Involving Customers in New Service Development

This book deals with how companies can involve customers or users in order to learn with them in the field of service-based business development. It presents a variety of customer-involvement approaches, methods for learning with customers, and the results of case studies conducted in both service and manufacturing companies focusing on value-creation through services. Based on research carried out by several research groups around the world, as well as on illustrative cases, the book creates new actionable knowledge regarding customer-involvement which will be useful for both practitioners and scholars. Benefits for readers include: an understanding of the business potential of learning with customers and other users; an overview of the fields of new service development and customer-involvement with regard to concepts, theoretical frameworks, and models, in addition to strategies and techniques for involving users in fruitful ways during the innovation process; an illustration of the cases based on the results of empirical studies; and managerial implications and guidelines regarding how to manage customer-involvement during the different phases of the new service and business development process. Contents:Process of Customer Interaction in New Service Development (I Alam)The Role of the Customer in the Development Process (B Sandén et al.)Customers as Co-Innovators: An Initial Exploration of Its Strategic Importance (U Mannervik & R Ramirez)Customer-to-Customer Interaction in Service Development: A Many-to-Many Approach (E Gummesson)New Service Development: Learning from and with Customers (B Sandén et al.)Managing Ideas that are Unthinkable in Advance: A Matter of How and Where You Ask (P Kristensson)Learning from Experiments Involving Users in Service Innovation (P R Magnusson)Customer Involvement — Lessons Learned: A Study of Three Customer Involvement Projects at Volvo Cars (F Dahlsten)Service Encounter Analysis Based on Customer Retrospection (P Echeverri)How to Better Learn from Users (H Björkman)Video-Based Methodology: Capturing Real-Time Perceptions of Customer Processes (P Echeverri)Customer-Oriented Service Engineering as a Success Factor — Findings of Case Studies of Customer Integration in the Service Development Process (R Nägele)Service Innovation, User Involvement and Intellectual Property Management (C Hipp & C Herstatt)Customer and Supplier Involvement in New Service Development (F Hull et al.) Readership: Researchers and professionals in the fields of marketing, business development, strategy as well as service and product development. Suitable as a textbook for postgraduate courses like quality management, marketing, service management, operations management, and product management. Keywords:Customer Involvement;User Involvement;Service Development;Product Development;Innovation;Understanding CustomersKey Features:Several internationally-distinguished scholars present their latest findings concerning customer-involvementProvides readers with useful presentation and explanation of theories, augmented by illustrative examplesReviews:“This is a comprehensive text that addresses competently the general lack of knowledge regarding new service development and the different tools and approaches required … it is a high value resource for most in the NPD field interested in either new service development or even co-creation with customers applied to either products or services.”Journal of Product Innovation Management