Collaborative Dynamics between Firms and Consumers : an Empirical Review from an Integrated Management Perspective

Combining bibliographic and content analysis, the study quantitatively analyses the scientific production on consumer involvement in marketing and innovation processes, a complex challenge for managers. Recently, the attention given to collaborative approaches has grown exponentially and this area of research has been given new impetus especially by the opportunities that virtual environments offer, and which allow firms to transform new interaction modalities into added value. However, there is a lack of literature reviews which rely on recent data. The topic, from an empirical and longitudinal point of view, appears to be under-explored. Covering the period from 1976 to December 2013, findings show broad trends in the reviewed studies and, extrapolating key concepts, highlight the main dimensions that have to be taken into account to explore the subject. The present review shows that a variety of focal points are used and interdisciplinary influences are expected to continue. Suggestions for future research have also been put forward.


Introduction
The importance of collaborating with consumers in the innovation process has been recognized for many years and there has been a steady proliferation of studies on this topic (Von Hippel, 1976, 1978, 1986, 1988;Grönross, 1990;Day, 1991;Gales & Mansour-Cole, 1995;Bruce, Leverick, Littler, & Wilson, 1995;Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004a;Vargo & Lusch, 2004).The concept of cooperation and value co-creation includes a range of potential forms of collaboration: co-conception of ideas, co-design, co-production, co-promotion, co-pricing, co-distribution, co-consumption, co-maintenance, co-disposal, co-outsourcing (Sheth & Uslay, 2007); co-meaning, co-experience (Frow, Payne, & Storbacka, 2011); collaborative filtering systems and word of mouth (Adomavicius & Tuzhilin, 2005;Chen & Xie, 2008); continuous co-innovation in the various aspects of a company's management, such as approach to the market, competitive positioning, organisational form, products and processes (Prandelli, Verona, & Raccagni, 2006).The fundamental idea embedded in the strategy of value co-creation is that it should be understood as "the benefits created from helping customers to achieve their desires and aspirations with their products experiences, and as a result of the revenue created from tailoring customer individual requirements" (Romero & Molina, 2011, p. 11).
According to this perspective, a value co-creation context is characterized by a continuous process of discovery of new sources, new opportunities and ways to co-create it by and for consumers and companies.It integrates firms' competencies and involves consumers' individual preferences into a network for the co-creation of the next level of value for products, services and experiences to be launched on the market.Also, this new perspective is central in open-business innovation (Chesbrough, 2003(Chesbrough, , 2006(Chesbrough, , 2011) ) and in network-centric innovation (NCI) (Nambisan & Sawhney, 2007) models.These approaches emphasize the need to continuously experiment around value creation and encourage companies to open up to new ideas coming from the outside, combining them with in-house ideas to develop new products, projects and systems which can then be brought to the market.
In recent years, the attention given to collaborative approaches, based on the emergence of a new creative consumer (Berthon, Pitt, McCarthy, & Kates, 2007;Berthon, Campbell, Pitt, & McCarthy, 2011;Jespersen, 2011; impetus especially by the rapid growth of the Web, through which organisational learning develops thanks to the continuous interaction with the market and the shared creation of the offer.The Web also serves as a powerful platform to access external and distributed knowledge. Existing academic literature suggests a significant potential of collaboration with consumers and, in general, with external subjects in the process of market value creation through ICTs (Von Hippel 2001;Von Hippel & Katz, 2002;Sawhney, Verona, & Prandelli, 2005;Bilgram, Brem, & Voigt, 2008;Füller & Von Hippel, 2008;Prandelli, Sawhney, & Verona, 2008;Choi & Cheung, 2008;Füller, Muhlbacher, Matzler, & Jawecki, 2009;Morgan & Wang, 2010).Considerable attention has been given to the benefits offered by the advent of digital technologies: low-cost interaction; increase in the speed and duration of the engagement process; easier sharing processes if compared to what can be done offline, where dynamics are limited to contexts of physical closeness (Dahan &Hauser, 2002;Afuah, 2003); customerisation, that is, maximum strategic flexibility for companies, both in terms of product technological customization and marketing policies (Wind & Rangaswamy, 2001); taking on board of various suggestions and knowledge inputs coming from the "periphery", which break consolidated patters in innovation processes.
Because of this growth of research, a review of the state of the art in this domain is deemed necessary.The topic deserves particular attention given the opportunities that the Internet offers: the challenge for firms is to exploit and transform new connection and interaction modalities into added value.
However, literature lacks literature reviews which rely on recent data: the topic, from an empirical and longitudinal point of view, appears to be under-explored.In particular, some contributions have a conceptual nature and have been carried out through a narrative review method (see for example : Hoyer, Chandy, Dorotic, Krafft, &Singh, 2010;Greer & Lei, 2012) or within the context of the OI general paradigm (see for example: Gianiodis, Ellis, & Secchi, 2010;Giannopoulou, Yström, & Ollila, 2011), while other studies use a quantitative review method but mainly focus on specific aspects (see for example: Di Stefano, Gambardella, & Verona, 2012 on the juxtaposition between technology and demand as sources of innovations).
Given the illustrated context and following the integrated marketing and innovation management perspective suggested by Ofek & Toubia (2010), the goal of this study is to map the scientific production related to the subject, illustrate the state of the art of research and highlight broad trends in the reviewed studies.
To achieve this aim, an empirical literature review has been carried out (Rumrill, Fitzgerald, & Merchant, 2010).In terms of methodology, the review process uses a mainly quantitative-descriptive approach, based on a survey of bibliographic scientific-academic sources.
The following set of research questions drive the study: RQ1.With what frequency has the topic been studied, also in diachronic terms?RQ2.Which are the most involved academic-disciplinary areas?
RQ3.What are the reference scientific sources?RQ4.Which are the most prevalent countries?
RQ5.What types of contributions have been produced on the considered topic?RQ6 a, b.Which are the most recurrent topics in the studies and the most widely used keywords?RQ7.Which are the most prevalent scientific institutions?
In addition, to get a sense of the community that has formed around this topic, the author also provides an overview of who has been working in advancing this area of research, identifying the most prolific authors and the type of authorship.
The structure of the paper is as follows: first, the methodology and study design will be illustrated; in the central section, findings and studies related to the investigated phenomenon will be presented.In the last section, results will be discussed.The author also provides insights from the reviewed literature to better understand consumer involvement processes and put forward suggestions for future research.

