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Customer Involvement: Elevate Engagement & Connection

• Post author By awesome
• Post date October 10, 2023

Customer involvement refers to the degree to which customers actively participate in the design, production, delivery, and promotion of a company’s products or services.

Encouraging customer involvement through co-creation, feedback, and advocacy can lead to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and innovation, as well as valuable insights for product development and marketing strategies.

Did you know that businesses with high customer involvement see a 55% increase in innovation success rates? It’s not just about selling a product or service anymore; it’s about creating an experience through content marketing and consumer involvement where customers feel valued and heard, ensuring that marketing messages foster high involvement. In today’s fast-paced market, engaging your audience directly through content marketing, leveraging customer insights, and fostering consumer involvement and customer participation can make the difference between thriving and merely surviving. This blog post dives into the essence of customer and consumer involvement, exploring strategies to enhance your relationship with your audience through content and research, and foster loyalty that goes beyond transactions to influence loyalty. By integrating customer feedback and consumer involvement into your business model, you’re not just improving your offerings; you’re building a community around your brand and involvement products. This high involvement with brands strengthens your business. Let’s uncover through research how making your customers and consumers central to your business strategy can unlock unprecedented growth and satisfaction for both brands and the work they do.

Key Takeaways

Engaging customers and consumers is not just beneficial but essential for the growth and sustainability of a business; actively seek their involvement and influence in various aspects of your service or product development, including research, to boost loyalty, satisfaction, and brand loyalty.

Understand that customer and consumer involvement comes in many forms, from feedback loops and community forums to co-creation projects, user testing, and content research, all influencing the outcome. Identifying the right type for your business, through customer research and insights, can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your engagement strategies, especially with high involvement and customer participation.

Crafting high involvement customer engagement strategies requires a blend of creativity and analytics; use research and data-driven insights to personalize your approach, making your consumers feel valued and understood by brands.

Elevating customer engagement effectively hinges on creating emotional connections ; strive to understand your consumers’ needs, desires, and pain points to foster a deeper, more meaningful relationship, whether through high involvement or low involvement strategies.

Recognizing and valuing consumers is more than just a courtesy; it’s a high involvement, strategic move for brands, backed by research. Regularly acknowledge their contributions, celebrate their milestones, and show appreciation for their high involvement and loyalty to strengthen the bond between your brand and its consumers through research.

Implementing high involvement customer engagement models for brands should not be a one-size-fits-all approach, according to research with consumers. Tailor your strategies, based on customer research and insights, to align with the emotional and practical needs of your target audience to see a significant impact on engagement levels, involving customer participation.

Unveiling Customer Involvement

Service industries.

In service industries, customer involvement takes a unique form. Businesses focus on engaging consumers directly in the creation and delivery of services, emphasizing customer participation, involvement, and customer citizenship behavior through research. This approach, involving us and research, ensures that services meet specific needs and preferences of consumers through their involvement.

For example, in “teenus” sectors like hospitality or healthcare, customers often provide vital feedback during or after service delivery. They share insights that can shape future offerings. This direct involvement of consumers, based on research and study, leads to tailored experiences, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty.

Modern Shift

Businesses today are moving towards customer-centric models . This shift highlights the importance of placing the customer, and by extension consumers, at the heart of every decision, ensuring their involvement through research and service co-creation. It’s not just about selling products anymore. It’s about creating meaningful interactions.

Companies now prioritize understanding customer needs through detailed insights. They use this information to refine their offerings continuously. This approach fosters a deeper commitment and involvement from consumers, as they feel valued and heard.

Customer involvement has evolved significantly over time. Initially, transactions were straightforward and impersonal. Today, they are complex and interactive.

This evolution reflects a change in consumer expectations. Customers now seek experiences that are engaging and personalized. They, et al, want to be part of the process, from product development to post-purchase support, involving consumers in service co.

Businesses, including service companies et al, have responded by integrating customer and consumer input into every stage of the lifecycle, emphasizing involvement. This includes using insights for product innovation and adopting strategies that encourage consumer involvement, creation behavior, and adoption intention to add value, as noted by et al.

Importance of Involving Customers

Service quality.

Customer participation and involvement play a crucial role in enhancing service quality and value co-creation. When consumers actively share their experiences and expectations, businesses can tailor their offerings to meet these needs more effectively, enhancing customer involvement and value.

Businesses that engage their audience in the development process, involving them in value co-creation et al, often see a marked improvement in service delivery. This direct line of communication and involvement allows for real-time adjustments, ensuring services remain relevant and valuable. It’s not just about meeting needs but exceeding them.

Continuous Innovation

Incorporating customer feedback into the business model is essential for continuous improvement and innovation . Feedback acts as a compass, guiding companies toward market demands and preferences.

A research team that prioritizes consumer insights can stay ahead of trends, developing products or services that resonate with their target market. This proactive approach to innovation keeps businesses competitive and relevant in fast-paced industries.

Brand Loyalty

The impact of customer involvement, including service co-creation, on building brand loyalty cannot be overstated. Consumers feel valued when companies listen to their feedback, fostering a sense of community and belonging around a brand.

This emotional connection strengthens trust, making customers more likely to make repeat purchase decisions with the brand. They become advocates, influencing the buying decisions of others through positive word-of-mouth.

Diverse Types of Customer Involvement

Direct interactions.

Direct interactions, as noted by service co et al, stand as the most straightforward way for businesses to involve their customers. This type involves service co face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or live chat sessions. Through these channels, customers can express their needs and preferences directly to the company. It allows for immediate feedback and adjustments, making it a high involvement strategy.

Businesses often use direct interactions in service industries where personal touch is crucial. For example, in postiteenus (postal services), customer involvement through direct interactions helps in customizing delivery options or resolving issues promptly. This approach ensures customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Feedback Mechanisms

Feedback mechanisms are systems set up by businesses to gather opinions from their customers. These can be surveys, online reviews, or suggestion boxes. Unlike direct interactions, feedback mechanisms might not provide immediate responses but offer valuable insights into customer preferences and areas needing improvement.

This method is vital for companies looking to understand their customers’ involvement levels over time. It’s a more passive form of involvement but essential for long-term adjustments and improvements. Industries like sotsiaalteenus (social services) rely heavily on feedback mechanisms to tailor their offerings to the community’s needs.

Co-creation Opportunities

Co-creation opportunities represent the depth of participation from customers in developing new products or services. This type involves customers directly in the creation process, leveraging their insights and creativity for better outcomes.

It’s a high involvement decision that benefits both parties: businesses get firsthand information on customer desires, and customers feel valued and heard. Industries such as technology and fashion frequently employ co-creation strategies to innovate and stay ahead of market trends.

Passive vs Active

Comparing passive versus active involvement strategies reveals significant differences in effectiveness and application areas. Passive strategies, like feedback mechanisms, are low-effort but provide deep insights over time. They suit industries where changes don’t need to be instant but informed by accumulated data.

Active strategies, such as direct interactions and co-creation opportunities, demand more effort from both parties but result in immediate benefits and stronger customer-company relationships. They’re ideal for service-oriented sectors like postiteenus or any industry aiming for rapid innovation.

Crafting Customer Engagement Strategies

Design steps.

Understanding customer needs and preferences is crucial in crafting effective customer engagement strategies. The first step involves deep research to gather insights about what customers truly desire. This can include surveys, interviews, and analyzing customer behavior data.

Businesses should then align these insights with their goals. It’s about finding a balance between what the company wants to achieve and what its customers need. This alignment ensures that the marketing messages resonate well with the target audience.

Integration Methods

Integrating customer involvement into service delivery requires careful planning and execution. One effective method is mass customization . It allows customers to tailor products or services to their specific needs, enhancing their overall experience.

Another approach is to involve customers in the creation process through co-creation strategies . This can be facilitated by tools that allow for easy design and feedback loops between the company and its customers. Such involvement not only improves product relevance but also strengthens brand loyalty.

Engagement Tools

To maintain ongoing engagement, businesses must utilize a variety of tools and platforms. Content marketing plays a pivotal role here. Creating valuable, relevant content helps keep the audience engaged over time. It’s not just about selling; it’s about providing information that enriches the customer’s life or solves a problem they have.

ial media platforms are also powerful tools for fostering a sense of community among customers. They offer spaces where people can share experiences, give feedback, and feel part of something bigger – a brand community.

Routine Response

It’s vital to establish routine response behaviors within your engagement strategy. Regularly updating content, responding promptly to inquiries, and staying active in conversations build trust and reliability in your brand.

A study on routine response behavior highlights its importance in maintaining long-term customer relationships. Consistent interaction keeps your brand top-of-mind for consumers when they’re ready to make purchasing decisions.

Elevating Customer Engagement Effectively

Tech leverage.

Leveraging technology can dramatically enhance customer engagement. Businesses today have access to various tools that can help them understand and interact with their customers more effectively.

One method is using customer relationship management (CRM) software. This tool allows companies to track customer interactions, preferences, and feedback. It helps in delivering personalized experiences. Another approach involves utilizing social media platforms. These platforms offer a direct line of communication with customers, enabling businesses to engage in real-time conversations and gather valuable insights.

Personalization Significance

Personalization plays a crucial role in elevating customer experiences. Customers appreciate when businesses recognize their unique needs and preferences.

Implementing personalization can start with simple steps like addressing customers by their names in emails or recommendations based on previous purchases. More advanced methods include using artificial intelligence to analyze customer data and predict future needs or interests. By making customers feel valued and understood, businesses can foster stronger relationships and encourage loyalty.

Engagement Analysis

Measuring and analyzing customer engagement levels is essential for understanding the effectiveness of engagement strategies.

Businesses can use metrics such as website traffic, social media interactions, and email open rates to gauge engagement levels. Surveys and feedback forms also provide direct insights into how customers perceive their interactions with the brand. Analyzing this data helps businesses identify areas for improvement and tailor their strategies to better meet customer needs.

Emotional Connections with Customers

Psychological aspects.

Creating emotional connections with customers goes beyond mere transactions. It taps into their hedonic needs and motivational orientation . When businesses understand this, they forge a deeper relationship that transcends the usual buyer-seller dynamic.

Customers often seek more than just products or services. They look for experiences that resonate with their personal values and emotions. This is where understanding their hedonic needs comes into play. These are desires related to sensory pleasure, emotional fulfillment, and aesthetic appreciation. By catering to these needs, businesses can create memorable experiences that customers want to repeat.

The motivational orientation of a customer plays a crucial role in their purchasing decisions. Some customers are driven by impulse buying, while others may experience purchase dissonance if their purchases don’t align with their internal motivations. Recognizing these orientations helps businesses tailor their approach, ensuring a stronger emotional link with each customer.

Building Loyalty

Emotionally resonant experiences are key to fostering customer loyalty . When customers feel understood and valued on an emotional level, they’re more likely to develop loyalty towards a certain brand or store.

This loyalty doesn’t just happen; it’s built through consistent positive interactions that make customers feel special and appreciated. Such interactions often lead to repeat purchases and can even turn customers into brand advocates who share their positive experiences with others.

Moreover, millennials show a particular affinity for brands that engage them emotionally. They value authenticity and personal connection, making them more likely to be loyal to brands that demonstrate understanding and care for their individual needs and preferences.

Reducing Dissonance

Emotional engagement also plays a critical role in reducing purchase dissonance. This uncomfortable feeling arises when a customer doubts the wisdom of a purchase soon after making it.

Recognizing and Valuing Customers

Customer contributions.

Businesses thrive when they acknowledge the unique contributions of their customers. This recognition goes beyond mere transactions; it’s about valuing customer citizenship behavior. When customers feel valued, they are more likely to engage in behaviors that support the business. This includes providing valuable feedback, advocating for the brand on social media, and participating in community events.

Customers bring more than just revenue; they bring insights that can lead to product innovation and service improvement. By recognizing these contributions, businesses can foster a deeper connection with their audience.

