Four-view Analysis of the Perceived Organisational Changes Required to Implement Micro-blogging During Product Conceptualisation for Capturing Consumer Conversations

Global manufacturing output continues to grow, creating the need for the development of new products and innovative enhancements to existing ranges. With the advancement of consumer social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.com, companies today are able to search for and utilise knowledge shared in online consumer conversations. Product designers may benefit from these discussions, which often focus on concerns, new ideas and/or product enhancements, thereby enriching the innovative process of New Product Development (NPD). The Web 2.0-based activity of micro-blogging has been researched widely, with scholars identifying both benefits and weaknesses for its use in general business activities. However, its application, particularly for capturing online consumer conversations for product conceptualisation and idea generation, is limited and rarely acknowledged. This paper aims to address this deficiency in literature, extending the previous research of Evans et al. [1], by examining how micro-blogging sites may be utilised during the product conceptualisation phase of NPD to capture consumer knowledge from micro-blogged conversations. Through the conduction of a face-to-face dual-moderated focus group, with fifteen employees of a small UK-based sports equipment manufacturer, we create a four-view model to identify the perceived organisational, process, personnel and technological changes required to embed micro-blogging into the product conceptualisation phase. Findings suggest that manufacturing companies would welcome the introduction of micro-blogging into NPD and view it as an opportunity to engage on a more personal level with current and potential customers and capture consumer feedback typically uncaptured by formal methods. Certain questions were raised, however, relating to interoperability with current systems, automated processes for content analysis and over reliance on manual engagement by staff members.