CCMS Seminar presentation by Prof. Cambier F. (NEOMA)

Brand Fans as Another Effective Source of Innovations for New Product Development: Towards a Better Understanding

Linda Hamdi-Kidar, PhD (Toulouse Business School, France)

Fanny Cambier, PhD (NEOMA Business School, France & CCMS)

Tomoko Kawakami, PhD (Waseda School of Business, Japan)

A stream of comparative studies already tried to understand the most effective external sources of innovation (e.g. the crowd, lead-users, household innovators) but the innovation literature also suggests another potentially interesting source that, in practice, remains largely untested: brand fans. Investigating brand fans’ effectiveness as innovation source is highly relevant, as many leading companies increasingly recognize their value for brands (e.g. deeper engagement). Thus, the current research compares who, the brand fans or the crowd, can ultimately generate better ideas for new products through two experimental studies. In a pilot study, we conducted an innovation challenge for a major confectionary brand and asked six experts to evaluate the concepts developed. This study counterintuitively reveals that top fans generated ideas that score significantly higher in terms of appropriateness (i.e. business potential and customer benefits) while not being significantly lower in terms of newness (i.e. novelty and originality) and feasibility. Next, based on the premise that brand fans might be too close to the brand for generating radical ideas, the main study (ongoing) compares ideas generated by brand fans with those generated by other users in the course of an innovation challenge for either radical or incremental innovations, in collaboration with IKEA Belgium.

More CCMS Seminars : 

• On November 21st AM, 2022 (Mons), Prof. Gronhoj A. (Aarhus BSS) will give a CCMS Seminar presentation.
• On December 20th, 2022 (Brussels) the CCMS, ULiège, UMons & Solvay Brussels School EM will con-organize a Marketing Day.
• On January 12th, 2022 (Paris) we will hold the 6th Joint Doctoral Seminar with Paris-Dauphine University.
• On March 31st, 2022 (Namur) UNamur will organize the ‘Journée de recherche en marketing du Grand Est’