Milestone Celebrations

Celebrating customer milestones is a powerful way to show appreciation. Whether it’s a first purchase anniversary , reaching a certain level in a reward program, or recognizing consistent engagement over time, these celebrations make customers feel special and valued.

Businesses can use emails, social media shoutouts, or personalized gifts as ways to celebrate these milestones. Such gestures not only strengthen emotional connections but also encourage continued loyalty and involvement.

Feedback Acknowledgment

Listening to customer feedback is crucial for any business aiming to improve its products or services. However, taking an extra step to acknowledge and act on this feedback shows customers that their opinions truly matter.

When customers see their suggestions being implemented, it reinforces the idea that they are an integral part of the value co-development process. This acknowledgment can be as simple as a thank you note or as significant as naming a new product feature after the customer who suggested it.

Recognition Programs

Recognition programs are designed to motivate customer involvement by offering rewards for specific behaviors. These programs often include points for purchases, bonuses for referrals, and exclusive access for frequent buyers.

Such programs not only incentivize repeat business but also create a sense of belonging among customers. They feel like part of an exclusive group where their actions contribute directly to the brand’s success.

Implementing Customer Engagement Models

Social media.

ial media platforms offer a dynamic way to engage customers. Brands can interact directly, respond to queries, and share content that resonates with their audience. They foster community building and allow for instant feedback.

Businesses use social media to launch new products or services. They create campaigns that encourage users to share their experiences. This approach turns customers into brand ambassadors .

Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs reward customers for repeat business. They track purchases and offer discounts, freebies, or exclusive access as rewards. These programs personalize the shopping experience and make customers feel valued.

Retailers often implement loyalty programs. They analyze purchase history to tailor offers. This strategy increases repeat visits and enhances customer satisfaction.

Interactive Platforms

Interactive platforms involve customers in product development or improvement. Businesses use surveys, polls, or beta testing to gather input. This model values customer opinions and fosters a sense of ownership.

Tech companies frequently adopt interactive platforms. They invite users to test new features or provide feedback on potential updates. This collaboration leads to better products and stronger customer relationships.

Citizenship Behaviors

Encouraging citizenship behaviors means inviting customers to contribute beyond transactions. Companies may ask for help in co-creating content, participating in forums, or supporting community initiatives.

This model strengthens bonds by aligning with customers’ values and interests. It turns them into active participants in the brand’s mission.

Case Studies

A fashion retailer launched a successful social media campaign encouraging customers to post outfit photos with a branded hashtag. The campaign increased engagement and sales.

An electronics company used an interactive platform for beta testing its new app. Feedback led to improvements pre-launch, resulting in high user satisfaction.

A grocery chain’s loyalty program personalized offers based on shopping habits, boosting customer retention rates significantly.

Significance of Emotional Engagement

Long-term advantages.

Businesses that prioritize emotional engagement reap long-lasting benefits. These include increased customer loyalty and higher spending. Customers emotionally connected to a brand are less likely to switch to competitors.

They also tend to recommend the brand to others, boosting word-of-mouth marketing. This form of engagement transforms customers into brand advocates. They willingly share their positive experiences with friends and family.

Customer Loyalty

Emotional engagement directly impacts customer loyalty. It goes beyond transactional relationships. Customers feel a deeper connection with brands that understand their needs and values.

This connection fosters trust and loyalty, making customers more likely to stick with the brand over time. They see the brand as an extension of their own identity.

Advocacy Influence

Customers who are emotionally engaged become powerful advocates for the brand. They share their experiences on social media and with people they know. This organic promotion is invaluable for businesses.

It not only attracts new customers but also strengthens the brand’s reputation in the market. Happy customers are the best marketers a business can have.

Authentic Connections

For businesses to authentically connect with customers, they must listen and respond to their needs genuinely. Personalized communication is key here. It shows customers that the business sees them as individuals, not just numbers.

Hosting events or creating spaces where customers can share their stories helps build community around the brand. These actions demonstrate a commitment to customer satisfaction beyond just selling products or services.

Closing Thoughts

Engaging customers isn’t just a strategy; it’s your ticket to building a brand that resonates and thrives. Throughout this discussion, we’ve unpacked the essence of customer involvement—from understanding its importance, exploring diverse types, to crafting strategies that elevate engagement. You’ve seen how emotional connections and recognizing your customers play pivotal roles in this dynamic landscape. Implementing these models isn’t just beneficial; it’s critical for fostering loyalty and driving growth.

Now, it’s over to you. Take these insights, apply them to your strategy, and watch your customer relationships transform. Remember, the most successful brands don’t just sell; they engage, connect, and value their customers at every touchpoint. Ready to make a difference? Start today by revisiting your approach to customer involvement and set the stage for unparalleled success. Let’s turn engagement into your brand’s superpower.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is customer involvement.

Customer involvement refers to the process of actively engaging customers in the development, marketing, and improvement of products or services, ensuring their needs and feedback directly influence business decisions.

Why is involving customers important?

Involving customers is crucial because it leads to better product design, higher satisfaction levels, increased loyalty, and more effective marketing strategies by directly addressing customer needs and preferences.

What are the different types of customer involvement?

There are several types of customer involvement including feedback surveys, user testing, collaborative product development, online communities for idea sharing, and direct communication through social media platforms.

How can businesses craft effective customer engagement strategies?

Businesses can craft effective engagement strategies by understanding customer needs, personalizing interactions, utilizing omnichannel communication methods, and continuously measuring and improving the engagement process based on customer feedback.

What techniques elevate customer engagement effectively?

Effective customer engagement can be elevated through personalized experiences, timely and relevant communication, rewarding loyalty, and creating a community around your brand that encourages active participation and advocacy.

How do emotional connections impact customer relationships?

Emotional connections strengthen customer relationships by building trust and loyalty. Customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand are more likely to become repeat buyers and recommend the brand to others.

How can businesses recognize and value their customers?

Businesses can recognize and value their customers by actively listening to their feedback, responding promptly to inquiries or complaints, personalizing their experience based on past interactions, and appreciating them through rewards programs or exclusive offers.

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Customer Engagement: Marketing case studies from Coors Light, a professional soccer team, and a private jet charter

This article was published in the MarketingSherpa email newsletter .

“The Marketer needs meaningful work and meaningful relationships,” Flint McGlaughlin taught in Above-the-Fold Energy: How to engage the prospect’s mind with a carefully crafted opening .

Those relationships can be with your business colleagues (a topic we frequently address in the How I Made It In Marketing podcast ).

But you should have a relationship with your customers as well. So you can put yourself in their shoes. So you can better understand the customer experience.

Interact with customers through your social media, mobile, digital, and experiential marketing to strengthen that relationship, to foster an emotional connection between your customers and your brand and improve customer engagement.

To give you ideas for building a customer engagement strategy, in this article we bring you three marketing case studies. First, we start simple – a private jet charter company shows us that even if you don’t have the perfect optimized copy for an opening paragraph, just adding those few lines is more engaging than having nothing at all. Next, we bring you a more complicated tactic – the interactive marketing a professional soccer team used to improve data collection and fan involvement. And finally, the most complex – Coors Light’s experiential marketing partnership.

Quick Case Study #1: Private jet charter company gets 17% more inquiries after adding opening paragraph to homepage

Before we dive into our first case study, a few words about MarketingSherpa case studies in general. When we publish case studies where marketers offer up specific creative samples or strategies, sometimes we get letters critiquing the strategy or offering a reader’s advice on how to improve the creative.

So, a little word of caution. No case study we publish has a perfect creative sample. Or a perfect strategy. However, these case studies do offer real-world examples showing the copy and strategies your peers and competitors are using, how they’re executing their marketing campaigns, and what is actually working for them (or, in some cases, not working).

And each case study offers a broadly applicable lesson for marketers. Not from vague “thought leadership” ideas. From real world, down in the trenches, nitty gritty, do-or-die tactics marketers are using to serve their customers and hit their numbers.

While I might execute any of these campaigns differently, or you might, we’re not in these marketers’ shoes. We’re not dealing with their very real time, budget, and performance pressures. We are not (to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt) in their arena.

Or as Flint put it in Session #15 , “Best is better than better, but better is still better than bad.”

With that said, let’s see what we can learn from how one entrepreneur made his marketing better.

“ The video had lots of great information. Flint did an amazing job explaining the topic,” said Kyle Patel, CEO & Charter Director, BitLux .

“In this video, Flint explained the need for relevancy and urgency in the opening paragraph. In our webpage, we also did that and tried to keep everything relevant to our customer base,” Patel said.

The jet rental company’s homepage had a that read “The Unique Private Jet Charter Experience.”

Below that subhead, the team tried to communicate the company’s unique selling point by adding an opening paragraph that read: “Our clients represent industry trailblazers. We think of ourselves as the same. With an efficient, premium service offering, charter your next journey with BitLux, and experience why we are the first and leading provider of private jet charter services through cryptocurrencies. Click here to check out the locations we serve.”

Creative Sample #1: Jet rental company homepage with sub-headline and opening paragraph added

The team felt that its customers wanted to have the privacy and convenience of making anonymous payments with cryptocurrency. So, they stated that in the opening paragraph to pull the customer’s attention and achieve a "micro-yes" which leads the potential customer to read further down the page.

The added opening paragraph has reduced the bounce rate by 24.9%. The company received 17% more inquiries from potential customers regarding flights. And there was a 12.8% increase in ROI compared to before when the homepage didn’t have the opening paragraph at all.

“It’s actually astonishing that only adding a few lines to gain their attention could lead to such a huge impact. When we didn’t have that section people were coming to our page but didn’t engage any further. It especially helped with our call-to-action rate when someone landed on our page from ads,” Patel said.

Quick Case Study #2: Valencia Football Club leverages interactive content to collect zero- and first-party data, gain 5,808 new newsletter subscribers

Data has been called the new oil of the digital economy.

Sounds good at first, right? But then think about all of the problems that come with oil, from pollution to dependence on other nations. Which is why many businesses and governments are working to shift their economies off of oil.

There are similarities in data, as many businesses and governments try to shift data collection practices away from third-party data (like tracking cookies) towards zero- and first-party data due to privacy concerns.

Zero- and first-party data

Valencia Football Club (Valencia CF) sought to get to know its customers better by collecting zero- and first-party data. Valencia CF is a professional football club (or as we would say in the United States, professional soccer team) in La Liga, the top men’s professional division in Spain.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Valencia CF suddenly felt a significant disconnect from its fans when stadium doors were forced to close. No longer able to interact with them in person, it chose to accelerate its digital transformation, developing a data collection strategy and reinforcing its online presence to meet its supporters’ expectations from afar.

Zero-party data is defined as information that customers intentionally provide (for example, filling out a form, taking a quiz or poll, or entering a sweepstakes). First-party data is defined as information an organization gathers from observing customer behavior on its own properties (such as website traffic or A/B testing).

“Zero- and first-party data collection allows brands to establish more genuine relationships with their audiences. As consumers are involved in data collection and willingly provide information about themselves it becomes part of their experience with the brand,” said Quentin Paquot, CEO, Qualifio (Valencia CF’s data collection and interactive marketing platform).

Data collection and community engagement priorities

In March 2021, Valencia CF decided to start relying increasingly on digital animation to engage with remote audiences while lockdown measures were gradually being eased across Spain. The marketing team of six had four primary marketing objectives:

• Grow its database by collecting new newsletter subscribers
• Know supporters better by collecting valuable insights and feedback from them
• Increase sponsors’ visibility by including interactive advertising formats within its offering
• Engage its database through fun and interactive games

The club uses interactive formats to better get to know, monetize, and engage its community of fans not only on match (game) days but on a recurrent basis. Every week, the marketing team organizes a meeting to discuss the performance of its campaigns, plan the next ones depending on Valencia CF games or the sponsor they want to highlight, and brainstorm campaign ideas.

