Engaging customers in decision making processes through social media: Are brands listening? How far can customer views be used in practice? / SMWF Europe

The concept of co-creation was first recognised by scholars C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy in their 2000 Harvard Business Review article, “Co-Opting Customer Competence”.

In their later book The Future of Competition they offered examples including Napster and Netflix showing that customers would no longer be satisfied with making yes or no decisions on what a company offers. (Reference: wiki/Co-creation)

Since this early research co-creation has arguable become a driving force in social media and marketing technique – providing an outlet for brands to include customers in the product and marketing planning process.

In New Media Age (NMA)’s recent cover story Charlotte McEleny talked to leading brands empowering customer involvement via social media. SMWF Europe brings this discussion to a live audience with NMA chairing a brand panel of New Look, Dell and Unilever (Lyx/Axe brand).

Discussion: Customer Insight and Co-Creation Embracing Social Media

• How are brands customer insight managers using social media? What are the best approaches to market research via social media?

• Engaging customers in decision making processes through social media: Are brands listening? How far can customer views be used in practice?

• Could using social media for insight and co-creation be the future for all FMCG? What limits does this approach have?

• Impact of treating customers as partners rather than just respondents… engaging the audience.

• Is co-creation a no-go area for some brands?

Moderator: Charlotte McEleny, Senior Reporter, New Media Age
Oliver Lucas, Head of Customer Insight & CRM, New Look
Kerry Bridge, Global Digital Media Communications Manager, Dell Public Sector
Philippa Rose, Global consumer marketing insights manager, Unilever (Lynx / Axe)

As part of a comprehensive two day social media conference the customer insight discussion sits alongside a presentation from the CIO on use of crowd-sourcing for public sector projects. Other topics during SMWF include: brand engagement with social media, social shopping, community management, customer support, location based marketing, mobile social media, business to business social networks, social gaming, virtual currencies and the latest web 2.0 marketing tools.

Now Europe’s largest conference and expo for the social media industry, the Social Media World Forum will be held March 29th/30th 2011 at Olympia and is part of the series .

via socialmedia-forum.com