Eleonora Paolocci’s article “Digital Strategies of Consumer Involvement and Innovation Dynamics: A Cross-Sector Explorative Study” (2014) is devoted to the investigation of the collaborative process between consumers and providers through digital technologies. The nature of this study can be examined with the help of the research onion suggested by Saunders, Levis, and Thornhill (2012). It gives the opportunity to observe the stages of the scholar’s investigation in order to understand its strategy and methodology.
The philosophy of the study provided by the researcher is interpretivism or social constructionism. The author of this article analyzes the behavior of the participants in collaborative processes to reach the objective of the study, and to understand how the usage of electronic technologies by the companies can influence the involvement of the consumers in co-creation processes. The scientist examines the factors impacting the efficiency of the proposed theoretical investigation in its practical implementation.
E. Paolocci uses an inductive approach in her study as she is considered to be a part of the research provided by her. The main actors of the research are the firms and their clients. The article establishes the investigation of the particular sphere of “consumer-provider” interaction based on the involvement of Web tools. The quantitative approach used in this study allows the scholar to analyze the dynamics of the collaborative process based on the implementation of Web technologies.
The scientist presents a number of factors influencing the development of the collaboration between the firms and their customers. The author of the investigation applies this method to understand why digital strategies are rarely used by the companies for the purpose of consumer engagement in the innovation process within the corporation. Quantitative data presented in this paper can be analyzed with the help of the empirical method.
The investigation provided by E. Paolocci is an action research since it studies the practice to establish that it conforms to the most practical approach. This action research is aimed at the improvement of the innovation dynamics and the potency of the collaboration through digital tools. The researcher provides a profound study of the experience of Web technologies usage in collaborative processes to examine its practical efficiency.
The author involves the multi-method of the study as the research provided by her is divided into sets containing different data on each segment of the investigated phenomenon. These datasets are analyzed by the author according to the quantitative technique. The scholar examines the following aspects of the issue: a transactional collaboration, the peculiarities of the consumer involvement process, and partner relationships with a customer, a paradigm shift of the investigated processes, etc. She analyzed the collected quantitative data on these aspects and provided the basis for future investigations in this field.
A longitudinal time horizon of the presented information gives the opportunity to trace the dynamics of the innovative “consumer-provider” collaboration at all the stages of its development. Due to this method, the changes of the studied processes are thoroughly examined and explained by the scholar.
The investigation, which introduces Eleonora Paolocci in her article “Digital Strategies of Consumer Involvement and Innovation Dynamics: A Cross-Sector Explorative Study” (2014), is primarily based on the analysis of secondary data sources. The author of the article did not collect the data directly from the firms and their management staff; it provides the extent research on the basis of the investigations of the scholars in the same field of knowledge.
Although, the issues studied in this research are under-explored for present day, the literature on the collaborative innovation processes provides the information for the extension of the research related to the “consumer’provider” partnership equipped with digital tools. It is a cross-sector explorative study, which gives the grounds for further profound research of given topic.
Reference List
Paolocci, E 2014, ‘Digital Strategies of Consumer Involvement and Innovation Dynamics: A Cross-Sector Explorative Study’, International Journal of Marketing Studies, 6(5), pp. 21-39.
Saunders, M, Lewis, P & Thornhill, A 2012, Research Methods for Business Students, 6th edn, Pearson Education Ltd, Harlow.