Collecting email newsletter subscribers

This is Valencia CF’s number one objective.

Originally, the organization struggled to get new newsletter subscribers and found that interactivity was an excellent way to collect first-party data by combining interactive formats such as quizzes, polls, tests and games, with opt-in forms.

For example, Valencia CF launched a poll that asked supporters to vote for their favorite new jersey. To validate their choice, fans had to fill out a form (first name, last name, email, date of birth, city), in which Valencia CF proposed a newsletter opt-in. As a result, the team managed to collect a total of 2,907 new newsletter subscribers in only 15 days.

Creative Sample #2: Favorite jersey poll

“The goal of this campaign was to get as many new subscribers as possible. We knew that creating a short campaign with a new season jersey to be won would be a good incentive. So far, this campaign has been the most successful one for us in terms of subscribers collected,” explained Cristina Garcia, Digital innovation and E-commerce Analyst, Valencia CF .

Getting customer feedback

According to Garcia, listening to the club’s audience and understanding them better must also be a high priority. To achieve this, the football club uses product battles to collect zero-party data, gather customer feedback and find out what they like. The concept is simple: fans vote for their favorite product between two options, with the chance to win one of them.

All the data collected through these battles is then sent to the ecommerce shop’s managers. Thanks to these inputs, they know the fans’ preferences and can adapt their product stock accordingly or launch promotions and specific actions around the most popular products. This is also why Valencia CF launched its first product battle in September around children going back to school when the online and physical shops receive all their new stock.

In addition to the ecommerce shop’s managers, Valencia CF also sends all the data it collects to its mailing tool to send emails tailored to fans’ preferences.

Creative Sample #3: Product battle where fans can vote for their favorite products

Increasing sponsors’ exposure

As a football club, Valencia CF is committed to giving great visibility to its sponsors, both offline and online.

Garcia explains: “We give exposure to our sponsors through an ad disguised as a game. It’s a win-win: we get a lot of participation, thanks to the prizes proposed by our sponsors, and they get the views.”

For its sponsor, Zumub, a supplements brand, Valencia CF created a sudden death quiz promoted via its newsletter with eight prizes, such as vouchers, VIP tickets and signed balls. The quiz mixed questions about the sponsor’s products and the Valencia CF team. To boost participation, the club announced all participants would receive a €10 gift once registered — an incentive to turn anonymous visitors into identified fans and grow the database.

This sudden death quiz has so far been the game with the most participation, with a total of 4,242 participants in eight days.

Creative Sample #4: Sudden death quiz that mixes in questions about sponsor’s products

Creative Sample #5: Prizes for sudden death quiz

Engaging on a recurrent basis

Valencia CF is using interactive formats regularly to keep its supporters engaged. For example, before every match, the organization publishes a prediction campaign with a regular prize.

These prediction campaigns are a great way to interact with audiences and help to build up the atmosphere before the match. As they are the most used campaigns by the club, Valencia CF has gathered excellent data and a few takeaways:

• The club obtains better results when the prize is a free ticket for the next match. The second prize to bring more participation is the jersey, and a football is the prize that brings the least amount of participation
• Instagram is the best channel to drive people to their campaign, but Facebook is the channel that has a better conversion rate, bringing most of the participation
• The club only needs to publish two tweets on Twitter to get good results

In 10 months, the club created 82 campaigns, and collected 5,808 new newsletter subscribers with an average new opt-in rate of 14.3% per campaign.

With the pandemic now in the rearview, Valencia CF is able to strike a solid balance between in-person and digital engagement. Supporters have been back in stadiums for a long time now, but with its new digital engagement efforts, Valencia CF can interact with its global fanbase seamlessly, allowing them to feel more connected and involved with the club than ever before.

“We’re interacting with our fans, giving them occasions to spend great times with us through fun games,” Garcia said.

Quick Case Study #3: Coors Light gets 8M impressions by partnering with podcast for experiential marketing and brand activations

To drive engagement and brand affinity for Coors Light with authentic endorsements, the beer brand became the presenting sponsor of the podcast Pardon My Take’s 5th annual Grit Week in August 2021. “Authentic endorsement is the key to all podcast partnerships,” said Lisa Jacobs, VP of Media, Ad Results Media (Coors Light’s media agency).

Grit Week is an annual Pardon My Take (PMT) tradition. During this tradition, members of the podcast travel to different areas of the country to prove how much grit they have inside and out in an unpredictable fashion.

Marketing campaign objectives

The team at Molson Coors Beverage Company, which owns Coors Light, sought to weave the brand’s presence into the different facets of the show (audio, video, social, etc.) and leverage the loyalty of the PMT audience to help drive consideration across beer drinkers.

Cross-platform integration strategy

The PMT team traveled the country in a co-branded RV. They made stops at places like the Pro Football Hall of fame, at a disc golf course to play with a pro, and at a hot wing restaurant.

Creative Sample #6: Co-branded RV used on nationwide tour by podcast team

Each stop featured brand integrations such as product placement, merchandise, and co-branded logos throughout multimedia elements during the program’s activities and challenges.

Some of these brand integrations were quite simple, like a Coors Light logo on the background of a video interview. Other brand integrations were authentically woven into the content, like the time a PMT team used a member of their team who is colorblind and provided an opportunity to see color for the first time by using special glasses to see the blue mountains on a Coors Light can.

“Knowing that Grit Week is one of PMT’s most hotly-anticipated events, we created custom PMT X Coors Light cans and merch to bring the chill to the events, which received HUGE praise from fans nationwide,” said April Roberts, Associate Marketing Manager, Coors Light .

Brand campaign outcome

In total, 23 million minutes of Grit Week content was watched. The Coors Light brand received 8 million impressions and 166,000 engagements, the majority of which aligned with target demographics and top geographic regions for the Coors Light brand.

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• Open access
• Published: 04 September 2015

Customer involvement through social media: the cases of some telecommunication firms

• Valentina Della Corte 1 ,
• Alessandra Iavazzi 1 &
• Chiara D’Andrea 1  

Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity volume  1 , Article number:  10 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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This study highlights the contribution of the role of social media in supporting customer involvement for service innovation.

It is commonplace that many service firms and processes have characteristics that differ from manufacturing. Analyzing the literature, we note that there are many contributions on innovation in the manufacturing industry while few researches are concentrated on the service industry. Hence, we chose to deepen the analysis on marketing innovation, with specific reference to the involvement of the customer, through social media, in service firms.

One of the key aspects of many service activities is the high involvement of the client/customer/user in the production of the final service. Without this coproduction process (i.e. interactivity of service production), the service would have often not been created. This customer involvement, together with the intangibility of many service products, leads service innovation to assume characteristics that are different from those learned by studies on manufacturing innovation. Service innovation is hard to capture in traditional categories like product or process innovation: the coproduction process and the interactions between the service provider and his client originate from so many touch points that it becomes difficult to identify what is the focus of innovation in service firms.

Hence, the focus is on the role of innovation in marketing activities in favoring the customer’s involvement in the service creation process through web tools, stimulating a closer relationship between the firm and its customers.

The study develops into the following steps: we start from the objectives and the definition of the research question through the study of the literature; we try to find some assumptions that can be useful to analyze the selected case studies. Results help us to discuss the analysis and to get to some conclusions.

Background of the study and objectives

The aim of this paper is to investigate about the role of innovation in favoring the creation of a closer relationship between the firm and its customers by the use of the web and its tools, considering the importance they have gained in the latest years.

The choice of studying marketing innovation in service firms comes from the analysis of the literature, in which we found a huge number of contributions on innovation in the manufacturing industry while there are few researches that focus on the service industry. Furthermore, the studies converge on the technological dimension and do not consider that ICT can be a tool for other forms of innovation that can be deepened, here including marketing innovation. Hence, the focus is on the role of innovation in marketing activities in favoring the customer’s involvement in the service creation process, stimulating a closer relationship between the firm and its customers. Web can constitute a valid tool in supporting decision makers since it allows accelerating this process.

Theories on innovation have been developed within the huge field of contributions on innovation in the manufacturing industry (Audretsch 1995 ; Becker & Dietz 2004 ). Looking at the service industry, there is a lack of contributions on the role of innovation in enhancing firms’ offer.

The first contribution on the innovation in the service industry refers to Barras (Barras 1986 ) and his “reverse product cycle”, according to which innovation in services takes place through three main phases (Gallouj & Weinstein 1997 ):

the incremental process innovation, that aims at increasing the efficiency of delivery of existing services;

the improvement of service quality that comes from more radical process innovations;

the emergence of product innovations, which favor the creation of new services or the whole transformation of the existing ones.

This contribution sheds light on the technological dimension of innovation. Further studies on the theme open the boundaries of the research, identifying other fields of study on innovation in the service industry. Within them, the marketing and the relationship with the customers gain increasing attention from the scholars.

Our study is articulated as follows: in the first section, we analyze the literature on the issue, trying to find some assumptions that can be useful to gain evidences. In the second section, we explain the methods used to collect and analyze the data. Among the service firms, we focus on the telecommunication sector, investigating on firms’ initiatives in identifying web tools that are able to favor customer involvement. The reason why we chose to examine firms operating in this sector is that it is high-tech based and with a strong competitive need of innovation. We then conduct our analysis trying to answer to the main research question, that is:

“How and to what extent are firms able to use web tools in order to favor the customer involvement in the service creation process?”

In the third section, we describe the results that help us to answer to the research question and to get to some conclusions, explained in the fourth section. The limits we encountered during the study are discussed at the end of the article.

Theoretical framework

In order to study the innovation in the service industry and the role of this phenomenon in focusing the attention on the customer and his key role in producing new innovation, the theoretical framework is concentrated on two streams of research, that are the open and the user innovation (Fig.  1 ).

Basic assumptions of open and user innovation. Source: Our elaboration. This figure shows the basic assumptions of open and user innovation on which this work focuses

Open innovation emphasizes the role of the interactions between external and internal ideas in creating value (Chesbrough 2006 ), while user innovation focuses on the role of users (individuals as well as firms – (von Hippel 2005 )) as leading innovators since their skills and competences have a key role in the creation of innovation. The competitive scenario imposes firms to change their business models, searching for new ideas that can come from the outside world and assuming new internal processes and technologies to improve their competitive position (Chesbrough 2007 ).

Hence, firms can develop and implement innovative ideas based on the opinions and comments the costumers express using the online communities.

A community can be defined as an organization that includes individuals with diverse backgrounds and preferences: their interaction generates fresh and complementary resources, knowledge and competencies (Bossink 2002 ; Oliver & Ebers 1998 ).

Therefore, customers can actively contribute to firms’ innovation processes through the sharing of their opinions and ideas. The so-generated innovation can lead to a better performance and value creation, not just for the firms but for the customer as well, since the service/product is built with the purpose of answering to the needs of the demand (democratized innovation – (von Hippel 2005 )).

In the telecommunication sector, van Cuilenburg and Slaa (van Cuilenburg & Slaa 1995 ) provide a definition of process and product innovation that is useful to reach the objectives of this study, stating that process innovation refers to the improvement of efficiency in production, while product innovation refers to the availability of new choices and opportunities of information and communication for customers (product differentiation).

According to the aim of this paper, we focus on the first aspect of innovation related to the service industry, investigating on how the customer can favor the creation and the development of new products becoming part of the co-creation process.

As previously said, in order to obtain sustained advantage for a company operating in the field of telecommunications, it is important to innovate constantly service offerings, possibly up to individual customers (Kristensson et al. 2008 ). In order to achieve this goal, it is desirable to involve customers in the innovation process to make them co-creators of the value, which is provided to them in the immediate future.

In order to study the degree of innovation, recalling some works on innovation in other sectors (Della Corte 2014 ), we propose some variables that explain the level of innovation a firm can show (Fig.  2 ).

