Does Social Media Really Help?: From Customer Involvement to New Product Success

Abstract

This paper intends to understand whether social media helps new product success in the context of customer involvement. The authors present a debate about the opportunities and challenges of using social media in new product development NPD. Through a critical literature review, a conceptual model with a moderation effect is presented. The review is mainly derived from 286 relevant papers published in top-ranked journals between 2005 and 2014. The results suggest that while social media provides an effective and efficient method for collecting information and knowledge about customers' expectations and experiences, it does not necessarily always lead to NPD success. The study shows that hidden customer needs, an advanced evaluation tool, the huge amount of information and a firm's absorptive capacity challenge the use of social media.