THE USE OF MARKETING INDICATORS TO MEASURE AND MONITOR THE EFFECTS OF IMPLEMENTING THE CONCEPT OF USER-DRIVEN INNOVATION

Abstract

The importance of users as a source of information for company innovation activity was raised in the 1980s by von Hippel. Today, a concept of a similar basis is known and developed in Europe under the name of User-Driven Innovation (UDI). The UDI is based on the belief that enterprises which are able to create, often in close cooperation with customers, products and services with features desired by users will survive in the market. In order to achieve the above, companies are trying to identify the hidden, often unconscious, needs of users, in order to try to meet these needs (UDI - Consumer Voice) or implement ready-made innovative solutions attributed to consumers (UDI - Consumer Leadership) (Warzybok, et al., 2008; NORDEN, 2006). Due to the growing significance of users as a source of information for innovation activities it is important to find measures which could assess the impact of this source on company innovativeness (Krawczyk, 2013b). The aim of this paper is to show that marketing indicators focused on measuring the relationship with customers can be used to measure the effects of implementation of UDI in innovative companies.