The Efficacy of Crowdsourcing for Early-Stage New Product Development: An Abstract

Abstract

Crowdsourcing is often recommended as an effective tool for product development and marketing research (Whitla 2009). This research examines the feasibility of using external user communities and crowdsourcing for early-stage idea generation in new product development (NPD) through an experimental design. The objective is to determine whether the quality and quantity of new product ideas from crowdsourcing through social media are superior to more traditional methods of market research such as one-on-one interviews and focus groups in the fuzzy front end (FFE). The benefits of using a crowd to tackle a problem with superior results have been tested empirically in a number of situations and reported by Scott E. Page (2007). However, managers, at least in a B2B context, tend not to trust ideas sourced in a collective manner. This research seeks to compare the outcomes in terms of quality and quantity of ideas in the FFE by comparing methods of collecting data. Specifically, methods where participants cannot interact with each other (one-on-one interviews) will be compared with two methods where they can, one online (social media platform) and one offline (in-person focus group). Research participants will be asked to provide new ideas for a food transportation system similar to the approach in Griffin and Hauser (1993) in the three different contexts. To simulate “expert users” in each context, the study will compare a group of self-described “foodies” to “non-foodies.” Independent coders with training in the offerings in the food industry and the feasibility of production will first count the number of new product ideas and then classify them as new-to-the-world or product line extensions. Then the coders will rate the quality and quantity of ideas across research contexts. Prior work has highlighted crowdsourced ideas as novel and creative (e.g., Füller et al. 2004). This project adds another dimension by exploring whether the products developed from these ideas are of high enough quality and quantity to lead to new-to-the-world innovations. If the crowd-based solution via social media provides as much or more valuable information as other methods, managers should consider relying more on external feedback from crowdsourcing in the early stages of NPD.