4.2.1. Toward customer participation in innovation

In order to insatiably maximize their innovation potential, more and more companies are seeking and producing ideas outside their own borders (open innovation paradigm in the Chesbrough sense [CHE 03]). Innovation is taking shape and is now part of a collaborative, participatory and bottom-up approach. In this respect and beyond the singular service-oriented approach, companies strongly support customers and users in their innovation efforts. Indeed, the contemporary customer or user has left their traditional postures of a simple passive recipient to become an active and collaborative protagonist of their own consumer experiences as well as a productive source of actions that create value and meaning [VOC 08]. Co-creation refers to considering customers as active participants in the organization’s work or treating customers as “partial employees” [LEN 00]. Through the academic literature and concrete experiences, mainly virtual and digitized, it appears that it is more customers and users, rather than firms, who are at the origin of the authorship of new products and offers in various fields [BAL 06, LIL 02, RAM 10, SHA 00, VON 86]. This perspective of co-innovation, which drives business transformation, underlines the desire and cooperative and productive role of customers and users in the service of innovation and the processes of defining new offers. Having become more active, more participatory, more resistant, more activist, more fun, more social and more community oriented [VOC 02], “post-modern” customers/users have transformed themselves, gained power (consumer empowerment trend) and become more entrepreneurial in terms of their relations with companies [VOC 08]. We are thus witnessing a deliberate and conscious convergence of roles upstream of innovation processes (phases of development of new products before their market launch), thus changing the relationship between the two players.

For a long time, the industrial sector and a few customers and users with widely demonstrated creative skills remained the focus, such as lead users¹ [LIL 02, VON 86], creative consumers² [BER 07] and emerging nature consumers³ [HOF 10]; the co-innovation phenomenon tends to spread to the context of consumer products and to all customers/users (the crowd). This cross-pollination is manifested, in particular, by the creation of online brand communities and the emergence of intermediation and crowdsourcing platforms involving a large pool of individuals.

4.2.2. Innovation by customers and users (user innovation): a major phenomenon?

The phenomenon of user innovation refers to innovations developed by end users rather than manufacturers [DE 16]. The motorized suitcase that carries passengers, the mountain bike or the very first dishwasher are just a few examples. Through an in-depth review of the literature and real managerial practices, Shah and Tripsas [SHA 16] report several main findings: (1) many significant and commercially attractive innovations come from users; (2) a significant proportion of users innovate; (3) users innovate in a wide variety of markets and in many industries and disciplines; and (4) the content of innovations by users differs from that of internal manufacturers and designers in terms of originality and adaptability to market needs. For example, 60% of innovations in the field of sports equipment [SHA 00] come from the market and more precisely from users. In a similar vein, Hienerth et al. [HIE 14] have shown that kayak users develop innovations at a cost three times lower than those from manufacturers. Several national empirical studies highlight the importance of this phenomenon in the current economic landscape. For example, 4.6% of respondents in France (representative sample of the French population) say they have already created a new product [VER 13]. A similar magnitude is observed in other Western countries, highlighting the extent of the phenomenon: 5.2% in the United States, 3.7% in Japan, 5.4% in Finland [DE 15, VON 11], 6.1% in the United Kingdom [VON 12], 5.6% in Canada [DE 13], 6.2% in the Netherlands [DE 11] and even 7.3% in Sweden [BEN 15].

It thus appears that users play an active and profitable role in the creation of innovations. Section 4.2.3 presents the forms of co-innovation and strategies available to companies to involve customers and users in their innovation processes.

4.2.3. Co-innovating with customers and users: three possible strategies

Co-innovation strategies with customers and users, mainly digitized and virtual, can take three dominant forms:

• – Co-innovation may be a partial strategy of the company and therefore only a subactivity of its overall activity. For example, to address the erosion of its customer base due to increased competition and to resurrect the customer experience, Starbucks launched the digital platform mystarbucksidea.com in 2008 to encourage its customers’ participation in the brand’s remodeling, by proposing ideas and voting for those of the community [RAM 10]. In 1 year, the platform registered 65,000 ideas and 658,000 votes. The brand has adopted an average of more than 25 ideas per year since the creation of this space, similar to the popular “splash stick”⁴, a proposal from a Japanese customer… In a similar vein, in France, Crédit Agricole has set up a virtual suggestion box to encourage its customers to participate in imagining the banking relationship of tomorrow. The initiative is detailed in Box 4.1:

• – The company’s global strategy can be based entirely on co-innovation with customers and users, as is the case with Threadless, a T-shirt creation platform where anyone can propose design and visual ideas of any kind, thus multiplying graphic works and styles and renewing its collections continuously. After submission to community votes for a fixed period of time, the most popular designs (four to six T-shirts per week) are sent into production, put up for sale and financially rewarded [OGA 06].
• – Co-innovation with customers can be subcontracted through the emergence of intermediation providers and crowdsourcing and open innovation platforms specialized in co-innovation call management, serving as a link between a sponsoring company wishing to solve a given problem (brand) and a community of individuals with potential solutions. The Agorize platform is an example (see Box 4.2).

But what do customers and users think of these practices? This is the purpose of section 4.2.4.

4.2.4. Co-innovating with companies: what do the main stakeholders think?

According to a survey conducted by Vellera and Hamdi-Kidar in 2017⁵ among a sample of 500 people representative of the French population, 31% of subjects were familiar with the principles of co-creation/co-innovation and 10% said they had already participated in such practices jointly with a company. According to the same survey, 40% of subjects reported that they had already adapted or modified an existing product for personal use (or that of a relative) and 19.8% had created a product from scratch outside any main professional activity.

Moreover, according to the same survey, companies that develop new products are perceived as more innovative (88%), more credible (69%) and closer to their customers (92%). Respondents consider that they (as customers) are legitimate to co-create with companies (89%) and that they are as competent as company employees to innovate (69.8%). In addition, the products resulting from this collaboration are considered to be more in line with their needs (92%), more practical (78%) and more attractive (86%). In addition, French consumers have a generally favorable attitude toward co-creation approaches (more than 85%), which they consider to be a real innovation approach (90%), legitimate for small companies or startups (around 90%). According to the same survey, 91% of subjects perceive co-innovation as a means of expressing customers’ creativity (91%) and not as a means of exploiting the customer and the user, by theft or scam. Indeed, only a quarter of respondents express reluctance to this approach and only 10% consider co-innovation to be scam. More than three-quarters of the surveyed customers considered that the co-created idea, from an intellectual property perspective, should belong to both parties (companies and customers), half opting for royalty-based remuneration (46%) (like Lego via its Lego Ideas co-creation platform, which paid up to 1% of the profits generated), one-third for a fixed monetary consideration (33%) and one-tenth for consideration in the form of gifts or prizes. Only 2% of the surveyed subjects consider it unnecessary to reward customers involved in such actions.

Ultimately, customers and users are an interesting source of new ideas for companies. Many of them co-innovate with their current or potential customers and users by involving them in idea generation sequences, creativity sessions, concept tests, etc., via collaborative platforms, forums for proposing new ideas or improving existing products, inventive activity crowdsourcing practices, etc. The positions of customers and users are constantly changing and transforming. Henceforth, their roles multiply and diversify and sometimes go beyond the ideation and creation of new products. Indeed, customers and users can, in some cases, move from playing a role as innovators to a role as entrepreneurs and business creators (user entrepreneurship phenomenon) [SHA 16] or take on the role of community brands developers [FÜL 16]. In addition, innovation by customers/users does not only concern new products but can also extend to the creation and development of new services [OLI 16], new techniques and innovative practices [HIE 16]. Finally, customers/users play an important role in the diffusion of innovations. This is the subject of section 4.3.

4.3.1. From the innovative customer to the influential customer

Social media represents both environments for expressing opinion and for seeking information and advice for customers. Aware of this, brands develop what is often labeled as viral marketing strategies.

Viral marketing is based on mechanisms related to word of mouth by customers who take over and share messages that are favorable to the company and that are initially and deliberately sent by the company [VAN 10a]. Among existing viral marketing strategies, the use of influential customers, regularly referred to as “influencers” or “opinion leaders” (OLs), is a particularly widespread practice. Like press relations with journalists, we then speak of “influencer relations”. The launch in May 2018 of InsidEars, Disneyland Paris’ European digital ambassador program, is an interesting illustration of this:

“Your enthusiasm and your content have a huge influence on our guests’ decision to come and visit us”⁶.