Scope of the Study
The study mainly takes on the point of view of firms in B2C contexts, given some prerogatives which make their exploration particularly stimulating.
First, studies on collaborative processes were originally carried out mainly in B2B markets, where they boast a longer tradition (cf.studies on strategic alliances : Håkansson 1982;Håkansson & Lundgren, 1995;Håkansson, Ford, Gadde, Snehota, & Waluszewski, 2009; the development of the concept of customer-supplier interaction, largely explored since the 80s by the researchers of the IMP -Industrial Marketing and Purchasing; the study of purchasing patterns in B2B markets : Ford 2004; social media utilization in B2B relationships: Kärkkäinen, Jussila, &Väisänen, 2013).
Second, organizations, in their role as purchasers, and end customers follow significantly different purchasing and decision-making models and processes.In the latter case, non-rational factors and inputs are more significant purchase drivers, while in the former it is economic incentives which play a major role.
Third, B2C markets contain more elements of risk, due to the size of the scope of reference and the wider language gap, which is linked to the difficulty of directly understanding needs.Of course, the statement by Gummesson and Polese (2009), according to which B2B and B2C markets are both part of a wider, more complex and common context is taken into due account (Note 1).
Consistently with the delimitation of the illustrated research area, the analysis of the existing literature focuses on specific content characteristics.The legal aspects related to the management of intellectual property rights and the appropriability regime of the outputs of collaborative processes were excluded, as well as the problematic nature and unforeseeability of co-creation processes (see for example : Cova, Dalli, & Zwick, 2011;Echeverri & Skålen, 2011;Fisher & Smith, 2011).Similarly, the critical-sociological currents which highlight the work carried out by the new figure of the working consumer (see for example : Cova & Dalli, 2009;Zwick, Bonsu, &Darmody, 2008), papers centred on the non-integration of consumers in the market, such as works on "consumer resistance" (Wipperfürt, 2005) and those which analyse the emergence of forms of co-entrepreneurship or tribal entrepreneurship (Cova, Kozinets, & Shanlar, 2007;Cova &White, 2010) were also excluded.The approach which, in the context of brand management studies, has developed the concepts of brand valueco-creationmodel (Iglesias, Ind, & Alfaro, 2013) and multi-stakeholder brand meaning co-creation (Vallaster & Von Wallpach, 2013) was also left out.By embracing a mainly managerial perspective, the study finally excludes papers produced by academic research on consumption which focus exclusively on the role of consumers in the co-creation of meaning, where value is transferred to the market and becomes accessible by companies, thus emphasizing the productive role of consumers.

