The Adidas Creators Club is a platform where customers and athletes share ideas and participate in the design process.
This type of collaborative R&D is made possible by social platforms but how can the power of social media in new product development (NPD) be captured?
In the first study of its kind, RADMA scholar Dhruba Borah and his co-authors have analysed studies up to 2023 to determine how social platforms are being used in their paper ‘The use of social media in different phases of the new product development process’.
They found that social media is used in different ways during the NPD.
It identified four categories of social media:
- Company-built social media sites – Dell IdeaStorm, My Starbucks Idea
- Company collaboration sites – IBM connections, Yammer
- Public social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, YourTube, Instagram
- Innovation intermediary social media – Innocentive, Get Satisfaction
Phase-specific use of social media in new product development
Discovery phase or ideation
This is the most challenging phase and social media was used to expand knowledge and great an understanding of customer behaviours.
In addition to the public platforms a number of companies had developed their own, such as Coca-Cola and this was found to strengthen relationships with customers and improve the quality of decision-making.
Main objectives:
- Generate novel ideas
- Identify business opportunities
- Screen and test new ideas
However, the researchers found that idea generated from social media were often of more quality and lacked creativity. Only 2 percent of the 25,186 ideas submitted to Dell IdeaStorm since 2007 had been used.
Development phase
In this phase, collaborative tools were used to improve communication, particularly with dispersed teams. It was found to improve decision-making and the speed and quality for producing new products.
Main uses of social media:
- Improve internal communication and collaboration – Slack, Trello
- Facilitate supplier involvement
- Enable product co-development
The downside was that employees were spending too much time viewing and managing their social media platforms without making work related contributions.
Launch phase
This is final and most costly phase of the NPD process and includes decision-making over the launch timing, strategic marketing, branding and customer feedback.
Main uses of social media:
- Raise awareness of their brand, product and offerings
- Promotion of products – this may include creating blog as part of formal campaigns
- Realtime feedback on new products and early alert of problems
The challenge is that social media is difficult to control and negative reviews or unfounded rumours can create damage to a company’s reputation that is difficult to defend.
Social media in new product development
The paper identifies four types of social media that can facilitate new product development across the three phases and provides firms with an organisational framework to guide NPD managers when using social platforms.
Read the paper:
The use of social media in different phases of the new product development process: a systematic literature review; Runyue Han, Julia Brennecke, Dhruba Borah and Hugo K. S. Lam