Firm’s marketing innovation. Source: Our elaboration. This figure explains the different dimensions of marketing innovation for service firms, showing the degree of customer involvement

Responsiveness to consumer

In the telecommunication industry, quality is a key factor in influencing customer satisfaction. In the field of marketing activities, firms can get a deep sense of customers’ needs and expectations in order to align their products/services quickly. The key success factor in the implementation of innovation of telecommunications services is information, with specific reference to the wishes and requirements of the customers as well as to the form of the competition offer. The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) activities include the understanding of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, matching their expectations and answering to their compliances, enhancing the service quality and the customer care (Akroush 2011 ). Innovation can be introduced both at the induced and at the organic level of the service creation process, with the purpose to reach a greater comprehension of customers’ needs and create a mutual value for firms and consumers (Vargo & Lusch 2004 ).

Customer involvement

At this second step, the costumer is directly involved in the process of service creation: the firms enquire about their necessities and preferences and incite for innovative proposal and initiatives that can improve the offer. Customer involvement in the innovation process permits the creation of more customized services that encounter the target expectations, dedicated offers and activities, which enrich the demand satisfaction and retention.

Media and social innovation

The experiential component of the service fruition makes the media and social innovation tools crucial to guarantee the consumer’s enjoyment and contentment. This dimension represents the highest degree of engagement of customers.

At the first stage - the responsiveness one - firms establish their propositions of value and receive feedback after the consumption phase.

At the second stage - the customer involvement - there is the co-creation between the firm and its customers through the participation at the production phase.

At the third stage - the media and social innovation - since the customer share his ideas, needs and suggestions, he almost becomes a “producer” and makes the firm able to create highly customized products and services. This is the case of crowdsourcing activities, in which users create network and share knowledge through the web. Firms can use this collective intelligence opening an online contest, a sort of competition between freelancer working for a specific project, product launch, etc. Hence, firms looking for intellectual capital and professionalism on the web can use the networked knowledge to carry out important marketing strategies (Della Corte et al. 2013 ).

The methodology we implement in order to conduct our research is developed in the following steps as shown in the Fig.  3 .

The methodology steps. Source: Our elaboration. This figure clarifies the different steps of the methodology, defining the method, the source of data and the web tools used during the analysis

In order to answer all the research it is suggested to conduct case study research when the research questions are how and what (Yin 2009 ).

According to Aarikka-Stenroos and Sandberg (Aarikka-Stenroos & Sandberg 2012 ) two case studies “allow rich description and comparison” as well as to proceed with a cross-case comparisons ((Eisenhardt 1989 ), 2007).

The research methodology uses a comparative case study approach and discusses about the relative qualitative results.

Furthermore, the case study methodology is in line with the exploratory nature of this paper since it is able to capture contextual richness and complexity of research issues (Yin 2003 ) and to understand the social structures ((Bonoma 1985 ), p. 204; (Riege 2003 ; Yin 2003 )).

The case study methodology is applied in order to describe the two undisputed leaders of the European telecommunication sector. Vodafone is one of the world’s most powerful telecommunication brands: it operates in 21 countries worldwide and the company covers the 72 % European 4G population and its percentage of customers in Europe has grown from the 35 % in 2012 to 52 % in the first months of 2015 (Vodafone Annual 2015 ). As regards Telecom Italia Group, the company operates in 24 countries worldwide; its 4G European population have increased from 8,677 in the first months of 2014 to 10,480 in the first months of 2015 (Telecom Italia Group – 1Q’15 Results).

Collecting secondary web data from the analysis of the web and the social networks related to the two companies, we try to apply a “sentiment analysis” and to collect social media insights to support our research. In order to achieve this goal, we draw upon Social Mention, a search engine and analysis platform for social media. It works by searching content from comments and blogs to news, videos and events thereby allowing users to easily monitoring what people are talking about them, their company or their products and services.

This platform keeps track of more than 100 social media properties including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google and Digg among others. Apart from its search and analysis service, it also features daily social media alerts and API.

Social Mention also uses several tools to come up with accurate results. These include sentiment that determines whether mentions are positive, negative or neutral, top users (who is talking about the subject the most), top hashtags (popular hashtags associated with your search query), post rank which measures social engagement and sources which indicate where blog sources come from.

The empirical analysis is conducted in order to understand: the level of marketing innovation achieved by the firm using web and social media tools. The initiatives of customer involvement through web tools; the level of participation of the customer in the innovation process.

In order to evaluate the responsiveness, it is necessary to monitor what people spontaneously say about the brand or about a specific service. The information are collected according to four parameters:

strength , defined as the likelihood of a search term being mentioned;

sentiment , that is the ratio of positive to negative mentions;

passion , that means the likelihood that the people talking about a search term will do so frequently;

reach , which is the depth of a search term’s influence, in terms of the ration of unique authors referencing a brand to the number of mentions.

According to these four parameters, results allow companies to understand users’ perceptions of the brand and to monitor their comments on the web, analyzing how much they talk about an item and in which terms (positive/negative) and what is the level of commitment to the brand, seeing the “passion” and the “reach” parameters (Fig.  4 ). However, this tool has two limits: first, it is impossible to set a specific range of time to collect data; second, the method used to collect the presented information is not clear.

Social Mention’s results on TIM and Vodafone. Source: Our elaboration from Social Mention data. This figure shows the Social Mention’s results according to the different parameters considered in the analysis

For what concerns customer involvement, we analyze social media activities, in order to understand firms’ efforts in involving users. Results show that both companies are active on the social networks but users comment their posts asking for problem solving (Fig.  5 ).

Customer involvement on the social media. Source: Our elaboration from Facebook data. The figure describes the results of the analysis in terms of: customer involvement of the users per month, considering the amount of ilike, comments and sharing activities; customer involvement for the year 2014, comparing the total amount of the results for both the brands

By looking at the different categories, it is clear that the promo posts reach a great number of users that interact with them, asking for more information. On the contrary, entertainment and engagement posts do not reach a great number of users, so firms might have to strengthen these forms of interaction in order to improve the interaction with the customers (Fig.  6 ). In the case of TIM, there is the “sport” category that catches the attention of lots of users, also thanks to the company’s investments as sponsor in the last Football World Cup.

Comments per category. Source: Our elaboration from Facebook data. The figure shows the number of comments gathered into different categories: sport, promo, news, entertainment, engagement and corporate posts

For what concerns the media and social innovation, companies show a high degree of efforts in starting with high innovative activities of users’ involvement (Fig. 7). Thanks to a partnership with Crowdtech (a software house and web agency), Vodafone has developed a platform to collect customers’ views about a variety of topics. At a higher level of involvement, among the different R&D activities, Tim has developed in-house the “User experience lab”, that is a platform in which user is asked to provide ideas and design for new service or to test services they are being implemented.

Results show that TLC firms do not make a full use of the web tools to enhance their relationship with customers. For what concerns the responsiveness, the web tools represent very useful mean for firms to obtain information about customer satisfaction or evolution in their needs. Otherwise, they are used from users to express their complaints, so firms have to concentrate their efforts on managing customers’ requests.

Looking at the social activities of Telecom on Facebook, for example, it is clear that customers use the Telecom and Vodafone fan pages as customer care, asking for solutions and obtaining responses or expressing their complaints. Vodafone, in particular, received awards in the “Management of Year in a large company customer service”, “Team of the Year: Complaint Management” and the “Innovation in customer service” for Usage Control. It means that in order to improve the service quality and strategically focus their objectives, telecommunications companies can use these tools to investigate the degree of customers’ sensitivity and expectations, in order to improve responsiveness.

The companies build a constant relationship with the customers by creating entertainment activities on the social networks and in introducing innovative activities in their business models, even if at different levels of involvement.

As regards customer involvement in the innovation process, it requires commitment to the relationship from both customer and supplier. Users can be instructed to elaborate upon the provided tools in their own settings of use to meet their own needs. Telecommunication companies can use this method to create a “needs-based” and truly personalized approach in the service creation (Magnusson et al. 2003 ).

Telecom and Vodafone, in fact, build a constant relationship with the customers by creating entertainment activities on the social: funny questions and posts about customers’ everyday life create one to one relationships with the users and increase the brand attachment. Furthermore, these relationships help firms in better understanding customers’ behaviors and improving their business processes in a co-creation approach.

Looking at the media and social innovation, these two companies make strong efforts in introducing innovative activities in their business models (Fig.  7 ): Vodafone has activated a collaboration with Crowdtech in setting up a Panel Community for its customers, obtaining useful information about users’ perceptions and feelings on a variety of topics. At a higher level of involvement, among the different R&D activities, Tim has developed in-house the “User experience lab”, that is a platform in which user is asked to provide ideas and design for new service or to test services they are realizing. This process results in new, customer-centric products and services – under the motto “from customers for customers”.

Media and social innovation activities. Source: Our elaboration. The figure clarifies the Media and social innovation activities launched by Vodafone and TIM with specific reference to initiatives with high degree of involvement

Conclusions and limits

To conclude, we find that the empirical analysis demonstrates that improving marketing innovation activities by the web tools can favor the customer’s involvement in the service creation process. The analyzed cases actually contemplate the use of web tools in their business models and recognize the importance of these tools in creating a closer and more valuable relationship with the customer and involving him in the service creation process.

The companies use web tools, such as social networks, blogs and online communication platforms to enhance the relationship with the customers through entertainment activities that see different levels of involvement of the customers.

For what concern the responsiveness, the web tools can allow obtaining information about customer satisfaction and their needs’ evolution. In some cases, customers use these tools to express their complaints, so cultural firms have to be able to manage them in order to avoid situations in which customers’ comments could negatively influence the brand reputation. As regards customer involvement, the firm-customer relationship helps firms better understanding customers’ behaviors and improving their service creation processes in a co-creation approach. In this way, cultural firms can also understand customers’ expectations before the service provision, thus creating fit offers able to determine customer satisfaction. Social and media innovation allows getting to customer-centric services. Hence, they can really help creating high-personalized offers that positively affect customer satisfaction.

One of the main criticism is that the higher is the involvement of the customer in the service creation process, the higher will be the customer’s expectations, but these findings can inspire telecommunication firms, as well as service firms, to improve their relationships with customers through the opportunities offered by the web.

Obviously, these reflections conduct to some limits. The research should be extended to other cases, in order to identify clear parameters able to compare firm-specific situations.

There are several tools for customer involvement that have not been contemplated in this study but that can favor the understanding of customer behaviors and their actual role in the service creation process. The application of the cited tools can generate higher expectations in the customer and consequently require more and more sophisticated tools.

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Department of Economics, Management, Institutions, University of Naples Federico II, Via Cintia, 26 – Monte Sant’Angelo, 80126, Naples, Italy

Valentina Della Corte, Alessandra Iavazzi & Chiara D’Andrea

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All authors made substantial contributions to the conception and design, acquisition and analysis of data and their interpretation. They all partecipated in drafting the article and revising it critically.

In particular, VD wrote the paragraphs “Background of the studies and objectives” and “Theoretical framework”; AI and CD wrote the paragraphs “Methods” and “Results”. VD, AI and CD wrote the paragraph “Discussion”. VD wrote the paragraph “Conclusions and limits”. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Della Corte, V., Iavazzi, A. & D’Andrea, C. Customer involvement through social media: the cases of some telecommunication firms. J. open innov. 1 , 10 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40852-015-0011-y

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Customer Involvement: Definition, Importance + Types

Involvement is how much time, effort, and thought a customer puts into choosing a product or service and how much fun they have doing it. Like motivation, involvement is a customer’s feeling on the inside. It makes a person think about and explain his or her choice. External sources and agencies can encourage customer involvement.

The involvement theory says there are two kinds of purchases: low and high. How involved a customer is in a purchase depends on how involved he or she is in the purchase.

