Collaboration with Customers – Understanding the Effect of Customer-Company Interaction in new Product Development

Abstract
Customer co-creation is becoming increasingly
popular among companies, and intensive
communication with the customer is generally seen as
a determinant of new product success. However, there
is still limited insight into what interaction with
customers really is. The most recent thinking argues
for an understanding of value-in-context in order to
co-create value with customers. The question, then, is
how value-in-context can be captured and how this
knowledge can be beneficial in the development
process. In essence in order to capture this type of
information a company needs to interact and
communicate with their customers. However, this
communication process has not been properly
analyzed. In the present study we analyze customer
collaboration based on four separate dimensions –
frequency, direction, modality, and content – in order
to understand the value of customer collaboration. The
data comes from a survey of 207 managers with
experience of new service and product development.
The paper concludes that three of the four dimensions
of customer collaboration have a significant positive
effect on New Product Development performance and
Market Share development.

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