Utilization of Social Media within Product Development -an exploratory multiple case study of SMEs and their perception on the usability of social media in the product development process

Abstract

While social media is already widely adopted among firms within commercialization and marketing, it can also prove to be a useful tool in the process of product development in order to interact with customers and open up innovation efforts. Our qualitative multiple case study of SMEs within sustainable innovation aims to outline; if, how and why social media is utilized in their product development processes. Our results show that the use of social media within product development is almost non-existent among our respondents, mainly due to limited resources in combination with a low amount of customers. A low number of customers impede the ability to realize the major gains of using social media; to facilitate convenient communication among a large number of users. Additional significant challenges are perceived to be the difficulty in controlling content, measuring gains and dealing with security issues. There is no consensus among the respondents regarding the perceived future potential for social media within product development; while some are quite hesitant, some companies do anticipate increased potential in the future.