This research identifies a surprising downside of crowdsourcing: Those participants whose ideas are not selected disengage from the brand after having learned about the outcome. From this perspective, crowdsourcing might better be framed as a communal effort rather than a competition.

In recent years, more and more consumer goods firms have started to tap into the creative potential of their user communities in order to fuel their new product development pipelines. While many have hailed this paradigm shift as a highly promising development for firms, there is hardly any...

Managers of new-to-the-market ingredient brands often use brand alliances to help establish the identity of an ingredient brand name. One common form of a brand alliance is joint branding in which an ingredient brand name is promoted on the host brand package. For new-to-the-market or little...

This paper examines consumers’ attention traces (e.g., sequences of eye fixations and saccades) during choice. Due to reduced equipment cost and increased ease of analysis, attention traces can reflect a more fine-grained representation of decision-making activities (e.g., formation of a...

In this article, the authors propose that the canonical customer-toolkit dyad in mass customization (MC) should be complemented with user communities. Many companies in various industries have begun to offer their customers the opportunity to design their own products online. The companies...

Firms and governments are increasingly interested in learning to exploit the value of lead user innovations for commercial advantage. Improvements to lead user theory are needed to inform and guide these efforts. In this paper we empirically test and confirm the basic tenants of lead user...

Luxury brands have started to offer consumers the opportunity to customize their exclusive products by making certain aesthetic decisions such as the color, fabric, or cut of their products. A robust finding in the marketing literature is that consumers place a greater value on customized versus...

Recently, toolkits for user innovation and design have been proposed as a promising means of opening up the innovation process to customers. Using these tools, customers can take on problem-solving tasks and design products to fit their individual needs. To date, arguments in favor of this new...

Firms and governments are increasingly interested in learning to exploit the value of lead user innovations for commercial advantage. Improvements to lead user theory are needed to inform and guide these efforts. In this paper we empirically test and confirm the basic tenants of lead user...

Firms and governments are increasingly interested in learning to exploit the value of lead user innovations for commercial advantage. Improvements to lead user theory are needed to inform and guide these efforts. In this paper we empirically test and confirm the basic tenants of lead user...