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Die Identifizierung von Lead Usern über soziale Netzwerke: Eine empirische Untersuchung unter jungen Konsumenten

The identification of lead users in social networks: An empirical investigation among young consumers

  • ZfB-SPECIAL ISSUE 5/2011
  • Published:
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Zusammenfassung

In den letzten Jahren hat das Lead User Konzept in der Forschung wie in der Praxis von Unternehmen große Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Zwar gibt es bereits eine breite empirische Evidenz für das hohe Potenzial von Lead Usern für die Entwicklung neuer Produkte, so fehlt doch bisher ein umfassendes Verständnis, was Lead User eigentlich ausmacht und was es Konsumenten ermöglicht, zu Lead Usern zu werden. Unsere Studie greift diese beiden zentralen Problemstellungen auf und fokussiert dabei auf den sozialen Kontext, da individuelle kreative Prozesse in sozialen Netzwerken entstehen. Dies führt zu unserer Forschungsfrage: Haben Lead User eine spezielle soziale Position in sozialen Netzwerken? Die empirische Untersuchung an 34 Gruppen mit insgesamt 804 jungen Konsumenten brachte zwei generelle Erkenntnisse: 1. Lead User fungieren als Bindeglied zwischen verschiedenen Gruppen. Diese Position impliziert, dass die Reichweite und die Vielfalt des von ihnen erhaltenen und verteilten Wissens größer sind als bei anderen Nutzern. 2. Dieser Befund ist unabhängig vom Alter der Konsumenten. Die Ergebnisse unserer Studie liefern einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Entwicklung neuer Ansätze für die Identifizierung von Lead Usern in verschiedenen Settings, darunter Web-2.0-Communities.

Abstract

In recent years, the lead user concept has received a great deal of attention in both academic research and corporate practice. Despite broad empirical evidence regarding the high potential of lead users for new product development, we still lack a full understanding of their nature and what enables individual consumers to become lead users. Our study addresses these fundamental issues in lead user research and examines them from a perspective which focuses on the social context of individual consumers. This angle is promising and fruitful as individual creative processes are couched in social networks. As a result, our investigation is guided by the following research question: Do lead users have a distinct social ‘footprint’ in social networks? We chose 34 groups of 804 young consumers as the empirical setting for our study, which yields two general findings: First, lead users are positioned as bridging links between different clusters of people. Being in this ‘boundary-spanning’ position implies that lead users have a wider reach and variety in receiving and distributing information and knowledge. Second, this finding is robust across different age groups. The insights from our study contribute to developing new means of identifying lead users in different settings, including Web 2.0 communities.

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Notes

  1. Obwohl es auch andere Konzeptualisierungen gibt, beispielsweise das von Burt (1992) entwickelte Constraint Concept, hat sich doch die Betweenness Centrality als das zielführendste und robusteste Maß erwiesen (Krackhardt und Holly 2002).

  2. Aus Gründen der Vereinfachung haben wir das außerdem verbreitete Maß der Eigenvektorzentralität (Alexander 1963; Bonacich 1972) hier nicht mit einbezogen. Eigenvektorzentralität ist eine verfeinerte Variante der Degree Centrality.

  3. Berechnet mit QAP-Korrelationen (Krackhardt 1987) der Netzwerkmatrizen der einzelnen Schulklassen.

  4. Neben der Dichte lassen sich soziale Netwerke auch noch durch andere Eigenschaften beschreiben, z. B. Segmentation (Baerveldt und Snijders 1994) oder Betwenness Centralization. Alle Analysen wurden auch unter Einbeziehung dieser Maße durchgeführt, zeigten aber keine statistisch signifikanten Zusammenhänge. Da in Netzwerken alle anderen Eigenschaften von der Gesamtanzahl der Verbindungen abhängen und diese durch die Dichte beschrieben wird, haben wir diese Variable in die HLMAnalyse einbezogen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lehrstuhl für Entrepreneurship und Innovationsmanagement, Institut für Technik und Management, Fakultät für Wirtschaft und Management, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623, Berlin, Deutschland

    Jan Kratzer

  2. Institut für Entrepreneurship und Innovation, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Nordbergstrasse 15, 1090, Wien, Österreich

    Christopher Lettl

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  1. Jan Kratzer
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  2. Christopher Lettl
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Correspondence to Jan Kratzer.

Anhang: SAGA (Syracuse-Amsterdam-Groningen-Sociometric-Scale)

Anhang: SAGA (Syracuse-Amsterdam-Groningen-Sociometric-Scale)

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Kratzer, J., Lettl, C. Die Identifizierung von Lead Usern über soziale Netzwerke: Eine empirische Untersuchung unter jungen Konsumenten. Z Betriebswirtsch 81 (Suppl 5), 83 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-011-0488-1

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