For example, when people buy a loaf of bread, they don’t feel like they’re doing much. It’s because the product doesn’t last very long. Once it’s been used up, it’s gone. If the customer is unhappy with a certain brand of bread, he will buy a different one next time.

When a person buys something that will last a long time, like a laptop, refrigerator, couch, or two-wheeler, he or she has a lot of say in the decision. Customers choose to give it a lot of thought. The effects of these products last for a long time. Before they buy products with a high level of involvement, customers ask many questions. Based on the type of product or service, the table below shows different levels of involvement.

In this blog, Customer involvement will be defined along with its importance and types. 

Definition of customer involvement

Customer involvement is the active involvement of customers in different parts of a company’s business, such as product development, marketing, and customer service. It involves talking to customers to learn about their needs, preferences, and expectations so that products and services can be made that better meet their needs.

Customer involvement can take many forms, such as giving feedback on products and services, participating in focus groups or surveys, or even co-creating or co-designing products with the company. By fostering a sense of partnership and ownership between the customer and the business, the main goal of customer involvement is to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Through customer involvement, businesses can better understand their customers’ needs, predict them, and make products and services that meet their expectations.

Importance of customer involvement

Customer participation is important for businesses in a number of ways. Here are some of the most important reasons why customer involvement is important:

• Better understanding of customer needs: Businesses can better understand their customers’ needs and preferences by involving them in different parts of their operations. This can help businesses make products and services that better meet customer needs.
• Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty: Customers are likelier to be happy with the products and services they receive when they feel their opinions are being heard and valued. Increased loyalty and retention may result from this.
• Increased innovation: Customer involvement can spur innovation by giving businesses new ideas and insights they might not have thought of otherwise. This can lead to the customer development of new products and services that better meet the needs of customers.
• Improved brand reputation: Businesses that actively involve customers in their operations are often seen as more customer-centric and innovative, boosting their reputation and attracting new customers.
• Reduced risk of product failure: Companies can reduce the risk of product failures and expensive recalls by involving customers in product development and testing. In the long run, this can save businesses time and money.

If a business wants to stay competitive in today’s market, it must involve its customers. By talking to customers and getting them involved in different parts of their business, companies can learn useful things, make customers happier, and come up with new products and services that better meet their needs.

Types of customer involvement

There are various forms of customer participation, including:

• Co-creation: 

Co-creation entails working with customers to create novel goods and services. This kind of customer participation is frequently used in sectors like technology, where customer feedback is crucial to developing novel products.

• Co-design: 

Customers are included in the design process to ensure the final product satisfies their requirements. This kind of customer involvement is frequently used in sectors like the fashion industry, where consumer feedback is crucial to developing fashionable and useful goods.

• Co-production: 

In order to increase the quality of the finished product, co-production entails involving customers in the manufacturing process. In industries like food service, where customers can offer insightful feedback on the flavor and quality of the food, this type of customer participation is frequently used.

• Customer feedback: 

Gather customer feedback on their interactions with goods and services in order to better future offerings. This kind of customer participation is frequently used in businesses like retail, where customer input can be used to enhance store layouts, product displays, and customer service.

• Crowdsourcing: 

Crowdsourcing is the practice of soliciting input and suggestions from a large number of people via online platforms. This kind of customer participation is frequently used in sectors like advertising and marketing, where businesses can use customer feedback to develop successful campaigns and promotions.

Depending on their sector, products, and customers, businesses may choose to use one or more types of customer involvement.

LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Decision Journey

Consumer involvement is crucial for every company that wants to thrive in today’s cutthroat economy. Involving customers in the product development process can result in the development of creative solutions that satisfy their wants and preferences.

Businesses can boost customer satisfaction and repeat business by including customers in decision-making. This fosters a sense of loyalty and trust among customers. Customer involvement can also produce insightful data that can be used to enhance product development, advertising campaigns, and customer support.

Businesses that put a high priority on customer engagement ultimately have a better chance of long-term success because they develop a solid brand reputation and cultivate customer loyalty.

QuestionPro is a great tool that businesses can use to get customers involved in many different ways. QuestionPro gives businesses the tools they need to get feedback from customers, analyze data, and take action to improve customer experiences. This can be done by conducting surveys or making online communities.

By utilizing QuestionPro’s different features, businesses can build customer loyalty, improve customer satisfaction, and succeed in the long run. Customer involvement is essential to the success of any business, and QuestionPro gives businesses the tools they need to get customers involved and foster a customer-centric culture. 

LEARN MORE         FREE TRIAL

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Turn Your Customers into Your Community

• Bailey Richardson,
• Kevin Huynh,
• Kai Elmer Sotto

Lessons from LEGO, TEDx, and Twitch.

For many organizations, cultivating a community will mean cultivating a new capacity. This is a democratic, not autocratic, route to building customer relationships. It requires trusting instead of controlling, and commitment instead of flightiness. Take inspiration from organizations like LEGO, TEDx, and Twitch. Though there may always be companies that prefer the path of building for their customers, the companies who decide to build with are reducing their risk—and growing their opportunities—in a changing world. Begin to collaborate with your customers by asking:

Today, does our company hope for the best at the big reveal? Or do we build trust with customers throughout our process? Does our team know the answer to who we want to invest in and why those people want to come together? Have we “followed on” our initial investment in this community? When and how?

In the early 2000s, facing growing competition from video games and the internet, LEGO found itself on the brink of bankruptcy . The company continued to struggle before staging a remarkable turnaround and surpassing Mattel to become the world’s largest toy maker. Central to that transformation was a fundamental shift in how LEGO approached their customers. For more than 75 years of its history, LEGO made toys exclusively for customers in a closed innovation process. But over the last decade, LEGO learned how to build with their fan community.

• BR Bailey Richardson is co-Author of the book “Get Together” and co-founder of consulting firm People & Company. She was one of the 13 original employees at Instagram when it was purchased by Facebook.
• KH Kevin Huynh is the co-author of Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People and co-founder of consulting firm People & Company.
• KS Kai Elmer Sotto is the co-author of Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People and co-founder of consulting firm People & Company.

Partner Center

Seven customer experience case studies that generated loyalty and ROI

Delighting the consumer is the number one priority for all customer-facing companies.

Right now, consumers have never had more choice, but when there’s an endless array of businesses offering similar products and services, how does any company stand out from the crowd?

By offering a personalised, relevant and completely human relationship that goes far beyond a single ecommerce transaction. 

A whole lifetime relationship between a customer and a company can be fostered under the customer experience (CX) banner, but this kind of loyalty can’t exist without first shaping a sustainable consumer-centric culture and delivering them compelling experiences.

Join us at our  Festival of Marketing , a two-day celebration of the modern marketing industry held in November, where we have an entire stage devoted to CX so you can learn how successful marketers optimise experiences to increase satisfaction and loyalty.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at some other useful case studies.

Coca-Cola uses  experiential marketing  to create a closer bond between itself and the consumer by immersing them in fun and memorable experiences.

The Coca-Cola Beat Generator was a custom music app which enabled consumers to mix their own music. It formed the core of a 70-day brand experience celebrating Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay.

The objective was to create an experience for the general public focusing on the fusion of music, sport and its brand. During an experiential roadshow users could create music using the sounds of sporting events, with additional beats and samples. The software ensured virtually any combination would fit harmoniously together.

Once a tune had been created users could pick up an MP3 recording or share via Facebook, Twitter or email. The music would also be played on a large screen during the roadshow. The Beat Generator was also used by Coca-Cola’s on-stage MC/DJ at each evening celebration and as part of a live performance in five major city celebrations.

9,000 pieces of music were created onsite with 2,500 retrieved online. There were 16,500 sessions on the Coca-Cola Beat Generator website and 1.78m Facebook impressions were delivered.

Cadbury launched its first Google+ community, ‘Cakes & Baking – The Cadbury Kitchen’, with a view to generating regular, authentic content for use on other platforms and drive engagement on its original Google+ page.

Communities not only provide a forum for discussion, but also create an opportunity to gather content for use outside of the community. It can be costly to develop, test and photograph new recipes, but a community can provide a source of regular and authentic content, which could be used to drive engagement elsewhere.

Cadbury is now one of the top 100 communities on Google+ with over 20,000 members. More than 2,500 recipes have been posted and there are an average of 20 interactions per post.

Homebase wanted to engage customers with personalised targeted emails to boost  email open and click-trough rates (CTR)  to drive campaign ROI.

Its email marketing previously concentrated on driving conversions with voucher code offers. However Homebase needed to shift its focus from converting prospective customers to encouraging people to consider Homebase prior to making a purchase.

It did this by identifying newsletter subscribers who had specifically shown an interest in kitchen products and, once identified, target those customers with a series of triggered follow-up emails with clear calls-to-action (CTAs).

The ‘Kitchen Trigger’ programme saw open and click-through metrics up to 20% higher than typical email campaign results.

Overall 48% of recipients booked in-store appointments, with an average conversion from appointment to final purchase of approximately 40%.

ASDA’s objective when building its app was to make shopping quicker and more convenient for busy customers.

In order succeed in this, the customer’s point of view had to be brought in right from the app’s development. ASDA’s customer research found the need for convenience, ease of use and also something that wasn’t filled with cutting edge technology they couldn’t get to grips with.

The customer experience was allowed to drive the technology, rather than visa versa.

Mobile now accounts for 18% of all grocery home shopping sales and 90% of this is from the app. ASDA App shoppers are twice as likely to become loyal, repeat customers. Shopping frequency for mobile is 1.8 times higher than desktop. The app had achieved more than 2m downloads by March 2013.

O2 uses customer data to provide many of its services. Prompted by new government legislation regarding transparency it needed to communicate to customers just how it relies on data to provide these services.

Customers are only going to share data with a company if it trusts it, and a company will only achieve trust if it’s entirely honest with consumers how that data is used.

If the use of data provides more relevant and improved customer experiences, outside of marketing, than this will only benefit the consumer.

O2 began by pulling together a cross-discipline team before working on creating personas and carrying out roleplay to tease out important issues. Key to this approach was involving customers early in order to inform its thinking and design.

O2 created wireframes explaining data control and how it relates to different services, and held customer workshops to see how customers responded to the idea of providing additional data. Finally, the company trialled the app with a group of customers, whose feedback it incorporated throughout the build phase.

This process informed ideas for new services, with O2 creating prototypes to test with users. The preferred concept was developed into a final prototype that was then tested with more than 1,000 customers, with 80% confirming that they would use it. This is now being rolled out in the UK and across Europe.

Because lingerie is not a product people always wish to try on, shoppers are in constant ‘browse mode’ where they find it difficult to make decisions.

Triumph created an interactive retail environment to solve that problem for them within the lingerie department of Selfridges store. The ‘Triumph Essence Fantasy Mirror’, housed in a specially designed ‘Fantasy Booth’.

A videocard invitation was sent out to consumers and on the day itself digital escalator panels in tube stations set the ‘Fantasy Forest’ scene, while window displays at Selfridges revealed the range on live models rotating slowly on music-box style plinths.

The windows also acted as a digital gateway to the Fantasy Mirror, with QR codes weaved into the lace design enabling shoppers to download the app to receive exclusive content, see the collection that would be featured in the window the next day and book an appointment in the Fantasy Booth.

The Fantasy Booth enabled shoppers to experience the collection without removing any clothing and merged the offline and online worlds.

Around 125 consumers attended the launch event and a 50% uplift sales was achieved in the first week after campaign launched as well as more than 1,600 app downloads during launch period.

Irish Books Direct

Irish Books Direct is designed to encourage a personalised community experience celebrating Irish literature and culture.

As a family business with limited resources Irish Books Direct had to grow organically with a minimum of investment. The key to any potential growth would be the adoption of various social elements that helped create a conversational online environment.

When customers sign up, they create a public member profile which allows them to interact with the site owners and other members. Books are promoted via personal blogs and customers are encouraged to join the debate via comments.

