دانلود رایگان مقاله چگونگی نوآوری با یک جامعه برندی

Abstract

This study examines how a firm can innovate with a brand community via an inductive, longitudinal study of three brand communities. The proposed framework for building an innovative brand community features six mechanisms: animation, openness, structuring, linking, theorization, and integration that support three processes: generation, socialization and adoption of user contributions. An innovative brand community can generate valuable innovations for the firm without reducing its own vitality. It brings together lead, creative, and other types of users to create ideas and new functions, uses, and contents pertaining to innovation. On the one hand, firms that partially open their boundaries by leaving space in the process of innovation for creation and discussion can benefit from the contribution of users without suffering appropriation problems. On the other hand, brand communities should receive toolkits for creation and animation, and encourage the development of both communities and innovation.

6. Conclusion

To build an innovation process involving a brand community, a firm should create and manage its relations with that community carefully. It can base its approach on six mechanisms that support innovation: animation, openness, structuring, linking, theorization and integration. This innovation process crosses firm and community borders and benefits from the assets provided by both types of organization. When the firm reshapes its boundaries, it can revise its innovation processes and integrate user knowledge and innovations. The resulting innovative offer includes a toolkit for innovation, provides support for brand community development, and encourages constant contact with the most active members. With its core competency of managing relations with the community, the firm can generate the most interesting innovations from the users’ point of view, develop a loyal user base, enjoy lower innovation costs, and secure a strong competitive advantage in its field. Thus, a new type of competition seems likely to emerge, in which firms aim not only to develop the best product in terms of functionalities or cost, but also to give their product characteristics that enable users to innovate, give it meaning, hack it, and adapt it to their increasingly individual and complex needs.