Sample and Data Collection
By using a descriptive approach, an empirical analysis of the existing literature was carried out.The object of such analysis was the monitoring of the following bibliographic sources: journal articles, proceedings papers, working papers.The tools used to support the research were the ISI Web of Knowledge (Web of Science) and EBSCO (Business Source Premier) databases, which complement each other.
Books-including e-books and monographs -were excluded from the analysis as the ISI database does not include these types of sources in the direct indexation mode.The time of publication of the analysed research material ranges from 1976 to December 2013.The units of analysis taken into account were the title, the abstract, the keywords provided by the author and the full body of the papers.The research was limited to contributions in English.
The methodological approach included the use of a two-step procedure, so as to identify an exhaustive and relevant set of contributions, and the use of the Semantic search / Keyword-based retrieval and Content analysis (Kassarjian, 1977;Krippendorff, 1980).
Content analysis is a descriptive method based on the observation of communication contents.One of its advantages lies in the fact that it relies on secondary words.This means that it is not prone to the most common methodological mistakes, as the researcher has minimum impact on data.In addition, it can be applied even to large quantities of data.Each article was scanned for appropriate contents.The search, both in individual and aggregate form, was performed with logical or Boolean operators, using adequately selected key words: co-creation, co-creation, co-design, collaborative innovation, collaboration policy, consumer engagement, consumer empowerment, consumer feedback, consumer insights, consumer involvement, contest, crowd sourcing, demand pull innovation, idea generation, online consumer panel, market driven innovation, open innovation, user innovation.After removing all duplicates-both from the output data individually produced by each of the databases and those derived from crossing the two tools-the results of the first research stage were analysed based on the mentioned key words.789 articles were identified.Drawing from the sample of studies from the first stage, the search process then adopted more specific boundary criteria for the review.The following were therefore excluded: contributions which focus solely on B2B contexts and intercompany partnerships; research which specifically focuses on the consumer-individual as a privileged perspective, such as socio-psychological studies on the motivations which push the subject to cooperation.
The final output is a list made available to other researchers to build upon, which includes 118 contributions (115 journal papers, 2 working papers, 1 conference proceeding).Table 1 presents this selection.For each identified study, the following data have been highlighted: year of publication; academic area / research setting (indicating the main reference field and stream of literature to which the research belongs); author; source; ranking (where applicable); topic / focus (summarizing the central idea of the contribution); author-provided keywords; main findings / insights (summarizing the primary conclusions of the study and the insights provided); scientific institution; country; type of study.
Each paper was read and coded as belonging to the most appropriate categories.In the study, the process of content analysis coding was complemented by open coding.The method of open coding followed specific steps.First, each paper was read in order to check for relevance and actual fit in the initial categorization resulting from the structured coding.In particular, with reference to the "topic / focus" class, when a coder did not identify an appropriate existing subcategory, new categorizations were reconsidered after the preliminary round of coding.Articles for which new classifications had been suggested were rotated again and reconsidered for recoding.

Data Analysis and Findings
Disregarding aspects such as the number of pages of the contributions and other characteristics, the selected material was finally analysed.The main findings are described below.

Publication Trend
Analyzing the number of contributions in the analysed sample, subdivided by year (Figure 1), it is possible to detect an exponential growth in the studies devoted to the explored subject, especially starting from 2001-2002 (RQ1).

Academic Area / Research Setting
The highest number of contributions in the analysed sample (RQ2) have been produced in the Technology and Innovation Management (22.88%) area.The areas which follow are (Figure 2).

Scientific and academic journals ranking
By limiting the analysis to scientific journals -considering the interdisciplinary nature of the explored topic -it becomes clear that contributions are fragmented in a large number of heterogeneous sources (RQ3), which present equally variable bibliometric indicators (Figure 3).Using the Impact Factor (IF) developed by Thomson Reuters (chosen among the most widespread evaluation parameters) the relative value of all indexed periodicals in the ISItable was verified (Note 2).9,000
Among empirical papers, the highest number of studies follows a qualitative approach (59%, i.e. 38 of them), followed by papers based on qualitative methods (26%, i.e. 17) and on mixed approaches, which use a mix of quantitative and qualitative tools (15%, i.e. 10 papers).
Among qualitative studies, the prevalent approach is that of the case study (92. Figure 5. Empirical papers: methods

Authorship
The prevalent type of paper has multi-authorship or shared authorship (76.27%, i.e. 90 papers), while the sole-authored type accounts for 23.73% (28) of all papers.Contributions which can be considered as having multi-institutional and multi-national authorship-namely are the result of the cooperation between several authors belonging to scientific institution in different countries-are the minority (35.59%, i.e. 42 papers), while papers which involve researchers from the same country are 64.41%(76) of the total.