That is how Catherine Powell, CEO of the Euro Disney Group, addressed the participants directly at a ceremony that brought together influencers to launch the program. The latter is part of a clear strategy: to develop and maintain privileged relationships with individuals active in social media, specialized in information on amusement parks (or even exclusively on Disneyland Paris) and identified as important relays of opinion on this theme.

This type of viral marketing strategy, coupled with the use of influencers, is encouraged by the development of social media: is influence marketing a new role for the customer?

4.3.2. Influence marketing: a new role for the customer?

Influence marketing is not in itself a new role for the customer. Indeed, the existence of individuals with a greater influence than others was mentioned as early as the middle of the 20th Century through the concept of an OL (opinion leader). In particular, these OLs are designated as playing an influential role in the dissemination of innovations [IYE 11, ROG 03, VAN 11]. OLs exert their influence in their close circle of friends, “at the level of ordinary relationships” [KAT 55], that is, within their social networks (offline), whether they are friendly, family, neighborhood or professionally oriented. This influence is exerted in particular through word of mouth [RIC 88].

With the development of social media, researchers and marketing practitioners have directly transposed the concept of traditional (offline) OL into the online context (e-opinion leaders [e-OLs]). However, the roles of e-OL and OL are not completely identical. Indeed, e-OLs not only influence their close entourage, but a potentially much larger audience, particularly on so-called interest media and social networks (e.g. Twitter), in contrast with so-called friendship social media such as Facebook [COU 13]. This wide reach of e-OL messages is also due to the structure of Internet social networks and due to certain properties of word of mouth in terms of speed, scale and scope of dissemination (see Chapter 5).

In both contexts (offline and online), some authors simply present and define OLs through their influential roles. However, marketing influence is not limited to OLs: experts, prescribers or celebrities can be marketing influencers. This approach to defining OLs is, therefore, not sufficient to describe and identify OLs [VER 09].

4.3.3. From OLs to e-OLs – who are they?

The literature proposes several approaches to defining OLs by highlighting some of their characteristics. Among the latter, monomorphism is a particularly important feature because it delimits the role of influence of OLs to a product category (or several categories of related products) or field of interest [GOL 03, ROG 83] for which they have expertise [GRE 00, JAC 81, VER 04a] or for which their surroundings grant them this expertise [BER 12, ELI 97]. This expertise is explained by a sustained interest and involvement in the product category [RIC, 88] as well as a higher appetite for media-provided specialized information [VER 14].

OLs not only possess this expertise in a specialized field (for which they are OLs), they also promote it by communicating. The way they communicate makes it possible to characterize these OLs, since they influence their contacts through frequent exchanges, marked by the transmission of a large amount of information [BEN 94] about this field of specialization.

Second, OLs have social characteristics. They have a strong propensity to participate in social activities [ROG 03, WEI 94] and occupy privileged positions within their networks. In a sociometric vision, a network analysis approach that focuses on the connectivity of individuals and how they are interconnected, three main categories of individuals are identified [HIN 11]: (1) fringes that are on the fringes of the network and poorly connected to other members (few links); (2) hubs that occupy a central place in the network and are strongly connected (large number of links) and (3) bridges are also individuals considered to be relatively central because they link several subparts of the network that would not be interconnected without them. Hubs and Bridges are considered OLs [BUR 99].

Despite the multiplicity of OL characteristics highlighted, the literature generally approaches OLs from the perspective of one or the other approach (e.g., the OL’s “source of advice” or the OL’s hub) to identify them. However, this raises questions about the unidimensionality of the concept of OL and therefore that of e-OL. From a multicriteria perspective, Ruspil et al. [RUS 16] define e-OLs in the specific context of Internet social networks as a source perceived as an expert, which selects and publishes valuable (interesting and useful) content for their contacts and whom seeks to develop their social capital, i.e. to be listened to and followed by a large number of people with whom they can interact. This approach, therefore, aggregates three types of characteristics: expertise in the product category (or field of interest), communicative characteristics (selection of interesting and useful content) and social characteristics (accumulation of social capital).

