Engaging Customers in Co-Creation of Value in Consumer Goods Industry: A Comparative Analysis

The current study provides a comparative analysis of innovation management approaches by engaging the digital customer in the development of new products, emphasizing the business strategies of two successful companies from the consumer goods industry, the Barilla Group and the Heineken Company. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the innovation management strategies of the both companies, highlighting their efforts to engage customers in developing creative ideas for new product development. Moreover, the study aims to comparatively describe the characteristics of the online platforms for consumer’s engagement in the co-creation process, by using social media tools and other Internet-based mechanisms. The foreseen result of the current research is to develop a framework of analysis for companies’ key actors in developing a new product development strategy that takes into account the importance of social media and of the new generation of consumers so called the Net generation that companies are more and more interested in.