Most Prolific Authors
In terms of publication of scientific-academic contributions on the topic in the considered sample (  The most prolific scientific institution (RQ7) in terms of publication of scientific-academic contributions on the topic in the considered sample (Figure 9) is the MIT Sloan School of Management, the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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Three European institutions follow: the business school of the Austrian Innsbruck University, the Danish Copenhagen Business School and the Italian Bocconi University.

Discussion
This article presents an overview of the state of the art in the research on consumer involvement in marketing and innovation processes.Different aspects stand out in this review.The field of study is still relatively young and thus attracts many researchers from different study domains.They bring different approaches, constructs, and methods to their analyses, which explain why similar goals are assessed in different ways.Interdisciplinary influences are expected to continue to contribute to more theory building.A wealth of methods means a wealth of findings, perspectives, and details, but, at the same time, heterogeneity leads to difficulties in comparing results among studies.
Specifically, when it comes to the specific research questions to which the study aims to answer, the analysis first shows a remarkable growth in the publishing activity in this area in recent years, which is expected to continue to flourish.As expected, a high fragmentation of the scientific production in a high number of heterogeneous sources has also been observed.However, the highest number of studies in the sample has been produced in the Technology and Innovation Management area, which would suggest that the sudden development of digital technologies was a propelling factor, given the availability of new information and communication infrastructures to support innovation.The analysis also seems to suggest a general geographical pattern in the study of the topic, and more specifically, a"westernization".Indeed, the most prolific authors with the highest number of occurrences have an affiliation with scientific institutions in North America or Europe.Based on this review, the majority of studies are of empirical nature.As a consequence, a methodological standardization in studying and analyzing the topic exists.Qualitative methods are the most widely used, especially the single case study: one can conclude that a substantial amount of published survey research is not chiefly concerned with generalisability.Finally, findings highlight that scholars have paid particular attention to the new role of the empowered consumer and to consumers' competence in the innovation process.Researchers seem to have focused their attention on the external environment as a possible source of knowledge and insights, and on its integration within firm boundaries.

