Do retailers leverage consumer social media content for innovation? An exploratory study

The rise of social media has opened new pathways for organizations to innovate, in particular because innovation impetus may now be harvested from outside the organization. In our research-in-progress we examine the case of a global retail organization that has recently adopted social media strategies with the view to foster consumer-driven innovation. We focus on why social media content generated by consumers under some circumstances facilitates consumer-driven innovation and why under some conditions it doesn’t. We report on the research methods, data collection, data analysis strategies and emergent findings, and conclude with a brief overview of our future research