The growth for the first two years of its existence (2011 – 2012) averaged 400%. The third year of the business saw monthly growth of around 300%.

Join us at our Festival of Marketing  event in November, a two-day celebration of the modern marketing industry, featuring speakers from brands including LEGO, Tesco, Barclays, FT.com and more.

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Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase Case Study

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The Laptop Computer Selection

Jb hi-fi product considerations, product component ranking in amazon computer department.

The customer’s behavior is one of the fundamental factors determining the success of the marketing strategy, product, and organization as a whole. The customer’s decision-making is affected by a number of factors, such as values, costs, risks, and situational factors (Fanning, 2020). One of the features determining the customer’s product selection and satisfaction is the level of involvement. It may vary depending on the circumstances and is essential to take into account when considering the marketing strategy (Fanning, 2020). The more the customer is interested in the product and fulfilling one’s need, the more likely they will get the product. The laptop computer marketing would differ from snack bar advertising because of the higher level of involvement in the laptop purchase.

The level of involvement and motivation is mostly dependent on the personal values and the concept of self. The personal relevance of a laptop is relatively low, as it is a standardized tool mainly used for work. The laptop specially designed for a person’s desires would have higher personal relevance and increased involvement but is rather money consuming and does not interest the general audience. The laptop also does not primarily affect the person’s concept of self. It does not change the person’s role in the community or increase the sense of self-worth unless it is a costly laptop. However, laptop purchase is still not as common and does not occur every year, so the customer usually carefully evaluates the risks and costs in the long-term perspective. The combination of these factors makes a laptop a relatively common product with routine or even limited involvement.

The overall degree of involvement in the purchase of a laptop remains at the routine involvement in the product’s design when choosing the technical characteristics. However, with the development of technology and online services, buying a laptop becomes less involved with activity with low risks associated as the customer is usually familiar with the product. The customer may only have extensive involvement in the product’s design when the computer is assembled from the parts that the customer chose explicitly. This is not usually the case for most laypeople who prefer a simpler machine for the cost of time spent choosing a laptop of the highest quality.

Computer retailers should take into consideration the typical routine involvement of the customer when buying a laptop. A careful and thorough explanation of laptop features is not needed as in extensive involvement. However, the laptop purchase is still a more significant event than a snack bar purchase and requires the customer’s attention (Fanning, 2020). Since the laptop purchase is a relatively long-term investment, the service should be satisfactory enough for the customer to return after years of laptop exploitation. A specific marketing strategy should also be followed to increase the involvement. Strategic planning of customer involvement largely determines the marketing effectiveness and potential profit. The specific type of routine involvement should be considered and applied to the buying process’s time zone to achieve success (Fanning, 2020). Implying to the person’s self-concept and the role the laptop can play to boost one’s ego or relationships in society can primarily affect the involvement and potential turnover of a prospect to a loyal customer.

A typical customer selecting a laptop would go through the three stages of searching, estimating, and selecting a laptop computer in the first time zone of the buyer decision process. As a typical customer who is not savvy in technology, I would first google “laptops for students” to see the possible options that are relevant to me. The cost is especially important, so I would sort the search results according to the price level. Next comes estimating the technical characteristics available at the lowest price level. My value is the product’s durability, so I would estimate the risks and possible adjustments or laptop repairs. Finally, when selecting one or several computer models, I would consider going to the store and having a face-to-face consultation with a retailer. Testing the chosen laptop would also be useful as the description on the website may be vague. The situational factors come in place as the service and brand or product expectations come in place and determine its satisfaction.

The level of involvement also affects the first stage of the buyer’s decision process. Product purchase involvement is the initial stage of involvement when the need and want for the product just formed (Fanning, 2020). The level of involvement for the purchase would be rather casual or even limited as the purchase of a laptop has certain monetary risks for a student and requires careful consideration. The typical customer’s expectations from a laptop should also be met for a successful purchase. The typical customers often tend to believe their acquaintances’ recommendations more than advertisements, which affects the initial purchase behavior process.

The involvement may be of a different degree varying from low to high involvement, depending on the familiarity with the situation. In the situation with the appearing need for a new laptop computer, most customers have already had a computer before. That is why most customers are usually acquainted with the standards and requirements, and the involvement may be from low to medium. However, not all users are well informed about the technological values of computers and new features so that certain situations may require high involvement and rigorous research in technological aspects and models of laptops. The want is usually to buy an upgraded version of the old laptop or change the brand and a laptop if it failed to meet the customer’s expectations. The involvement is low if the customer buys a newer model in a habitual way (Fanning, 2020). On the contrary, it is high when the customer is interested in a completely different product and researches the possible satisfactory options (Fanning, 2020). Face-to-face consultation and review of the models are often the most suitable option for satisfying the customer’s needs.

Today, JB Hi-Fi is one of the world’s leading retailers of computers, TVs, and various Hi-Fi technology. It appears to be very distributed not just in Australia but also worldwide. The company’s success makes it interesting to investigate the marketing strategy and product design to apply in other business projects. When designing and promoting a new product or marketing an already existing one, it is crucial to examine a vast number of product considerations to reach success (Fanning, 2020). The information needs to be collected about the product and its nature to tailor the marketing strategy and align it with product considerations. These features primarily affect the buyers’ decision process and overall satisfaction.

Product leadership is one of the essential product considerations that JB Hi-Fi follows. Product leadership implies providing a unique product for the target audience. JB Hi-Fi manages to succeed on this criterion as its philosophy aims at delivering a specialist range of products for the lowest prices. The retailer aims at collecting the best brands with the lowest prices and provide genuine personal service to make the customer’s experience memorable. The care for the customer became one of the primary features defining the success of the company. The following standards and company policy became the benchmark for the industry. The fast-growing JB Hi-Fi became the point of reference for the technical and entertainment industry.

Besides a defined philosophy, JB Hi-Fi also possesses an individual product strategy. They define their product’s specific value as low prices and put the main emphasis on it in their commercials and marketing campaigns. The following strategy falls under the low-price minimal augmentation criterion. JB Hi-Fi’s primary focus is on low prices and numerous discounts, so they employ the full strategy. The attractive price and bright discount tags make the product more interesting for the customer than at the competitor’s stores. JB Hi-Fi does not need to have a niche approach or carefully consider the segment suitable for the price. They already have a high production volume and meet the customer’s needs for good products at low prices. Since the market is heterogeneous, especially for such a broad specialty of products, JB Hi-Fi applies a lower-price strategy to a specific segment of the market. It is more beneficial compared to a higher price with appropriate augmentation strategy in manufacturer’s stores.

The recipient also plays an essential role as the marketing campaign is typically tailored for a specific audience. JB Hi-Fi focuses on business-to-consumer (B2C) retail but can also be considered a business-to-business (B2B) type. The retail company has to negotiate with other manufacturers to get the product (B2B) and provide it to the customer (B2C). The company carefully considers the consumer, who is the primary recipient of the product, and adapts the marketing strategy. The bright and catchy design combined with funny slogans and low prices makes JB Hi-fi an ideal niche for teenagers and geeks.

Product variability of the retail store is another critical element of the company’s success combined with a low price. One can find a massive range of products for various needs, including shopping and specialty products. JB Hi-Fi focuses explicitly on collecting the immense number of products from various brands together. The product is very heterogeneous, but JB Hi-Fi manages to provide consistently appropriate customer service.

Understanding and evaluating the product components is essential for both the company and the customer. The customer assesses the product components in general and separately during the decision process to find the best option (Fanning, 2020). The company then adjusts all the components to meet the customer’s needs and adapt to the marketing strategy. The product components considered are the goods, services, ideas, experiences, people, and place (Fanning, 2020). They all come together in a complete impression from the product, and each of them may affect the sales rather radically. Amazon may be an example of a vast online retail corporation where several product components come together.

The apparent product that the customer gets after ordering at the Amazon website is physical goods. However, these goods are usually purchased to provide a service, especially in the computer department. Thus, service becomes the primary component of the product. The computer’s performance that gives benefit to the customer is the main reason for the purchase (Fanning, 2020). Computers are explicitly bought to give access to the internet, play games, or to program. The service that phones provide is the ability to call and communicate with people. The computer or electronic product’s service aims at providing the solution to the technical problem or giving satisfaction from playing video games. The service is performed by the purchased machine towards the person. The border between the service and goods product components becomes very blurry in a complex product system and the interconnectedness of the goods and their service.

The secondary in importance product component of Amazon is goods. Amazon supplies all sorts of goods online, including computer and electronics retail and states. Even the philosophy of Amazon is tailored to provide the goods for the customer. The range of goods is extensive and includes both consumable and durable goods, even in Amazon’s computer departments. Various screen filters, repair tools, cables are the goods used regularly or purchased frequently, so they may be considered consumables. The majority of the goods in Amazon’s computer department are durable goods, such as laptops, workstation computers, and displays. They are long-term utilities with different life-span and are used regularly.

Excellent customer experience is another feature that Amazon sells as a product. It increases customer satisfaction with the goods and services and is used as a strategic imperative (Fanning, 2020). The customer experience at Amazon is mainly formed through the interaction of the customer and a company. The positive cognitive experience of the customer is achieved through reviews and customer questions and answers sections. The cumulative effect builds through a friendly approach of customer service and a wide range of goods. People enjoy online shopping, and such a relaxing experience makes them feel satisfied and come back to Amazon even when they do not need a product urgently.

The ideas surprisingly can also be supplied at the computer department. The unique service and the goods that provide experience lead to the idea product component of Amazon. The idea of accessible computer products that can be shipped right to the door reflects the idea of a computerized environment. The very fact that amazon functions entirely online shows how modernization occurs and the internet takes over the market. In amazon, the computer market also promotes the idea of being environmentally friendly with its climate pledge friendly badge and product certifications. The value proposition and pricing are also the ideas that Amazon computer retail embeds (Fanning, 2020). Amazon provides a unique pricing strategy with numerous pricing options for different products to correlate the customer’s needs. The reference pricing allows the company to manage the floor and ceiling prices and increase price comfortability for the users.

Amazon’s place product component is a digital space – a website with a collection of computer products. It does not determine the product and does not create additional value. However, it creates a setting for interaction and provides the customer with the ability to shop online from any part of the world. People as a product component are also not really presented on Amazon as an online service. The service allows for asking the seller a question on the Q&A section, but it lacks real human contact.

Fanning, S. M. (2020). The marketing concept: Philosophy, theory, and application (7 th ed.) [e-book]. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, February 24). Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-involvement-in-a-laptop-purchase/

"Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase." IvyPanda , 24 Feb. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/customer-involvement-in-a-laptop-purchase/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase'. 24 February.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase." February 24, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-involvement-in-a-laptop-purchase/.

1. IvyPanda . "Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase." February 24, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-involvement-in-a-laptop-purchase/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Customer Involvement in a Laptop Purchase." February 24, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/customer-involvement-in-a-laptop-purchase/.

