How to be Successful in Co-creation Research
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Tue, Oct 27, 2009
At the ESOMAR Online Research 2009 conference, Volker Bilgram of HYVE AG presented a case study of the Swarovski Enlightened Innovation Research Community, which was designed for the purposes of co-creation, marketing research and community.
- Cocreation. Part of the IRC was a co-creation tool to enable users to configure wristwatch designs from 24 components then selecting and freely placing any of 108 gemstones on the watch. More than one thousand designs were submitted in the first eight weeks, ranging from the simplistic to complex designs that took participants 45 minutes to create. Users could also upload designs created with other software.
- Marketing research. Designs were presented in galleries and rated by three groups: by users, by a jury of Swarovski designers and by a jury of external designers. Users could submit a short evaluation (award 1-5 points) or a detailed evaluation ("vote and win"). Members were invited to comment on one another's designs. Besides stated preferences, data was mined from the configuration tool for frequency of selection of components and gemstones. In addition, preferred combinations were identified.
- Community. The IRC was an open community requiring completion of a short registration form. Users uploaded their own avatars. Banners on design-related websites were used for initial recruitment, which led to buzz to spread interest in the community virally. More than 2000 participants contributed to the contest from 48 countries.
In the post-processing, the winning design was produced as a prototype and presented at a leading trade-show fair in Switzerland. A trend booklet of the MR findings was used for B2B marketing by Swarovski. The community was so successful that Swarovski ran a follow-on community and will continue community research initiatives.