One of the most interesting ways that marketers are using online communities is to involve customers in their innovation or new product development processes. At Forrester, we’ve called this ‘ultimate’ in consumer focus Consumer-Driven Innovation or CDI. CDI is:

A process that uses consumer-generated content, consumer interaction, insights, and feedback to create and shape new products and services, build business processes, and sculpt customer experiences that yield revenues and profits.

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Influential customers drive purchase decisions and have enormous value for brands. However, most companies – when they do measure and act on customer value – evaluate their clients only on their direct financial value – what they spend with the company.

Our research at Forrester shows that people rely on each other more than on marketing messages when they make purchasing decisions. Like our panel members, we all ask families, friends, colleagues and now, often, our online communities, before buying. Marketers need to take these connections and interactions into account.

As an example: Who is more valuable? The client who spends 2 nights in a hotel twice a year or the one who writes a rave review on the TripAdvisor.com after her first stay, or the one who recommends the hotel to business colleagues when they are traveling to the city.

How you determine value will in turn determine how you prioritize your investments in marketing – including in social media – and customer management. In ignoring social value, marketers run two risks: 1) investing in the wrong activities or in the wrong customers; and 2) under-evaluating the potential of social media (including word of mouth). Read more »

Every year, Forrester surveys a panel of European consumers about their relationship with technology. For example, we ask them what they do online, how much media consume they and how they make purchase decisions. And for the last 3 years, we’ve asked consumers about their participation in social technologies like blogging, social networking, tagging…

Our 2008 survey reveals that nearly 60% of online adult Europeans (18 – 65+) participate. That’s up by 10 points as compared to 2007. Of the 8 countries we track, the Dutch are the most active – 71% use social technologies regularly – at least once a month.

What do these Dutch do online? Read more »

I’ll be speaking at KREM’s conference about how consumers in Europe are participating in Social Computing – and in particular, in social networks; and what marketers can do about it.

It’s not news that people are using the internet to connect to each other, and use the net to build communities of shared interests, objectives and passions. In 2007, 13% of online European adults were members of social networks, as were over half of young online consumers. Read more »