领先用户研究:概念,测量与影响因素

Lead user research: Concepts,measurements and influencing factors

研究领先用户,可以了解未来市场发展趋势和捕捉用户需求变化,开发更具市场潜力的新产品或服务等,并增加企业新产品或服务的竞争优势。但相关研究尚未成熟,且国内研究十分缺乏。基于相关外文数据库对领先用户理论研究的重要成果进行了梳理,深入分析了领先用户的概念、量表与测量和影响因素等。研究发现:(1)领先用户是指在特定领域处于重要市场前沿地位(领先市场趋势),并期望从满足需求的解方案中获得高收益(高期望收益)的用户;(2)量表包括领先市场趋势和高期望收益两个基本维度;(3)影响因素由领域相关变量、领域独立变量和动机构成。最后,对未来研究方向进行了展望,以期为国内学者进一步研究领先用户及企业与领先用户合作进行新产品开发提供参考。

In face of increasingly fierce market competition,companies are gradually shifting from a closed internal R&D process to opening up and cooperation. Research shows that about 40% of new product development in different industries faces failures,and only a few surviving new products have become widely accepted standard equipment in the industry. Therefore,companies often cooperate with users in various ways in order to obtain ideas and knowledge for improvement and development of new products or services,thereby alleviating user and market acceptance risks.However,ordinary users are not enthusiastic about participation,and there are not many innovative and useful ideas. Companies consume a lot of time and cost in the process of screening users,but they have very low efficiency. Most companies are also looking for the more suitable groups to continuously improve and develop new products or services.The lead user approach adapts to the needs of the company innovation and marketing,allowing company’s products to fit future market trends and develop new products that are more attractive to the market. This is because lead users meet mainstream needs earlier than others and innovate to meet their own needs. Therefore,researching lead users can understand future market development trends and capture changes in user needs,develop new products and services with more market potential,and increase the competitive advantages of new products or services.Therefore,this paper uses Business Source Complete in EBSCO database,ProQ uest Business Information Database,and the Social Science Citation Index( SSCI) database in the Web of Science database to search papers of lead user. The results show that:(1) Lead users are at ahead on an important marketplace trend,and thus experience high benefits from obtaining solutions to their needs;(2) Lead user construct consists of being ahead on an important marketplace trend and high expected benefits,and the measurement of being ahead on an important marketplace trend can be combined with relevant market trends in specific industry fields;and(3) The influencing factors of lead user mainly consist of field-related variables( such as use experience and product knowledge),field-independent variables( such as locus of control,innovativeness,cognitive style and opinion leadership) and motivation( such as internal motivation and extrinsic motivation. Research results,while enriching the existing research of lead user,can also provide certain guidance for companies and lead users to cooperate effectively in the new products development.