Theoretical Implications
In line with expectations, and based on the results of this review, it can be argued that no dominant paradigm per se has emerged.Different theoretical bodies have been employed: relationship marketing studies; new product innovation (NPI) research and collaborative marketing patterns; management and organisational studies on network-firms and Open Innovation (OI).
The concept of relationship marketing (Christopher, Payne, & Ballantyne, 1991;McKenna, 1991;Pepper & Rogers, 1993) and the research streams derived from it, apply the metaphor of personal relationship to the exchange processes between a company and consumers.A key idea in the later development of this approach, or New Relationship Marketing (Gummesson, 2002), is the potential that the Internet has to enhance the ability of firms to engage customers in several ways, allowing companies to transform episodic and one-way interactions into a persistent dialogue with them.According to this perspective, "technological forces are shaping the practice of Relationship Marketing" (Sheth, Parvatiyar, & Sinha, 2012, p. 10) and without an effective use of technology, relationship marketing is not an effective strategy (Zineldin, 2000).In embracing the key assumption that relationships with customers play a central role in the process of economic value creation, the evolution of this idea into a tool in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) also offers a strategic connection between marketing strategies and ICTs (Jayachandran, Sharma, Kaufman, & Raman, 2005), thus creating the paradigm of information-enabled relationship marketing (Ryals & Payne, 2001).Ahuja and Medury (2010) follow the same approach: it becomes essential to create and maintain adequate Customer Information Management systems: "companies interact with customers, treat them as organizational assets, learn about them and through the process of incorporating feedback and co-creation" (ivi, p. 94).
While collaboration with customers can involve several business processes, one of the most important aspects is cooperating to create value through product innovation.NPI research and the related international empirical literature have given great impetus to co-creation mechanisms (Von Hippel, 1976, 1978, 1986, 1988;Day, 1991;Webster, 1994;Gales & Mansour-Cole, 1995;Bruce, Leverick, Littler, & Wilson, 1995;Slater & Narver, 1998;Verona, 1999;Thomke, 1998Thomke, , 2002;;Danneels, 2002;Urban & Hauser, 2002), acknowledging the power of collaboration and going beyond a company's borders and demand-pull dynamics as the main factors behind this process in current times.
Literature on collaborative marketing (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c;Vargo & Lusch, 2004;2006;2008;Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008) presents the concept of convergence between consumers and producers as an invitation to combine their respective skills in a partnership.The main focus is the role of companies in identifying and supporting those consumers' activities which lead to value creation.
The contribution of management studies on OI (Chesbrough, 2003(Chesbrough, , 2006(Chesbrough, , 2011;;Nambisan & Sawhney, 2007) and on the network and systemic model of organisations (Butera, 1995;Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, Roth, &Smith, 1994;Lane, Serra, Villani, & Ansaloni, 2006;Golinelli, 2010) is particularly relevant in connection to the idea of a collective enterprise.This is linked to the disappearance of organisational borders, the emergence of looser relationships and the enlargement of a company's network.In a systemic approach, knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1996) and skills owned by consumers are a great potential available to companies to foster their evolution processes.
The combination of these separate theoretical bodies allows the identification of key concepts which, extrapolated from the reviewed literature, try to grasp the main dimensions that have to be taken into account to explore the complex nature of the investigated topic: relationship, consumer engagement, value co-creation, openness.Each research stream, within its discipline of reference, takes on a different epistemological perspective, which highlights complementary aspects.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research
This study presents a recent review of the topic, but some limitations of the analysis carried out should also be highlighted.First, findings are limited by the fast-paced nature of the publishing activity.Second, the analysis carried out, although allowing work on a robust database, focuses on journal articles, conference and work papers and selects contributions on the basis of keywords.It would be useful to extend the analysis to scholarly handbooks, book chapters and monographs.A network analysis linking scholars and thematic content areas would also be interesting.Third, the author recognizes that the review is mainly carried out from a corporate perspective, without taking into account consumer responses to collaborative dynamics.Future reviews may further analyze the topic going beyond the managerial point of view, extending the review by including other topics linked to the micro-level where consumers act.This could allow the identification of possible contributions related to the effectiveness of collaborative approaches in relation to different consumer audiences and their responses (for example, the relationship between the topic and firm/brand reputation, consumer loyalty, effectiveness of products in terms of greater closeness to customer needs, positioning in terms of better differentiation).Some methodological issues also emerged after examining the contributions surveyed in this review.In particular, it is deemed important to rely more on methods that today appear to be under-utilized in order to enrich the field with heterogeneous perspectives: methodological studies which suggest new methods and systems to analyse and measure the phenomenon; empirical papers of quantitative-extensive type and with a longitudinal design, which would allow causality inference and generalisability; theoretical contributions attempting to link and integrate definitions, concepts and insights originating from different research settings, placing them within holistic interpretative frameworks with practical and managerial implications to deal with the collaborative process.
Future research should also be conducted on costs, risks and outcomes related to the implementation of collaborative processes between companies and consumers and on the development of metrics to measure them.The quality and quantity of external contributions-of potentially unlimited quantity and of highly variable quality -may create overwork in terms of time management, skills and planning needed to deal with this flow and mutual exchange, as well as opportunities for managers themselves.In such situations, problems about scarcity of resources and attention become particularly important.Finally, adopting an interdisciplinary, multi-functional approach, future research should also look at the following other aspects:  Perspectives for the Organizational Communication discipline: support for the creation of an open mentality to tackle the 'not invented here' syndrome; managing possible tensions linked to the impact of co-creation processes which involve external subjects on the company's micro-culture -the consumer owns competences and skills and is placed in the condition of turning them into practice, however it is possible that the internal resources could report a reduction of power;  Perspectives for the PR field: strategic support in the management of external collaborative processes with the aim of limiting possible critical points;  Relationship between collaborative approaches and the evolution of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), moving towards the "umbrella" definition of Sustainability, which includes the traditional elements of green/environmental policy, as well as new aspects related to the concept of stakeholder engagement, economic and business behaviour, respect of privacy and, more importantly, the inclusion of the 'consumerism' component related to the preferences and desires of consumer segments;  Relationship between the communication of the open innovation strategy engaging consumers and the macro industrial company's paradigm (please refer to: Rindova & Fombrun, 1999): does it have any influence on the evolution of the served market dynamics?

Table 1 .
Literature review
Collaborative dynamics, company's boundaries extension, corporate identity: is a hyper-adaptation risk feasible?
Collaborative processes and specific company's features;  Types of external contributors and different stages of collaborative processes: which consumer segments should firms target at each stage? Firm-level and consumer-level impediments of co-creation; 