.
.
When Customers Get Clever…
. — Pierre R. Berthona, Leyland F. Pittb, Ian McCarthyb, Steven M. Kates —.
.
Companies have always been on their toes dealing with clever customers. There are different strategies how to best use these clever customers to enhance the value of the brand, but before understanding these strategies, we have to understand the different types of “Clever Customers”.
Clever customers can be of two types: -
.
.
1. Creative Customers: -
.
Creative customers, also called as underground innovators are identified as those who adapt, modify or transform a proprietary offering and represent an interesting paradox for businesses. What should a firm do when creative customers start to modify products, hack code and adjust services to suit themselves? This article identifies that creative customers can represent a black hole for future revenue or be a gold mine of ideas.
.
.
2. Lead users: -
.
Lead users are those whose current strong needs will become general in the marketplace months or years in the future. Since lead users often try to fulfill the need they experience, they can provide new product concept and design data as well.
.
.
Differences between creative customer and lead user
.
- Creative customers work with all types of offerings while lead users work with just novel or enhanced products
- Creative customers generally do not face needs that will become general; they work on personal interests that remain personal or expand to a subset of users.
- Creative customers need not benefit directly from their innovations but indirectly through peer recognition etc.
- Firms use a formal and disciplined process to find, screen and select lead users. Creative customers rarely ask permission to experiment with a firm’s offering.
- Creative customers are usually independent of the organization while lead users are contacted by, communicated to and their process of interaction with the firm controlled by the organization.
.
.
Reasons for treating creative customers strategically
.
- They exist and are here to stay. They are bound to grow in number
- They are a rich source of innovation
- Recognizing and utilizing creative customers is a form of outsourcing the process of new product development
.
.
Firms’ stances towards creative customers
.
Discourage – Firm’s attitude towards customer innovation is negative but actions are de facto passive. They verbally berate customer innovation but take no overt action
Resist – Firms verbally berate customer innovation and back that up with punitive action
Encourage – Firm verbally lauds and applauds customer innovation but takes no overt action to facilitate it.
Enable – firms cheer customer innovation and back words with deeds to actively help customers innovate on their products.
.
.
Awareness, analysis and response
.
Once managers are aware that their offerings are being modified by customers, they should analyze the phenomenon and then respond. Response should be unambiguous and send appropriate messages to all stakeholders.
.
.
.
Follow-me On:
.
.
.
Tags: Clever customer, Creative Customers, Lead users