New service development: learning from and with customers
New service development relies on the complex task of understanding and anticipating latent customer needs. To facilitate proactive learning about the customer, recent findings stress customer involvement in the development process and observations of customers in real action. This
paper draws on theory from market and learning orientation in conjunction with a service-centered model, and reviews the literature on customer involvement in innovation. A field experiment was conducted in Sweden with end-user mobile phone services. The design departures from the nature of
service that precepts value-in-use and by borrowing from relevant techniques within product innovation that supports learning in customer co-creation. The experiment reveals that the consumers' service ideas are found to be more innovative, in terms of originality and user value, than those
of professional service developers.
Keywords: Customer information; Customer service management; Learning; Market orientation; Market research; Sweden
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 December 2004
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