The paradox of tie strength in customer relationships for innovation: a longitudinal case study in the sports industry
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2011

Current literature argues that firms should have strong ties to customers to benefit from increased customer retention and loyalty. Strong ties, however, have also shown to prevent innovation, suggesting that firms should also develop weak ties to other customer groups. This paper focuses on the potential for strong ties to facilitate, rather than prohibit, innovation. It is based in a 7-year longitudinal research project with Adidas, a global sporting goods company. From the case, we find that the paradox of tie strength results from an overly simplified view of the nature of company-customer relationships. Contrary to the established literature, we find that strong ties in the Adidas case supported significant innovation. In fact, the involvement resulted in the development of a new product with a radically different product architecture and led to one of the most successful product launches in the company's history. To explain these findings, we introduce the nature of customer participation in a firm's value creation processes as a new dimension of the constitution of firm-customer ties and discuss how such a kind of relationship can develop.

organization

product development

creation

future-research

community

user innovation

orientation

weak ties

perspective

knowledge

Författare

Tobias Fredberg

Chalmers, Teknikens ekonomi och organisation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy

F. T. Piller

RWTH Aachen University

R and D Management

0033-6807 (ISSN) 1467-9310 (eISSN)

Vol. 41 5 470-484

Ämneskategorier

Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9310.2011.00659.x

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2018-03-27