4.3.4. Identifying and selecting leaders and e-OLs

In the offline context, several identification methods exist to identify OLs. Among them, three are particularly widespread but only converge moderately among them [IYE 11]: self-assessment, sociometry and observation [NEJ 14]. These methods have also been transposed into the digital context to identify e-OLs:

• – Self-assessment is a method based on measurement scales on which respondents assess their own OL status by indicating their level of agreement or disagreement with statements offered. These scales are based on different approaches to defining OL and e-OL (see section 4.3.3). Despite the proximity of these concepts (OL and e-OL), there are adapted and recommended measurement scales for each of them [RUS 16].
• – Another approach to identifying OL is based on its sociometric definition. It is then a question of finding the hubs and/or bridges that are considered to be OLs (see section 4.3.3). To do this, it is necessary to be able to calculate sociometric indicators (number of incoming and outgoing links, for example) and/or centrality. It is possible to rely on sociometric indicators directly provided by the platforms, such as on Twitter. On this Internet social network, two sociometric indicators are present on its members’ profiles: the number of subscribers (“followers”: number of incoming links) and the number of subscriptions (“following”: number of outgoing coming links). Vignolles et al. [VIG 16] propose to mobilize these indicators to identify e-OLs on Twitter by calculating the ratio number of subscribers/number of subscriptions for each individual. Those with a ratio greater than 2 are considered e-OLs. In some cases, and for networks with accessible data, it is possible to extract a large amount of data via appropriate programs and to visualize the network via network analysis software (such as NodeXL, see Chapter 5). In both cases (ratio of profile indicators or network analysis approaches by software), and because of the specialization of OLs, it is necessary to complete the sociometric approach with an analysis of the accounts in order to verify that the identified OLs are related to the themes and products of the viral marketing campaign.
• – Finally, with regard to observation, it is facilitated by the public nature of the exchanges. Automated methods have been developed to identify influential individuals on Internet social networks, including so-called influence measures. The Klout index was an emblematic example [LYN 17] but its recent closure (May 25, 2018) highlights the difficulty of such tools to establish themselves on a long-term basis despite their potential as facilitators in the identification of e-OLs.

Once they have acquired a high level of social capital, and a status of near celebrity on Internet social networks, brands use OLs and e-OLs beyond their initial field of specialization. These practices are reminiscent of endorsement advertising by celebrities [KAP 16], regularly used by marketing and may call into question the effectiveness of OL influence mechanisms based on trust and credibility in relation to the initial area of expertise.

4.3.5. Relationship management with leaders and e-OLs

Influential relationships represent a set of managerial practices, some of which are controversial. This is particularly the case when influencers are paid for their publications but do not post it until it is discovered by their followers⁷. In addition, this type of practice can be perceived as a form of disguised and therefore illegal advertising in some cases⁸. In France, the French professional advertising regulation authority (Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicité (ARPP⁹) proposes the adoption of good practices of transparency and loyalty toward the public: if e-OLs publish as part of a commercial collaboration with a brand with reciprocal commitments (e.g. in exchange for remuneration), this collaboration must be displayed explicitly and instantly. In this perspective, some hashtags (#ad or #sponso) are not perceived as sufficiently transparent and it is recommended to use terms such as “in partnership with…” or “sponsored by…”. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposes similar guidelines. Despite these rules, extrinsic motivations (remuneration, gifts, etc.) are particularly attractive for OLs [SHI 14].

Beyond the regulatory and ethical framework, it is also necessary to consider the impact of the use of this type of extrinsic motivation on the effectiveness of viral marketing strategies [TRU 09]. OLs’ contacts trust those OLs because of the quality of their advice and because they are perceived as disinterested and impartial [COR 71, HER 91, VER 14]. In particular, OLs are not perceived as commercial sources [LI 11, ROG 62, TSA 05]. Moreover, the use of extrinsic motivations could neutralize the perception of OLs as a source of trusted advice and therefore ultimately influence. To avoid this type of negative externality, it is also possible to use intrinsic motivations to help, for example, OLs and e-OLs maintain their status (e.g. for e-OLs, any element that maintains or develops their expertise and/or ability to publish content that is interesting and useful for their contacts; see definition of e-OL, section 4.3.3).