• Open access
• Published: 08 August 2024

New biomarkers for liver involvement by dengue infection in adult Vietnamese patients: a case-control study

• Nguyen Thi Cam Huong 1 , 2 ,
• Nguyen Phuong Hai 1 , 2 , 15   na1 ,
• Chau Van Khanh   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0006-9787-2316 3 , 4 , 5 ,
• Mohamed Gomaa Kamel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9848-2965 4 , 6 ,
• Nguyen Van Vinh Chau 2 ,
• Nguyen Thanh Truong 16 ,
• Nguyen Thanh Vinh 2 ,
• Randa Elsheikh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5811-9907 4 , 7 ,
• Abdelrahman M Makram   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2011-8092 4 , 8 ,
• Aya Elsheikh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8851-1822 4 , 9 ,
• Hiep Nguyen Canh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0336-3339 4 , 10 , 11 ,
• Somia Iqtadar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8482-9355 12 ,
• Kenji Hirayama   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9467-1777 3 ,
• Pham Thi Le Hoa 1 , 2 &
• Nguyen Tien Huy   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9543-9440 3 , 4 , 13 , 14  

BMC Infectious Diseases volume  24 , Article number:  800 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

78 Accesses

Metrics details

Liver injury with marked elevation of aspartate aminotransferase enzyme (AST) is commonly observed in dengue infection. To understand the pathogenesis of this liver damage, we compared the plasma levels of hepatic specific, centrilobular predominant enzymes (glutamate dehydrogenase, GLDH; glutathione S transferase-α, αGST), periportal enriched 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD), periportal predominant arginase-1 (ARG-1), and other non-specific biomarkers (paraoxonase-1, PON-1) in patients with different outcomes of dengue infection. This hospital-based study enrolled 87 adult dengue patients, stratified into three groups based on plasma AST levels (< 80, 80–400, > 400 U/L) in a 1:1:1 ratio ( n  = 40, n  = 40, n  = 40, respectively. The new liver enzymes in the blood samples from the 4th to 6th days of their illness were measured by commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) or colorimetric kits. Based on the diagnosis at discharge days, our patients were classified as 40 (46%) dengue without warning signs (D), 35 (40.2%) dengue with warning signs (DWS), and 11 (12.6%) severe dengue (SD) with either shock (two patients) or AST level over 1000 U/L (nine patients), using the 2009 WHO classification. The group of high AST (> 400 U/L) also had higher ALT, GLDH, ARG-1, and HPPD than the other groups, while the high (> 400 U/L) and moderate (80–400 U/L) AST groups had higher ALT, αGST, ARG-1, and HPPD than the low AST group (< 80 U/L). There was a good correlation between AST, alanine aminotransferase enzyme (ALT), and the new liver biomarkers such as GLDH, αGST, ARG-1, and HPPD. Our findings suggest that dengue-induced liver damage initiates predominantly in the centrilobular area toward the portal area during the dengue progression. Moreover, these new biomarkers should be investigated further to explain the pathogenesis of dengue and to validate their prognostic utility.

Key messages

Arginase-1, α-glutathione S transferase, and 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase levels were significantly associated with dengue severity and can serve as good prognostic predictors for liver injury.

Our findings suggest that dengue-induced liver damage initiates predominantly in the centrilobular area toward the portal area during the dengue progression.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Dengue is currently prevalent in 125 countries worldwide, with two-fifths of the world’s population at risk, and affects approximately 100 million people every year [ 1 ]. This number is estimated to increase in the near and distant future due to the suitability of climate and environment [ 2 ]. The spectrum of dengue infection ranges from an asymptomatic condition to a severe disease [ 3 , 4 ]. The 2009 World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines classify dengue infection severity into three main groups including dengue without warning signs (D), dengue with warning signs (DWS), and severe dengue (SD) based on clinical manifestations (vomiting, abdominal pain, hemorrhage), organ dysfunction (liver, renal, coagulation disorders) or shock (related to vascular permeability) [ 3 ].

Organ involvement has often been considered in dengue patients. Particularly, hepatic dysfunction is a well-recognized complication of this condition, with elevated AST and ALT occurring in 86% and 46%, respectively [ 5 , 6 ]. Liver dysfunction is attributed to apoptosis of hepatocytes, hypoperfusion, and hypoxic damage of liver cells due to plasma leakage, oxidative stress, or immune-mediated liver injury [ 7 , 8 , 9 ].

Acute dengue infection can lead to varying degrees of liver damage (LD) that can be detected from the elevation of transaminases, hepatomegaly, jaundice, and even acute liver failure with hepatic encephalopathy. Acute liver failure can be fatal, especially if it presents in patients with coagulation disorders, renal dysfunction, and metabolic derangements [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Liver involvement with extremely high transaminases can fully resolve as the acute infection recovers [ 12 ]. A major chunk (65–97%) of dengue patients with hepatic derangement has the maximum rise in hepatic aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) at convalescence (days 7–10) [ 15 , 16 ].

The liver dysfunction in dengue is measured in terms of the rise in AST levels, where higher values are associated with a more severe condition, development of complications, and prolonged stay in the hospital. Elevation of AST is therefore considered a prognostic marker and marker for severity classification [ 6 , 17 , 18 ]. Indeed, our previous systematic review and meta-analysis found a significant association between AST and SD [ 19 ]. LD biomarkers such as glutamate dehydrogenase (GLDH), glutathione S transferase-α (αGST), arginase-1 (ARG-1), paraoxonase-1 (PON-1), and 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) have been recently investigated in numerous liver involvement, especially in drug-induced hepatic impairment. Previous studies report that GLDH [ 20 , 21 , 22 ] and αGST [ 23 , 24 ] are mainly present in the hepatic centrilobular area, HPPD, also known as F-protein, is expressed in all hepatocytes and enriches in the periportal region [ 22 , 23 , 25 , 26 ], while ARG-1 is highly found in the portal area [ 26 , 27 , 28 ].

We, therefore, conducted this study to assess these new markers of LD in Dengue patients and to explore the characteristics of hepatic zonal damage in dengue infection.

Ethical statement

This case-control study was performed on adult dengue patients in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The study was approved by the institutional review board of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases of Ho Chi Minh City (ID: 1104/QD-BVND). Written informed consent was obtained from each patient upon enrollment. All the methods followed the relevant approved regulations, guidelines, and declaration of Helsinki.

Participants’ enrollment

We enrolled all dengue patients presenting to our setting between October 2015 and December 2016 on days 4 to 6 of dengue illness based on either a positive dengue IgM or non-structural protein 1 (NS1).

All hospitalized dengue cases during the study period were eligible for selection and were then stratified into three groups of equal size based on their plasma AST levels: less than 80 U/L, 80–400 U/L, and greater than 400 U/L (Fig.  1 ). All included patients satisfied the 2009 WHO criteria for dengue diagnosis [ 3 ] and were positive for dengue IgM or NS1. Accordingly, patient severity was classified at both admission and discharge. Patients were recruited from normal wards for dengue-infected patients or from the ICU if they were transferred due to shock. However, patients with shock at enrollment were excluded, as AST levels can be elevated in individuals with hypoperfusion [ 6 , 17 , 18 ]. Non-laboratory-confirmed cases were also excluded.

A flow diagram to visualize the selection of the participants

Sample collection

A venous blood sample was collected in EDTA tubes on the 4th – 6th day of illness. Plasma was separated by centrifugation at 1000 × g for 10 min and was stored at -20° until used for the enzyme testing.

Dengue confirmation

All cases were diagnosed as dengue patients if they had positive results for either dengue NS1 protein on the 1st – 4th day or IgM against dengue virus on the 6th day of illness (in case they were negative for NS1) using SD BIOLINE Dengue Duo Strip Kit (Standard Diagnostic Inc., Korea).

Liver enzymes and liver span measurement

Plasma αGST level was measured by sandwich ELISA using (GS41 2kit, Oxford Biomedical Research, Inc., USA), which does not cross-react with mu, theta or pi variants. HPPD was detected by the sandwich ELISA kit (ABIN419893 2kit) produced by Abbiotec™ (USA). ARG-1 was also quantified using the ELISA kit (EH1274, FineTest Biotech Co. Montgomery, TX, The Netherlands). Colorimetric assays were applied to quantify GLDH (ab102527 kit, Abcam Inc.), and PON-1 (Paraoxonase Enzyme Activity Assay Kit, Baran Medikal) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Liver spans were measured using ultrasound.

Statistical analysis

The skewness and kurtosis tests were used to test the normal distribution of continuous variables. Frequencies and percentages were used to describe categorical variables. The Chi-squared test (or Fisher’s exact test, as appropriate) was used for categorical data. Student’s t-test (one-way ANOVA test for > 2 groups comparisons) was used for normally distributed continuous variables while the Kruskal-Wallis H test was used for continuous non-normally distributed variables. The correlation was analyzed using the Spearman-rank test. Data were analyzed using MedCalc version 14.8.1 and RStudio software version 3.2.4. The data for patients and the R script can be obtained from the authors. Results were considered statistically significant with p  < 0.05.

Patients’ characteristics

A total of 87 dengue adult patients were enrolled into three equal groups based on plasma AST levels (< 80, 80–400, > 400 U/l), where 29 patients were equally allocated to each group. In our sample, we had 50 (57.5%) dengue (D) cases, 29 (33.3%), dengue with a warning sign (DWS), and 8 (9.2%) severe dengue cases (SD) with AST > 1000 U/L according to the 2009 WHO severity classification (Fig.  1 ). The median (IQR) age was 24 (18–34), and the median (IQR) duration of fever was 5 (5–6) days.

At discharge, there were 2 (2.3%) cases with shock (DS), 10 cases without shock but with AST > 1000 U/L (11.5%, included 2 progressing cases), 35 cases of dengue with warning signs (DWS) (40.2%, includes 6 progressing cases) and 40 cases (46%) dengue (D).

The median (IQR) of variables of the study population were described as ALT 91 (34–290) U/L, GLDH 4.01 (2.83–5.42) U/L, αGST 10.19 (6.92–14.56) ng/mL, ARG-1 101.18 (70.43-181.75) ng/mL, PON-1 9.99 (6.77–13.76) U/L and HPPD 827.05 (600.28-1056.53) ng/mL.

Characteristics and value of biomarkers of three AST groups

The group of moderate AST (80–400 U/L) was older than the others (median age was 32 vs. 22 and 23) ( p  = 0.01). BMI differences existed among the high, moderate, and low groups of AST ( p  = 0.03) with higher BMI in the moderate and high AST groups than in the low AST group. The group of high AST (> 400 U/L) had also higher ALT, GLDH, ARG-1, and HPPD than the other groups while the high (> 400 U/L) and moderated (80–400 U/L) AST group had higher ALT, αGST, ARG-1, and HPPD than the low AST group (< 80 U/L). The values of PON were not different between the three groups (Table  1 ).

Our co-efficient correlation analysis revealed significant correlations among GLDH with αGST ( p  = 0.002), ARG-1 ( p  = 0.01), and HPPD ( p  < 0.001); among αGST with ARG-1 ( p  = 0.001), HPPD ( p  < 0.001) and minimal platelets count ( p  = 0.003) and among ARG-1 with HPPD ( p  < 0.001). We also found a correlation between PON-1 and liver span. Moreover, there were significant correlations among AST and each of ALT ( p  < 0.001), GLDH ( p  = 0.003), αGST ( p  < 0.001), ARG-1 ( p  < 0.001), HPPD ( p  < 0.001), minimal platelets count ( p  < 0.001), and liver span ( p  = 0.047) while ALT was also significantly correlated with GLDH ( p  = 0.009), αGST ( p  < 0.001), ARG-1 ( p  < 0.001), HPPD ( p  < 0.001), and minimal platelets count ( p  < 0.001), but not with liver span (Fig.  2 ).

A Correlation matrix of different liver enzymes with each other and with the liver span, as well as minimal platelets, count. Abbreviations; AST = Aspartate transaminase, ALT = Alanine transaminase, HPPD = 4-Hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase, PON-1 = Paraoxonase-1, GLDH = Glutamate Dehydrogenase, ARG-1 = Arginase-1, αGST = Glutathione S Transferase-α. Correlation findings by Spearman-rank test. Significant correlations are in bold. Patients’ number = 87 for all variables

In our study, we found that the group with AST > 400 U/L had higher ALT, GLDH, αGST, ARG-1, and HPPD. Interestingly, our findings suggest that dengue-induced liver damage is initiated predominantly in the centrilobular area toward the portal area during the dengue progression. This progression is against the direction of blood supply which follows from portal veins and hepatic arteries draining in central veins, at centrilobular zones.

