The Role of Customer Information in Service Innovation (CInSIn)

  • Koskull von, Catharina (Project manager, academic)
  • Helkkula, Anu (Project participant)

Project: Externally funded project

Project Details

Description

Service innovation is important and even vital for the company's prosperity and future existence. Since the early 1970s research has consistently found that one of the top key factors to a successful new service is information about customer needs and wants, i.e. customer information. As a result, much normative research have been conducted on how companies "best" should acquire this valuable information. Much of this prior research have been based on the assumption that organisations and managers act rational. As a result, fruitful discussions of potential difficulties, as well as potential facilitators, related to acquisition and use of customer information in innovation processes have been neglected. This research project funded by TEKES and four partcipating companies is a first step towards creating insights on how customer information is acquried and used in service innovation. Moreover, the project will clafiry the concept of customer information and a classification of different types of customer information will be conducted (e.g. invisible customer information, recyclable customer information). The classification, as such, could be used as a diagnostic tool to identify the efficiency of customer information use in companies' innovation work. The aim of the project is to develop knowledge on acquisition and use of customer information in service innovation. The primary focus is on the company's internal customer information processes and how these are utilised in the company's innovation practices. The research process is divided into five phases: [1] Careful planning of the mix of data collection methods, [2] Collection of data, [3] Analysis of data, i.e. identifying the obstacles and facilitators of customer information use and acquisition in the development process, classification of different types of customer information, [4] Writing it up and summarising key learning points, [5] Reporting and disseminating.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01.08.200831.01.2013

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