Customer involvement management

Customer Involvement Management, CIM, is an approach that takes the customer orientation one step further than Customer Relationship Management^[1]. CIM is about identifying and developing possibilities to involve customers in the business and product development process, such as design, marketing, sales, customer service, etc. The degree of involvement can be as far as to make the customer a part of the product, experience and delivery.

Within CIM the product is regarded to be a subset in what meets the customer's need of identification, problem solving and consumption. The possibility to influence the design and the consumption itself is assumed to be of great importance for the customers buying decision and loyalty.

One example of a company that uses CIM is Nike. With the concept NikeiD they let the customers design their own sport shoes.

More recently companies have started to build Web portals, in order to involve their customer in the idea generation, selection, development and commercialization phase of their innovation process ^[2].

References

1. ^ [1], 2009-02-26, Dagens Media (in swedish)
2. ^ Rohrbeck, R., Steinhoff, F. and F. Perder(2010) Sourcing Innovation from You Customer: How Multinational Enterprises use Web Platforms for Virtual Customer Integration, Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 117–131