This blog post will analyse the strategic concept of using crowdsource marketing as a tool for co creation in a business to customer marketing platform. I will also analyse the advantage and disadvantage of using public participation in product development. As an example, I will also analyse the effectivity of Starbucks crowdsourcing blog campaign and how consumer interaction has influenced the brands strategic process. Although other medium of use for business to customer marketing exist, I will be only be discussing it in relation to crowdsource marketing.
What is crowdsourcing?
A term coined by Jeff Howe in 2006, Crowdsourcing refers to a method of gathering opinions or information through public assistance to complete business-related tasks, that are usually resolved by third-party service providers. Crowdsourcing is used by businesses to gain a direct insight into the desires of their consumers. (Rubel, 2006).
How can crowdsourcing be used as a tool of co creation in business to customer marketing?
An article entitled Business‐to‐Consumer (B2C) Collaboration: Rethinking the Role of Consumers in Supply Chain Management, discusses a concept created by (Fawcett and Walker, 2014) which says competition derived from emerging technologies has forced business to create “a new source of customer intimacy” in supply chain management (SCM), that can be defined as co-creation. The article goes on to say that consumer who choose to participate in crowdsourcing are considered “active” players in value creation and should also be considered collaborator within the broad spectrums of SCM.(Ha, 2015) Taking into consideration the broad spectrum of SCM, businesses could choose to use this concept within their business to address their marketing initiatives and would be considered a business to consumer marketing concept created to aid SCM.
Advantage and disadvantage of public participation
Advantage- A newspaper article from the Guardian titled How crowdsourcing and open innovation could change the world, discusses the notion that open innovation created through crowdsourcing could be used as a tool to develop sustainable technology. The article goes on to state that opening a businesses workforce to the public invites a diverse set of skills and experience that could not only be used tackle difficult issues faced in business but also create new concepts based on the direct needs and opinions of those who consume from a brand (Ferrari, 2013).
Disadvantage- An article titled Crowdsourcing faces ethical, legal risks discusses the concepts that crowdsourcing campaigns created by established brands could be considered an unethical form of public exploitation, especially when brands use crowdsourcing to create or improve concepts from services that are usually paid for. The article goes on to state that the allocation of ownership rights from crowdsourced market research remains unclear and if businesses want to avoid legal action crowdsourcing should be conducted in a consultative manner (Phneah, 2013).
Industry example of crowdsource co creation in a business to customer marketing platform
About Starbucks
Starbucks is one of world most famous coffee stores, with more the 18,000 retail location in 60 countries. The companies segmentation currently stands in a dominant region of the upper market share of the coffee industry, competing and functioning on a distribution mass level with brands such as Mc Donald’s and Dunkin Donuts (Starbucks, 2015).
My Starbuck Ideas campaign
Starbuck is one of the earliest adopters of incorporating social media into their website, using platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest, Google + and Youtube, to promote brand awareness. A new addition to the companies marketing strategies is My Starbucks Ideas, (Figure 1.) the company uses crowdsourcing through the My Starbucks Ideas blog, to give consumers the chance to create and voice there opinions on new coffee recipes.(Schoultz, 2015)
Figure 1. My Starbucks blog
Source: www.mystarbucksidea.com
This digital strategy has received a lot of success, falling under the areas of market research that provides the consumers with the platform for change, experimentation and direct engagement with brand; this interactive approach has beneficially given the brand a direct source to their consumers needs. The concept resulted in participants voicing a broad spectrum of ideas unrelated to the core drink recipe idea concept. The brand also encourages participants to share their ideas through their social media platforms Twitter and Facebook, (Figure 2) through voting concepts that encourage participants to compete for the implementation of their ideas.(Schoultz, 2015)
Figure 2. My Starbucks idea social media intagration
Source: www.mystarbucksidea.com
How effective was this approach?
Fundamentally, Starbucks core object was to create a digital marketing concept that would give the brand a direct insight into its consumers needs and the company achieved this. Over 150,000 ideas have been submitted to the my Starbucks idea website since it began in 2008. Through crowdsource marketing over 3 million mobile transactions now occur on average per week and the company now sell on average over 5.8 million new snacks and drink recipes per year (csnnews, 2013)
Critical analysis: Does the campaign sufficiently meet consumer demand?
As previously stated over 150,000 ideas have been submitted to the my Starbuck campaign blog, a blog article written in 2010 titled Tough love for Starbuck investigated the companies promises to implement successful ideas; the findings showed that at the time only 50 out of the 80,000 ideas sent in were enforced representing .06% of consumer demand and went onto state the resulting figures conflicted was the companies share vote discuss and see strategy (Brand autopsy, 2010) Today Starbucks have implemented 277 out of 150,000 ideas shared representing .18% of consumer demand once again showing that company has potentially missed many opportunities for product development and innovation (Starbucks, 2015)
Conclusion
In conclusion my findings show that crowdsourcing in a co-creation format could be considered to be a powerful initiative within a business to customer marketing platform and the concept of allowing the public to influence and manipulate a companies strategic process could be considered a open and undefined and innovative strategic approach to digital marketing.
References
Ben Ferrari and Mehmet Fidanboylu. (2013). How crowdsourcing and open innovation could change the world. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/crowdsourcing-open-innovation-change-world. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Brand autopsy. (2010). Tough love for Starbucks . Available: http://www.brandautopsy.com/2010/01/tough-love-for-starbucks.html. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
csnnews. (2013). http://www.csnews.com/industry-news-and-trends/competitive-watch/starbucks-celebrates-five-year-success-my-starbucks-idea. Available: http://www.csnews.com/industry-news-and-trends/competitive-watch/starbucks-celebrates-five-year-success-my-starbucks-idea. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Ellyne Phneah . (2013). Crowdsourcing faces ethical, legal risks.Available: http://www.zdnet.com/article/crowdsourcing-faces-ethical-legal-risks/. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Rubel, Steve. (2006). Who’s ready to crowdsource?. Advertising age . 77 (43)
Starbucks. (2015).http://blogs.starbucks.com/blogs/customer/archive/2013/04/24/our-best-idea-was-asking-you-for-yours.aspx. Available: http://blogs.starbucks.com/blogs/customer/archive/2013/04/24/our-best-idea-was-asking-you-for-yours.aspx. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Starbucks. (2015). About Us. Available: http://www.starbucks.co.uk/about-us. Last accessed 19/04/2015.
Souad Djelassia Isabelle Decoopmanb. (2013). Customers’ participation in product development through crowdsourcing: Issues and implications . Industrial Marketing Management. 42 (5), 683–692
Ta, Ha. (2015). Business‐to‐Consumer (B2C) Collaboration: Rethinking the Role of Consumers in Supply Chain Management. Journal of business logistics. 36 (1), 133 – 134.
MIKE SCHOULTZ . (2015) STARBUCKS MARKETING MAKES SOCIAL MEDIA A DIFFERENCE MAKER, http://www.digitalsparkmarketing.com/creative-marketing/social-media/starbucks-marketing/