Posted on : 2024-01-07 21:02:32
Article : Good Morning Monday management solution for the TASK 275- To help drive innovation 58% of businesses are now piloting co-creation projects
To broaden the businesses companies, need to add either new products or gor for new SKUs or introduce brand variants. The brand Co-creation refers to inviting stakeholders (usually customers or employees) to participate in a design or problem-solving process to produce a mutually valued outcome. Customer co-creation can lead to some great innovations, such as Etihad Airways' customizable cabin interiors. However, co-creation can also produce some real head-scratchers, like 'Boaty McBoatface', the crowdsourced name for a UK environmental research vessel. NOW let us view how certain global conglomerates encouraged brand co-creation with the help of their consumers participation.
1.Unilever is one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, owning over 400 well-recognized brands, including Dove, Lipton, Best Foods, and many more. With operations in 190 countries and products used by over 2.5 billion people on a daily basis, Unilever has a massive pool of customers from which to source ideas and solutions to product development questions. To put this resource to use, Unilever actively looks to its customer base for product solutions, asking start-ups, academics, designers and customers for ideas and suggestions.
The global response to the Unilever platform has been strong, and has also helped develop a more open culture: now, over 60% of Unilever's research projects involve external collaboration. Unilever's approach to co-creation reflects the value of open innovation and shows the potential uses of crowdsourcing to solve problems - even complex problems requiring technical knowledge and expertise.
2.Heineken-Beer giant Heineken is an immensely popular global brand, with global revenue of crossing €27 billion . Despite its size, Heineken is a company that recognizes the value of customer collaboration at the local level. In 2012, Heineken invited a group of customer stakeholders to participate in what is called ‘Heineken Open Design Explorations Edition 1: The Club’. With this initiative, emerging designers from a diverse range of backgrounds were tasked with developing a new and innovative club concept. Nineteen designers used an online creative hub to share ideas with thousands of Heineken fans. The end result was the Heineken Concept Club, unveiled during Milan Design Week in 2012. Thousands of Design Week attendees visited the installation to interact with the crowdsourced layout, and the event attracted a lot of industry and media attention. This example demonstrates how a customer co-creation can help attract fresh media attention for established global brands, even well-known brands like Heineken. Even better, the funds required for such an exercise are likely lower than traditional marketing or advertising costs.
3.DHL, the world’s largest courier, is a great example of how customer co-creation can be successfully applied to service industries, not simply to the manufacture of products.
Over the past decade, DHL has hosted workshops with customers in Germany and Singapore in an effort to find creative solutions and improve client experience. The company has now formalized these workshops into DHL Innovation Centers.
At these Innovation Centers, customers are invited to talk to DHL employees and brainstorm new initiatives to help company performance. One of the great ideas to come out of these sessions was the ‘Parcelcopter’, a drone used for deliveries over challenging terrains.
This approach to customer co-creation proved to be fruitful: as of early 2017, DHL had held over 6,000 co-creation sessions with customers. In 2018, DHL extended its network of showcase centers in North America, opening its third Innovation Centre in Chicago.
DHL’s co-creation efforts have also helped customer satisfaction scores to rise over 80%, generating higher client retention as a result. Crowdsourced technologies have also helped DHL dramatically reduce the delivery time for some items. This example shows us that co-creation is never out of reach, even for the world’s largest companies. Even though DHL employs over 490,000 people around the world and produces $57 billion U.S. dollars in annual revenue, the company still looks for inventive new solutions.
End point- Co-creation helps build brand loyalty by making a customer part of the production process. It also helps enhances the financial performance of a company through a good bottom line. Lastly, it encourages innovations and ideas. An example of co-creation is using social media platforms such as Twitter to solicit customer feedback. Feedback from consumers can be useful in providing suggestions regarding a brand that may help modify a product. An example is how football clubs rebrand their uniforms.
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