AGORA doctoral candidate Zafeiria Karlou is researching how brands and consumers co-create products in the metaverse. She is particularly interested in exploring the consumer co-creation dynamics, mechanisms, tools along with the novel ways of collaborative interaction and engagement that arise within the metaverse.
New channels for collaboration and communication are made possible by the metaverse’s increasing growth. The metaverse serves a digital setting with a plethora of advantages that revolutionize relationships, interactions and the creation process of new products. As metaverse is constantly growing, new capabilities for product innovation arise through co-creation processes. Co-creation between brands and consumers holds great promise thanks to metaverse’s ideation, collaboration and socialization affordances. The goal of this study is to understand how the metaverse facilitates consumers and brands to co-create on the new product development process, with an emphasis on the mechanisms and tools that make this possible.
Understanding these dynamics is essential for both academic knowledge and practical applications in fuelling innovation and finding out consumer-brand collaboration interplays. Through co-creation processes, the diverse opinions and collective tacit knowledge of users can be revealed by letting them partake in the
creative procedure of the new product development and feedback processes. For example, the gaming community participates in feedback process and game developers actively influence gameplay mechanics, storylines, and game features. This co-creation process increases user satisfaction and stimulates the rise of novel ideas for gameplay and innovations based on users’ feedback.
Within organizations, product innovation plays a significant role for their competitive advantage and survival in a fast-paced and competitive market. The emergence of the metaverse proposes capabilities that can foster operations, providing novel pathways for engagement, collaboration and effectiveness. For example, companies can take advantage of the metaverse for virtual events, product testing and formulate a platform for training and experimentation. What is more, metaverse provides the opportunity for deeper engagement through gamified experiences, simulations, digital bonding and trust that traditional digital platforms do not offer. It comes as no surprise that companies applying metaverse technologies are reporting developments in
operational efficiency and higher consumer gratification.