Nguyen Khanh Huyen-HS176177-MKT1704

1.

What is customer co-creation?

Co-creation is defined as contributions made by customers that assist a firm in the design and development
of a new product offering.

Customers can help companies improve new product development by contributing ideas and selecting ideas
for possible new offerings.

What are the steps in the customer co-creation process?

Successful customer co-creation requires two key steps:

1. Firm must get its customers to submit contributions

2. Firm must select a few viable contributions  from much a larger set of ideas (many of which are not
very valuable)

What are different types of customer co-creation?

There are four different types:

1. Collaborating: open contribution, customer-led selection

2. Tinkering: open contribution, firm-led selection
3. Co-designing: fixed contribution, customer-led selection
4. Submitting: fixed contribution, firm-led selection

Why do some customer co-creation ideas fail?

 “Design crowdsourcing”. The practice of soliciting functional design solutions from the crowd.

These researchers conducted both qualitative and quantitative studies that assess the impact of design
crowdsourcing upon product performance. The results indicate that (1) design crowdsourcing has a positive
impact on the sales of new products that are low in customer appeal, but have (2) no effect on the sales of
products that are high in customer appeal. They also found that (3) firms are more likely to engage in design
crowdsourcing for products that are more technologically complex.

This research suggests that design crowdsourcing can be a beneficial tool for companies under certain
conditions, especially for those who have complex technological products that have a low degree of initial
customer appeal.

 “Consumers response to other consumers’ participation in new product development”

The experiment revealed that participants had a more favorable impression of both the product and the
restaurant when customers contributed ideas for an incongruent product. However, experiment shows the
opposite when customers selected ideas, they had a more favorable impression for both the product and the
restaurant when the product was congruent for the other product.
The results of this study suggest that firms should use customers to contribute novel ideas but then select
ones similar to current offerings.

What should we do to ensure the success of customer co-creation?

1. Rule of one

For co-creation to work, companies need to get lots of ideas, and provide incentives for customers to
contribute.

2. Authenticity is critical

Customers are much more likely to contribute their ideas, time, and energy to companies that have an
authentic need for their help, and not just trying to exploit their efforts for commercial gain.

3. Patches and badges

Most successful co-creation initiatives award successful co-creators, not just financially, but also
through some visible symbol of recognition.

4. Don’t be the bad guy

One of the dangers of customer co-creation is a possibility of alienating customers by rejecting their
ideas. One way of reducing this risk is by engaging your broader customer community to evaluate, vote on,
and select these contributions.

2.

Provide a definition of the sharing economy.

Sharing economy is defined as a technology-enabled platforms that provide users with temporary access to

resources that may be crowdsourced.

Connects individuals who have things they want to share with individuals who need these things

What are the typical characteristics of the sharing economy?

1. Two-sided platform (this is a business model that requires firms to recruit not only customers but
also providers; some sharing platforms have decided to own their own supply of resources)
2. Crowdsource supply (suppliers are not employees and platforms have limited control over them, as a
result, quality of the offering is less consistent)
3. Access not ownership (customers have the opportunity to try products and services they would not
be able to or want to own; brands may be less important in the sharing economy than in the
traditional economy)

Explain the sharing economy typology, which is introduced in the article “Lateral Exchange Markets”
(Perren & Kozinets, 2018)
In this article, the authors seek to provide a better understanding of the sharing economy by developing a
topology that can be used to understand the various types of firms that operate in this new economy. They
conducted a very extensive ethnographic investigation of nearly two hundred different sharing
platforms, including Airbnb, Uber, and TaskRabbit, as well as many others.
This investigation included interviewing individuals that participate in these various platforms, reading news
articles and press releases, and also a careful examination of their websites. Based on this data collection, the
authors were able to organize these various platforms into a two-by-two matrix. This matrix has two
dimensions, consociality (which is the degree to which the members of a platform can engage in social
interaction), and second, platform inter-mediation (which is the degree in which transactions flow through a
platform provider). Based on these two dimensions, the authors propose that there are four different types
of sharing economy platforms; enablers, forums, matchmakers, and hubs. Now it appears that most Sharing
Committee firms like Uber and LendingClub, or either matchmakers or hubs. In some, the study provides a
very useful tool for understanding the sharing economy, there are different types of businesses that operate
in this new emerging space

What are some practical recommendations for activities in the sharing economy that were introduced
in the video lesson?

1. Leverage your prosumers (prosumers- “producer”, “consumer”; individuals who provide

crowdsourced resources)
2. Employ reverse ration (customers rate providers and providers rata customers; 80% of customers
approve this practice; firms must retain customers and providers)
3. Ride the surge (surge pricing increases the price of shared service in a particular area when
demand is high; balances supply and demand by reducing customers willing to pay for service and
increasing providers willing to serve)
4. Position on price (market offerings as a way of saving money rather than saving the world)

3.

- Is Threadless a success or a failure?

Threadless was a community first and this mentality has remained at the forefront of their
business operations today. They created solutions for their community which has fostered a
strong sense of loyalty. When Threadless introduced design challenges they had a willing group
of contributors to fuel their success. 

- How does today’s digital world impact (both positively and negatively) Threadless’ co-creation
strategy?

POSITIVE 
1. As of early this year, approximately 4.5 billion are on the internet which is 59% of the total
population. Much more than what it was 5 years ago with 3.6 billion people, more people are
on the internet thus increasing the market tremendously for threadless. 
2. With the world moving more towards the digital era, a lot of free tools are available on the
internet for creating amazing designs without having any technical knowledge thus making it
easier for people to contribute. 
3. With the rise of social media, sharing has become easier and simple, more and more people
like to share and create new things, this could bring up a positive environment for companies
based on co-creation such as threadless. 

NEGATIVE 
1. With more people online and easily replicable business model of threadless the competition
has also increased significantly. 
2. With similar platforms such as zazzle, printify, red bubble , etc the top designer of threadless
are moving towards them in the seek of new opportunities. 
3. There is always a threat from giants such as Amazon to enter the competition and disturb the
market. (Amazon released its “Merch” service which, similar to its Kindle service, allows
independent designers to upload designs and such to Amazon and Amazon will sell and print
shirts on demand in return for a cut of the profits)

- How could Threadless improve its co-creation strategy? What tactics or tools could they use to
enhance their success?

Today the whole world is on social media. 

• Part of the business is about engaging customers with social media. More and more
engagement with the customer will lead to more followers and traffic on the website.
• Improving interaction with artists through increased engagement.  
• Improve R&D. 
• Since its a co-creation strategy, Involve and give customers or users more and more
importance so that they don't feel cut out or get demotivated.