embrace customer collaboration This is the third of five thoughts regarding the importance of connecting and the power of community. Facilitating connection and leveraging community is arguably the ‘next big thing’ in marketing, an issue explored in some detail in Tuesday’s thought. Around the world, there is a growing trend towards the co-creation of goods […]

embrace customer collaboration This is the third of five thoughts regarding the importance of connecting and the power of community. Facilitating connection and leveraging community is arguably the ‘next big thing’ in marketing, an issue explored in some detail in Tuesday’s thought. Around the world, there is a growing trend towards the co-creation of goods and services, whereby businesses work collaboratively with customers and potential customers to develop an optimum outcome in terms of customer satisfaction, repeat business, referral, and return on investment more generally. Recent research in the United States found that 72% of businesses surveyed now use customer collaboration to drive research or gather data that can be used to refine strategies and deliver superior outcomes. Another study found that some 64% of decision makers in the United States suggest that co-creation delivers superior outcomes to more traditional approached. Yet another study in the US found that 66%…