Exploring Characteristics and Motives of Consumer Innovators: Community Innovators vs. Independent Innovators

Successful product innovation has been recognized as an outcome of integrating users into the development process. This study compares the characteristics and motives for product development between users who do not belong to a community (independent innovators) and those who are members of communities (community innovators). An online consumer survey in Japan is conducted to test the differences. The result reveals that community innovators tend to help one another and reveal information more than independent innovators do, and their innovations tend to be adopted more often than those of independent innovators. These results suggest that communities can enhance the diffusion of innovation and effectiveness of product development more than independent innovators. Thus, they represent a valuable and useful resource for firms searching for new ideas and products. The study identifies community innovators' motives for both product development and revealing information. Finally, we discuss how firms can efficiently integrate these users into the innovation process.