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...

Lead users are proposed as a valuable resource for marketers in terms of the (1) development, (2) adoption, and (3) diffusion of new products. We present the first consumer study to provide evidence that the latter two suggestions are justified. First, we find that lead users demonstrate...

Signaling consumers that the company behind a brand is run by a family is increasingly observable in the marketing realm. One possible reason could be the emotional value signaled by the family nature of the firm. Brand signals carrying emotional value might contribute to a competitive...

In the last years, scholarly attention was on a steady rise leading to a significant increase in the number of papers addressing different technological and organizational aspects of digital transformation. In this paper, we consolidate existing findings which mainly stem from the literature of...

Digital transformation increasingly requires activities located outside firm boundaries, for example via alliances with start-up companies. Despite this, German Mittelstand firms, primarily owned and managed by enterprising families and seen as role models of innovation, appear reluctant to...