Additionally, despite a remarkably uniform anatomical structure consisting of hexagon-shaped lobules, liver parenchyma is heterogeneous in terms of cell types and functional origination. Key liver metabolic enzymes are expressed differently within different (periportal, midzonal, or centrilobular) zones on the long porto-central axis of the hepatic lobules, a phenomenon termed metabolic zonation [ 22 , 29 , 30 ]. ARG-1 and HPPD are associated with severe dengue, which can be attributed to the predominant of these enzymes in the periportal zones of the hepatic lobules [ 31 ]. Also, ALT and AST have a pan-lobular distribution but more predominantly in periportal areas [ 22 , 23 ]. Subsequently, periportal zones are more affected in severe cases. However, a specific periportal enzyme (like ARG-1, HPPD) may better prognose the severity of liver injury than other enzymes that show less prominence in the periportal area compared to the centrilobular area, like AST and ALT.

The exact etiology of this direction in liver injury progression is still unknown but it can be attributed to many factors. It can be suggested that this track and sequence of liver damage is due to the dependence of the centrilobular area on the hepatic veins with lower oxygen gradient, unlike the periportal area on the hepatic arteries [ 29 ], making centrilobular areas more liable for injury and damage which suggest, in part, a hypoxemic injury. Subsequently, dengue infection can affect the vascular supply to the liver with vascular leakage and endothelial damage [ 32 ]. This may lead to increased oxygen free radicals and mediators which finally cause tissue damage [ 33 ].

Furthermore, the centrilobular zone of the liver is considered a vulnerable zone in many cases such as hypoxia, toxins, metabolic disorders, drugs, and inflammatory conditions. This is due to the low oxygen concentration and enzymes as described. The centrilobular zone is assumed to be the first affected zone in viral hepatitis and autoimmune hepatitis [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Also, the centrilobular zone has a higher activity of Kupffer cells than the periportal zone, although it is more numerous in the periportal zone [ 22 ]. Notably, the Kupffer cell is one of the main target cells in dengue infection, which may explain the liability of damage in the centrilobular zone in dengue [ 32 ].

Indeed, Kuo et al. suggest that dengue may cause a hepatic injury and transaminase rise akin to that in patients with conventional viral hepatitis [ 38 ]. Further, Chen et al. revealed a strong correlation between hepatic cellular infiltration and T-cell activation in immunocompetent mice infected with dengue. Moreover, they also found that the kinetics of hepatic enzyme elevation correlated with that of T-cell activation and suggested a relationship between the elevation of liver enzymes and T-cell infiltration [ 39 ].

Similarly, biopsy specimens from dead DSS patients reveal various forms of liver injury with hepatocellular necrosis, Kupffer cell (KC) hyperplasia and destruction, microvesicular steatosis, and a pauci-cellular inflammatory infiltrate being the most common histological features [ 6 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ]. Hepatocellular necrosis varies from mild focal necrosis with Councilman bodies to severe submassive and massive necrosis affecting all zones of the hepatic lobules. Interestingly, in dengue cases with mild liver injury, lesions are mainly observed at mid-zonal and centrilobular areas [ 42 , 43 , 46 ].

Moreover, dengue virus was often isolated from Kupffer cells, endothelial cells, and hepatocytes at injured sites [ 41 , 47 , 48 , 49 ], suggesting a direct effect of dengue virus-induced hepatocellular necrosis. Also, Seneviratnea et al. show that the dengue virus is capable of replicating in hepatocytes and KC and dysregulated host immune responses may have a significant causative role in the LD. In contrast to the plasma ALT, GLDH had a 10-fold greater magnitude and persisted longer. Moreover, serum GLDH is more liver-specific than transaminases and is not substantially affected by skeletal muscle damage [ 50 , 51 ].

The HPPD was a more sensitive and specific biomarker of LD than AST and revealed a close correlation with the histological assessment of LD [ 52 ]. Similarly, αGST was found in a high concentration in centrilobular cells and hence is more sensitive to LD in this liver metabolic zone [ 51 ]. In addition, the fold increase of αGST is more than serum transaminases but less than GLDH [ 53 ]. Akin to ALT, the activity of GLDH rises with the LD severity [ 50 , 54 ]. Larger ranges of some GLDH and HPPD should be considered in observation studies and differentiate the severity of LD.

Ashamiss et al. suggested ARG-1 as a highly liver-specific biomarker with a higher specificity compared to other liver enzymes [ 55 ]. Our previous systematic review and meta-analysis disclosed an association between thrombocytopenia and dengue severity [ 19 ], following the WHO recommendation of using low platelets count as a warning sign in dengue [ 3 ].

This study had three limitations. Firstly, the reversal correlation between minimum platelet count and AST, ALT, αGST, and HPPD may be due to the independent associations of both platelet count and liver enzymes with disease severity, by various systemic mechanisms [ 6 , 56 , 57 , 58 ]. However, platelets may play important local specific effects on liver injury. Platelets recruited to the liver, on the one hand, increased platelet destruction. On the other hand, they can form clots and extravasated platelet aggregation leading to hepatic microcirculatory dysfunction and worsening hepatic hypoperfusion. Moreover, activated platelets can exaggerate hepatocellular necrosis by releasing mediators such as serotonin or by promoting the accumulation of other inflammatory cells in the liver, including T-lymphocytes [ 59 , 60 ]. Secondly, sampling methods may not be ideal since blood samples were taken at a single timepoint from day 4 to 6, while different liver enzymes have different peaks after injury. The sample size of this study may limit the generalizability of our findings. Moreover, this study may pose some concerns about information bias because some patients were more closely monitored in the ICU. Hence, adverse events were more likely to be readily spotted. However, this study followed the same methodology of previous projects that aimed at investigating similar exposures and outcomes [ 5 , 61 , 62 ]. Thirdly, there might be cross-reactivities among IgM in dengue and other flavivirus infections that potentially affect the accuracy of dengue classification [ 63 ]. However, we did not merely rely on IgM, but also other clinical and sub-clinical criteria for the diagnosis. Due to the above limitations, all studies conducted to date, including ours, should not be used for outcome prediction. Subsequently, it is not in our capacity to draw firm conclusions about the predictability of our findings.

Conclusions

By studying 87 dengue cases, we found a significant correlation between AST, ALT, and the new liver biomarkers, including GLDH, αGST, ARG-1, and HPPD. Our findings suggest a possible progression of dengue-induced liver damage starting in the centrilobular area (where GLDH and αGST are predominantly found) and moving towards the periportal area (where HPPD and ARG-1 are primarily located) during the disease. Moreover, HPPD, ARG-1, GLDH, and αGST could potentially serve as good markers of dengue severity. However, further validation with larger studies and the development of predictive models incorporating these novel biomarkers is crucial for healthcare providers, enabling them to predict patient outcomes and make informed decisions in dengue management.

Data availability

The data used in this manuscript can be provided upon request from the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

Glutathione S Transferase-α

Alanine Aminotransferase Enzyme

Aspartate Aminotransferase Enzyme

Dengue without warning signs

Dengue with Warning Signs

Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid

Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay

Glutamate Dehydrogenase

4-Hydroxyphenylpyruvate Dioxygenase

Intensive Care Unit

Kuffer Cell

• Liver Damage

Lot Quality Assurance Sampling

Non-Structural protein 1

Paraoxonase-1

Severe Dengue

World Health Organization

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Abdelrahman Tarek Mohammed, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt (Email: [email protected]), for his early contribution to the writing of an earlier version of this study.

This work was supported in part by a “Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)” (16H05844, 2016–2019 for Nguyen Tien Huy) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan and by the Japan Initiative for Global Research Network on Infectious Diseases (J-GRID) for Kenji Hirayama. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, publication decision, or manuscript preparation. The open access fees are covered by the Egyptian Knowledge Bank for Dr. Abdelrahman M Makram.

Author information

Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Nguyen Phuong Hai and Chau Van Khanh contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Infectious Diseases, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Nguyen Phuong Hai & Pham Thi Le Hoa

Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Nguyen Thi Cam Huong, Nguyen Phuong Hai, Nguyen Van Vinh Chau, Nguyen Thanh Vinh & Pham Thi Le Hoa

School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, 1-12-4 Sakamoto, Nagasaki, 852-8523, Japan

Chau Van Khanh, Kenji Hirayama & Nguyen Tien Huy

Online Research Club (http://www.onlineresearchclub.org), Nagasaki, Japan

Chau Van Khanh, Mohamed Gomaa Kamel, Randa Elsheikh, Abdelrahman M Makram, Aya Elsheikh, Hiep Nguyen Canh & Nguyen Tien Huy

Institute of Malariology, Parasitology, and Entomology Quy Nhon, Quy Nhon, Vietnam

Chau Van Khanh

Ipswich Hospital, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Colchester, UK

Mohamed Gomaa Kamel

Deanery of Biomedical Sciences, Edinburgh Medical School, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Randa Elsheikh

Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, October 6 University, Giza, Egypt

Abdelrahman M Makram

Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura Manchester University, Mansoura, Egypt

Aya Elsheikh

Department of Human Pathology, Kanazawa University Graduate School of Medicine, Kanazawa, Japan

Hiep Nguyen Canh

Center of Pathology and Cytopathology, Bach Mai Hospital, Hanoi, Vietnam

Department of Medicine, King Edward Medical University, Lahore, Pakistan

Somia Iqtadar

Institute of Research and Development, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, Vietnam

Nguyen Tien Huy

School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Duy Tan University, Da Nang, Vietnam

Department of Infectious Diseases, Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Nguyen Phuong Hai

Tan Phu Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Nguyen Thanh Truong

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Contributions

N.T.C.H., P.T.L.H., N.V.V.C., and N.T.H. were responsible for the idea and study design. N.T.C.H., P.T.L.H., N.P.H., N.T.T., N.T.V., and N.V.V.C. collected the data and performed the experiments. N.T.C.H., P.T.L.H., M.G.K., A.M.M., C.V.K., K.H., and N.T.H. analyzed the data and interpreted it. N.T.C.H., P.T.L.H., C.V.K., M.G.K., A.M.M., R.E., A.E., K.H., and N.T.H. wrote the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Abdelrahman M Makram , Pham Thi Le Hoa or Nguyen Tien Huy .

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The study was approved by the institutional review board of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases of Ho Chi Minh City (ID: 1104/QD-BVND). All procedures performed in this study followed the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Huong, N.T.C., Hai, N.P., Van Khanh, C. et al. New biomarkers for liver involvement by dengue infection in adult Vietnamese patients: a case-control study. BMC Infect Dis 24 , 800 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-024-09527-2

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Received : 17 February 2024

Accepted : 17 June 2024

Published : 08 August 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-024-09527-2

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• 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, customer involvement in new product development: a relationship marketing perspective.

European Journal of Innovation Management

ISSN : 1460-1060

Article publication date: 1 December 2005

The purpose of the paper is to create an increased understanding of new product development processes concerning customer involvement. A relationship marketing perspective has provided the theoretical basis, allowing a new perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative, multiple case study, based on in‐depth interviews in three small companies and three large, multinational enterprises has been carried out.

The findings indicate the value of cross‐functional teams and customer involvement. The use of formal methods for customer involvement, however, is found to be limited. Some creative ways of using cross‐functional teams in small companies are described.

Research limitations/implications

A framework for customer involvement in new product development, based on the levels of relationships, is proposed. This framework conceptualises the customer‐involvement options identified in earlier research, based on the levels of relationship as defined in relationship marketing theory.

Practical implications

The framework gives directions how product development in various levels of relations could be handled. The paper also gives examples of how to organise cross‐functional teams.

Originality/value

The framework developed in the paper is useful for the theoretical conceptualisation of the area. In addition, it provides a structured base for future studies.

• Product development
• Customer satisfaction
• Relationship marketing
• Team working

Lagrosen, S. (2005), "Customer involvement in new product development: A relationship marketing perspective", European Journal of Innovation Management , Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 424-436. https://doi.org/10.1108/14601060510627803

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2005, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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