Lead user

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The term lead user (trend-leading user, trend-leading customer) was introduced in 1986 by Eric von Hippel .

Lead users are users whose needs are ahead of the requirements of the mass market and who expect a particularly high benefit from the satisfaction of needs / problem solving. The term is used both for companies (business customers) and for end consumers (private customers) and applies to both the material goods and the service sector.

definition

Lead users often act as innovators themselves. They are highly motivated to find a solution to their problems because of the great benefit they expect from satisfying their needs. In addition, lead users acquire specific skills and knowledge when dealing intensively with the respective topic. Therefore, lead users in many cases have a certain expert status as well as consumption, market and solution skills.

Lead users rarely innovate in isolation. In many cases, they take part in informal communities that serve to exchange information and provide mutual support (so-called user-to-user assistance). The Internet as a medium can play a decisive role in this. Today, many lead user communities and internet forums are used as communication platforms. From the company's point of view, the self-selection of lead users is increasingly targeted. B. present their problems in an ideas competition. In these cases, lead users and prosumers have a lot in common.

Lead user method

The lead user method is a process in which a provider tries to specifically involve lead users in product development. The method typically has four phases:

  1. Identification of important market trends
  2. Identification of lead users
  3. Workshop to develop innovative product concepts with the lead users
  4. Project the results onto a larger market

This form of cooperative product development by a company with lead users harbors both opportunities and risks. The classic lead user method is reaching its limits, especially against the background of increasingly complex products.

Possible opportunities:

  • Identification of customer needs and innovative solutions that are ahead of the market trends
  • Future market developments can be determined better than through traditional market research
  • Early detection of market risks
  • Obtaining information about competitors
  • Improving quality through customer orientation as early as the product development phase

Possible Risks:

  • The customer jumps off
  • Delay in product launch by the lead user
  • Higher organizational effort
  • Concentration on niche solutions that are not suitable for the mass market

Critical to be noted are problems that can arise in agreement with the lead users. B. regulate property rights or authority to issue instructions. From a practical point of view, there are still problems with regard to implementation time, costs and personnel deployment for implementing the method according to the classic approach. Newer variants of the lead user method integrate classic market research approaches such as B. the conjoint analysis , in the early phases of concept development and thus address the problem of niche development.

literature

  • V. Bilgram, A. Brem, K.-I. Voigt: User-Centric Innovations in New Product Development. Systematic Identification of Lead User Harnessing Interactive and Collaborative Online Tools . In: International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 12 (2008), No. 3, pp. 419-458.
  • A. Sänn, D. Baier (2012): Lead User Identification in Conjoint Analysis Based Product Design. In: WA Gaul, A. Geyer-Schulz, L. Schmidt-Thieme, J. Kunze (Eds.): Challenges at the Interface of Data Analysis, Computer Science, and Optimization . Springer, Heidelberg, 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-24466-7 , pp. 521-528. (PDF; 593 kB)
  • E. v. Hippel (1986): Lead Users. A source of novel product concepts . In: Management Science, Vol. 32, pp. 791-805.
  • E. v. Hippel (1988): The Sources of Innovation.
  • E. v. Hippel, R. Katz (2002): Shifting Innovation to Users via Toolkits . In: Management Science, Vol. 48, pp. 821-833.
  • E. v. Hippel (2005): Democratizing Innovation .
  • T. Szymusiak (2013): Prosumption - a new concept. Between market and ecology. Sustainability Solutions, Munich, ISBN 978-83-936843-2-8 .
  • T. Szymusiak (2013): Is Alvin Toffler Prosumer or Lead User of the modern economics? ( Alvin Toffler Prosument czy Lead User współczesnej ekonomii? ). Creativetime, Kraków.
  • T. Szymusiak (2015): Prosumer - Prosumption - Prosumerism . OmniScriptum GmbH & Co. KG, Düsseldorf, ISBN 978-3-639-89210-9 , pp. 38-41.