The co-creation continuum: from tactical market research tool to strategic collaborative innovation method

Journal of Brand Management: year end review 2017

“…The SI illuminates the need for brand and co-created innovation in the digital era (Uncles and Ngo 2017). It opens with consideration of a co-creation continuum within branding from a managerial perspective (Ind et al 2017), with findings indicating most brands currently tend to use co-creation as a tactical market research tool. However, some have successfully transitioned to the other end of the continuum and engage customers and other stakeholders potentially in all stages of the co-creation process-enabling differentiation and competitive advantage.…”

Theory and practice of brand co-creation

“…Academic discussion of co-creation, by contrast, challenges all perspectives that stick to a company-oriented brand building and talks of the new logic for thinking about brands and branding (Merz et al, 2009). Indeed, brand co-creation is often equated with the era of 'stakeholder-oriented branding' (Christodoulides, 2008;Schultz, 2009, 2010;Iglesias et al, 2018) in which brand construction has been regarded as an ongoing social process of negotiation between stakeholders and the brand owner Ind, 2014;Ind et al, 2017). These interrelationships between co-creators and their more direct interaction with brands are increasingly reinforced by the technologies available in digital environments (Christodoulides, 2009;Ramaswamy and Ozcan, 2016;von Wallpach and Vallster, 2013).…”

“…Nevertheless, there is to date no universal framework capturing the brand co-creation paradigm and respecting the networklike structure, the heterogeneity of the participants in brand creation and the low controllability of the process. There is furthermore little empirical evidence so far as to how practitioners can make use of co-creation to interrelate with customers and other brand co-creators to establish true partnerships with them (Ind et al, 2017). In general, it can be said that existing research on the paradigm of brand co-creation is fragile and fragmented (Hatch and Schultz, 2010;Ind et al, 2012;Payne et al, 2009).…”

“…(4) Lastly, it is noted that recent studies have called for a new, more open and participatory brand management style (for example, Iglesias et al, 2013); that the shift from internallygoverned, management-centred brand building to a co-creative process requires practitioners to re-think how they operate brands; that, on the one hand, brand owners are increasingly losing control over intended brand meanings (Kristal et al, 2018;Saleem and Iglesias, 2016) while, on the other, brand management can generate product-related and brand-related benefits by interrelating with internal and external stakeholders (Ind et al, 2017). Accordingly, this thesis aims to offer useful guidance to managers in business-to-consumer and business-to-business settings on the question of how to initiate, institutionalise and maintain brand co-creator networks.…”

“…Recent thinking around the branding process challenges the assumption of brand identity as a static and enduring creation, initiated, executed and controlled by brand management (Aaker, 1996b). Specifically, a brand is seen as a dynamic social process constructed through multiple networked interactions and relationships between the company, the brand and various stakeholders (Black and Veloutsou, 2017;da Silveira et al, 2013;Iglesias et al, 2013;Ind et al,, 2017). Instead of accepting the brand owner's view of what its brand is, stakeholders become active conduits and co-creators of brand meaning (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004;Kornum et al, 2017;Veloutsou and Guzmán, 2017;von Wallpach et al, 2017).…”