LabCom MeetUX

This study examines how a firm can innovate with a brand community via an inductive, longitudinal study of three brand communities. The proposed framework for building an innovative brand community features six mechanisms: animation, openness, structuring, linking, theorization, and integration that support three processes: generation, socialization and adoption of user contributions. An innovative brand community can generate valuable innovations for the firm without reducing its own vitality. It brings together lead, creative, and other types of users to create ideas and new functions, uses, and contents pertaining to innovation. On the one hand, firms that partially open their boundaries by leaving space in the process of innovation for creation and discussion can benefit from the contribution of users without suffering appropriation problems. On the other hand, brand communities should receive toolkits for creation and animation, and encourage the development of both communities and innovation.

During collaborative innovation projects, interactions between actors and knowledge exchange among them have a crucial role to foster innovation. External knowledge can be integrated into the project through different practices. Thereby, to help companies to identify their best practices, it is necessary to find out where and how external knowledge is acquired, transformed and applied in order to better understand the organisational mechanisms by which firms acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit knowledge. To this end, we propose a new participative method called ISEACAP (Identification, Simulation, Evaluation of Absorptive CAPacity) in order to elicit exchanged knowledge during each part of an innovative project and map the knowledge journey from its integration to its application. The outcome of the method will first help the participants (actors of the innovative project) to better understand and improve their practices for integrating external knowledge. Further, it will help us to reach the way organisational routines will be implemented.

La capacité d’absorption (ACAP) d’une organisation est considérée comme une capacité dynamique fondée sur des routines et des pratiques. Si les débats académiques soulignent l’importance de les étudier avec finesse, les méthodologies proposées aujourd’hui en Systèmes d’Information, et plus largement en Sciences de Gestion, ne sont pas satisfaisantes. Nous proposons de comparer les différentes méthodologies qui peuvent être mobilisées pour appréhender plus finement les routines et les pratiques d’ACAP. Sur la base des limites identifiées de ces méthodes, nous proposons l’approche collaborative ISEACAP (Identification Simulation Évaluation et Assimilation pour les pratiques d’ACAP). Cette méthode s’inscrit dans les approches « practice-based » et s’appuie plus spécifiquement sur la co-production de savoirs en interaction directe avec les praticiens. ISEACAP favorise la description en finesse des pratiques d’ACAP à travers une méthode ludique et participative. L’article propose ainsi une nouvelle méthode de recherche collaborative qui permet conjointement, aux praticiens de s’engager activement dans une démarche réflexive de leurs pratiques, et aux chercheurs de mieux appréhender les mécanismes constitutifs de l’ACAP. Au-delà de l’absorption de connaissances, la méthode proposée ouvre des perspectives pour l’étude des pratiques et routines organisationnelles mobilisées (de manière consciente ou non) par les acteurs pour la création et le développement de toute capacité dynamique.

This paper investigates consumers’willingness to pay a price premium for two environmental attributes of a non-food agricultural product. We study individual preferences for roses associated with an eco-label and a carbon footprint, using an economic experiment combining discrete choice questions and real economic incentives involving real purchases of roses against cash. The data are analysed with a mixed logit model and reveal significant premiums for both environmental attributes of the product.

Upgradeable products are designed to allow sequential improvements during their lifetime. Little is known about consumers’ preferences for these eco-innovative products. We use a discrete choice experiment to assess the importance of several attributes of product upgrading on consumers’ choices. Four types of products are investigated: a washing machine, a wireless (upright) vacuum, a traditional vacuum and a laptop computer. Our experimental design varies several attributes of upgradeability (the type of improvement, the time between initial purchase and first upgrade and the upgrade practical procedure). All other characteristics of products are kept constant except the purchase price and the upgrade fee. Individual values are elicited on the basis of the random utility model (RUM) and an estimated mixed logit model permits to compute willingness to pay indicators. The results indicate that consumers value positively the possibility to improve products’ performance through upgrading, especially in terms of energy efficiency.

Understanding consumer preferences is a key element of new product development and sustainable consumption. Among sustainable products, we consider new products with upgradability properties. Upgradeability helps to prolong the lifespan of a product, satisfying changing consumer preferences and needs. This additional created value must be measured by willingness to pay premiums. This paper uses a method which valorizes each attribute of the product and analyzes the determinants of these premiums. A key advantage of the calibrated auction-conjoint method is the possibility of estimating numerous attributes with a large number of attribute levels. The results support the idea that consumers are willing to pay premiums for upgradeable, sustainable products, although these premiums are rather weak for some durable products in the study.