The research of eight distinct Netnography projects in the field of Fast Moving Consumer Goods and in-depth interviews with employees reveals a multi-faceted attitude towards need information(consumers' wishes, expectations, etc.) and solution information(ideas and solutions shared by consumers). The authors also shed light on project ownership, in which stage of the innovation process Netnography can generate value, and the reaction of other departments not directly involved. The findings provide insights into key success factors when conducting Netnography research and hints for other explorative, consumer-orientated approaches.
This presentation provides insight into the open innovation and co-creation idea and describes a human-centred innovation approach with respect to the changing roles of market research and product design. The increased importance of strong interdisciplinary (internal) collaboration of researchers and designers for being successful in open innovation is emphasized. Only the combination of external co-creation and internal collaboration make open innovation programs successful. Embracing a human-centered innovation approach means also to intervene in existing structures of power within the company which are built upon hierarchy.
Online conversations in web forums, blogs and other 'user generated content' platforms are a valuable source for gaining unobtrusive Consumer Insights. A new method to analyze this user generated content is Netnography. The Netnography method [interNET & ethNOGRAPHY] is an observant research approach of online conversations in web forums, blogs and other 'user generated content' platforms in the internet. In contrast to quantitative, IT-driven counting of keywords and phrases through web monitoring solutions, Netnography is a qualitative research approach to analyze conversations in order to gain deep Consumer Insights and transfer them into product solutions. The presentation gives an overview of the method as well as the business benefits of the Netnography approach for generating Consumer Insights. The proceeding of a Netnography project will be shown in a case study HYVE conducted together with NIVEA (Beiersdorf) on the topic of sunless tanning.