We all remember those moments when we stumbled upon another interesting article or video, just when we had finally decided to stop scrolling through our Facebook feed. Several years ago, Pocket built a solution to this problem of vacillating between postponing your important tasks for 5 more minutes (again) and risking missing out on something interesting. And recently, utilizing the huge amounts of data they gathered, the company launched a new service: Pocket Recommendations. In this post, I will point out how Pocket has managed to co-create the value provided through this new service with millions of people.
Although 3D printing is not completely adopted by companies yet, it provides the opportunity to let consumers customize products to their needs. This is due to the fact that this way of producing provides flexibility (D’Aveni, 2015). Therefore, new business initiatives emerge that make use of 3D printing for ‘mass’ customization. An example is a company called Digital Forming. Within the company’s app, customers are able to adjust product parameters such as shape, color, size and materials. There is a professional design that serves as a basis for the design process. Therefore, the company also refers to it as ‘co-design’. Examples of products that can be customized and 3D printed by Digital Forming are jewelry, iPhone cases and coffee cups. After the customer has designed its product, it is produced in a 3D printing manufacturing facility of Digital Forming.
“Where are we going for dinner? Someone Dianping it!”
Food has a special meaning to the Chinese people. For years, a new word “chihuo” appears among the young generation of Chinese people, which means foodie. They enjoy exploring popular restaurants and sharing their experiences on social networks. In prospect of increase in demands of this market, the Chinese e-commerce giants are taking rivalry to food. Dianping is one of the top location based service review platforms (also launched mobile APP). In 2015, Dianping (China’s Yelp) and Meituan (China’s Groupon) merged to form O2O service giant, valuing $15 billion.
The most prominent examples of value co-creation are lying in the apparel industry. Customization of clothes with creation of unique prints, colors, sized and textiles, as well as shoes with different design features are all familiar to the consumer. However, there are industries, on the other hand, where customization is just starting to create awareness.
Skyscanner is a search-website for traveling. You can easily compare flight tickets from almost all flight companies on price, traveling time and location. Their mobile app is downloaded over 40 million times and it has over 50 million returning customers who use Skyscanner every month. It is because of the quality of the recommendation system (RS) that they have perceived a customer satisfaction rate of 8.2 (trustpilot). In this blog you will learn what the three key success components are of Skyscanners’ RS.
Relevance For a very long time, the electrical infrastructure has remained unchanged. But over the last couple of years, the smart grid has been developed as a new type of electric power system (Güngör et al, 2011). Factors that have contributed to this change are the growing demand for energy and climate change considerations (Farhangi, 2010). Both of these drivers request for a more efficient energy system which will allocate electric resources better and give more insights in our personal and professional usage of energy. Part of the solution is delivered by the increased amount of data that is collected, stored, and analyzed. This has motivated companies to research the possible value which they can extract from the data in order to achieve a competitive advantage (Provost and Fawcett, 2013). The combination of the need for better understanding of the allocation and usage of resources and the increased availability of information on these matters have accelerated the potential of the smart grid.
Nowadays platforms offer several opportunities for companies to interact with their customers. An example of such an interaction is market research. The purpose of the article of Witell et al. (2010) is to understand the differences between proactive and reactive market research techniques, as both have different influences during the development of new market offerings.
Consumer Value Creation 