Abstract
The integration of customers into the development process of new products and services is crucial for companies regardless of the industry in which they operate. The advent of the Internet and new media applications has transformed value creation processes of the tourism industry to an extent unseen in other industry sectors. Electronic information mediators, such as information and booking portals of DMOs (destination management organisations) are not only becoming an increasingly dominant source of information and opinions for tourists but also for tourism service providers. The latter motivates our work to identify the innovative users from all visitors of an electronic information platform. In this paper we present findings from a research project, where we identified innovative users based on lead user characteristics as well as by a virtual idea contest. The paper’s findings are controversial with respect to mainstream innovation research as they indicate that scales used in traditional innovation research disappoint in the tourism context. With our research we contribute to the existing literature in three ways: 1) we explore whether the lead user concept can also be applied for new service development in spa tourism; 2) we investigate the innovative potential of the identified lead users by assessing their creativity through an idea contest; and 3) thereby evaluate whether lead users in spa tourism are able to substantially contribute to new service development.
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Faullant, R., Krajger, I., Zanker, M. (2012). Identification of Innovative Users for New Service Development in Tourism. In: Fuchs, M., Ricci, F., Cantoni, L. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2012. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1142-0_37
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1142-0_37
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-1141-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-1142-0