Open Innovation through Customers: Collaborative Web-Based Platforms for Ethically and Socially Responsible New Products Part 1

Introduction

Consumerism studies have their roots at the very beginning of the marketing discipline. Buskirk and Rothe (1970) stated that consumerism can be related “to what has been popularly accepted as the marketing concept for the past 20 years, which suggests that the purpose of a business is to provide customer satisfaction” (p. 61). Kotler (1972) defined consumerism as the “social movement seeking to augment the rights and power of buyers in relation to sellers” (p. 49). Over time the power of buyers has become central to marketing and customer-centric strategies and a “must” for firms oriented to customer satisfaction and long-term profitability (Kaufmann & Khan Panni, 2013).

From a customer perspective, consumerism can be “defined as the organized efforts of consumers seeking redress, restitution and remedy for dissatisfaction they have accumulated in the acquisition of their standard of living” (Buskirk & Rothe, 1970, p. 62). Evidently, consumer dissatisfaction causes change over time with the undertaken corrective actions, following social and economic environment evolutions (Granzin & Grikscheit, 1976) and call for firm continuous attention, because their development is even more rapid and radical than in the past. This is due to globalization and new interactive communication tools, understood as Web 2.0 features, which provide instant information flows all over the world and an on-going socio-economic change with cross influences between countries, unimaginable until a few years ago.

Globalization and the rapid exchange of information and knowledge, enabled by new technology features, are the engines (Perrone, 1996) of hypercompetition (D’Aveni, 1994), and assume a major role in changing consumer - firm reciprocal attitude. Today customers play a decisive role in firms’ decisions, their satisfaction and loyalty is vital for firm survival, even more so when competition is a worldwide game.

Customers are aware of their role in firm success and of their power in affecting firm decisions about new products and strategies. These aspects represent both an opportunity and a threat for firms; an opportunity because their willingness to participate in firms’ decisions can be used to better answer their needs involving them in different stages of new product development; a threat because customers claims and dissatisfaction motives and causes towards a firm can be known, wrongly or rightly, all over the world thanks to a “click,” disseminating panic and opening a firm crisis (e.g., Mattel).

Considering customer willingness to participate in the firms’ decision as an opportunity, at an early stage, firms have used web 2.0 features to create blogs, forums, chats and communities in which customers can express their opinions, exchange information, thus creating a new and ever updated source of information and knowledge, sometimes with the firm’s support.

On their own, customers have generated their own blogs, forums, chats and communities developed by or around them which have become a valuable source of information and suggestions for firms, sometimes despite their wishes.

Parallel to this ever more growing awareness about the opportunities and threats of these tools, a new scenario for customer involvement in firms decisions has become possible, leading to OI through customers, spotlighting their priorities which today call for a more ethically and socially responsible course of action by the firm.

The OI approach highlights the opportunities to open up firm boundaries offering the possibility to internalize and combine external knowledge sources with internal ones, allowing the acquisition of complementary resources and competences (Chesbrough, 2003a).