Exploiting B&O’s innovative resources - Analysing the opportunities on Facebook

Mads Alexander Enghoff, 091286-1627 Martin Knudsen, 131086-1967 Rune Sørensen, 040185-1763

A203, Social network and marketing relations – CBS, fall 2011 Niels Kornum – STU: 29.493

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Table of content Introduction .............................................................................................................................. p. 2

Case: B&O and social media .................................................................................................. p. 2

Theory ...................................................................................................................................... p. 3

Research question .......................................................................................................... p. 4

Structure .................................................................................................................................. p. 5

Survey finding ......................................................................................................................... p. 5

Netnography ............................................................................................................................. p. 8

Discussion and recommendation .............................................................................................. p. 14

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ p. 16

List of references ...................................................................................................................... p. 17

Appendix 1 – mail requesting users to participate in survey ................................................... p. 18

Appendix 2 – overview of survey results ................................................................................. p. 19

Appendix 3 – Paradox matrix ................................................................................................... p. 22

Appendix 4 – full survey findings ............................................................................................ p. 23

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Introduction

Whether or not a business is on Facebook, the customers are. This is a fact that can be ignored,

but doing so is a possible risk for any company and it’s products. Social media such as Facebook

is an important communication platform for most people, and if a company does not give its

customers a forum for to talk about the brand, they will just find their own. This can prove to be a

major challenge for any company, since it will not be in charge of or have a say in the debate

forum, and thereby the company cannot respond if online criticism should occur. Furthermore the

company might miss out on great business opportunities and the possibility to follow and adapt.

Facebook is by now a known media, but the use of it is not. Many companies are present on

Facebook without any real strategy; only 33% of companies using Facebook are following a

direct strategy and plan (kalypso.com, 2011). Though many companies use Facebook, very few

have cracked the code for how to utilize social media on order to benefit the company. As a result

of this, customer-driven innovation, one of the most ideal uses of social media, is rarely

practised, since most companies neglect the fact that Facebook and other social media posses a

unique possibility to extract product ideas and innovation from the often big amount of fans and

followers.

In this paper we will look into how Bang & Olufsen is using Facebook as a media. This is done

with special focus on how the company can benefit from its many Facebook fans in regards to

innovation, which we will argue is one of the company’s major challenges.

Case: B&O on Facebook The Danish electronic company Bang & Olufsen (B&O) was founded in 1925 and quickly

became recognised internationally, especially when they launched a radio that worked on

alternating current without batteries. B&O has been focusing on design from the beginning and

the company’s products are often of different and distinctive design when compared to

mainstream rivals. This strategy positioned the B&O brand as high class, quality minded and

somewhat expensive, and it have experienced high popularity worldwide resulting in company

followers who are often very loyal and committed to the brand.

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For a long time B&O was one of the leading companies within its product category and the

company’s design and product innovation resulted in several awards. This, however, has changed

over the last decade and now B&O is a long way from former glory. Instead the company has

been facing decreasing revenue for a long time as Sony and Samsung among others have invaded

their former niche of clean and timeless design on consumer electronics (comon.dk, 2004). After

several unsuccessful product launches and a general change in buying mentality from the

customers due to the financial recession, B&O announced in 2008 that the company would go

back to focus on it’s core competences: high quality audio and video products as well as sound

systems for the automotive industry. This might be the first step to recover the brand, but B&O

still faces significant challenges to renew the brand image and the company in general.

One of the most significant problems for the company is their timing and innovation, which not

at all correlates with their vision: “courage to constantly question the ordinary in search of

surprising, long-lasting experiences” (bang-olufsen.com, 2011). B&O is currently following a

strategy, which doesn’t fit their market position, since they act with a hesitant attitude toward

new products like a market leader, instead of promoting at the front as a niche player, a position

the company must accept. The high product prices, which in the past reflected the high quality

and design, is now a hindrance for many customers, since the technological development has

exploded over the last decade and thereby brought down prices dramatically. B&O is left

providing their customers high quality products at prices many times higher than their

competitors, and the technological innovation is lacking crucially for the company. Thereby the

company must turn to innovation and preferable in combination with their loyal customers, a

challenge where social media including Facebook is a perfect tool for the company. The official

B&O fan page already has more than 52.000 fans, but the company does not use these actively in

any way.

Theory The three interesting forms of online communities, seen from a company’s point of view; CSR-,

brand- and innovation communities (Kornum, 2007) is an interesting point of departure in

regards to B&O. For B&O we do not see any particular need for stressing corporate social

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responsibility and therefore do not focus on CSR in this project. Next is the brand community; it

is no secret that B&O has a declining brand value even though they still have a loyal customer

base. The company enjoys high brand value in the minds of the consumer, but might slowly be

regarded more and more as an old-person product, why brand communities could be interesting

to study. Related to the old-person brand we see the lack of innovation or at least value-

innovation as a major flaw in B&O’s business model, which could help the brand image as well.

The theory of innovation community will be in focus in this project, which we think could help

improve the brand as well, though we won’t look further into branding.

One essential element of making user-driven innovation is getting the users to participate. This is

one of the main concerns in most online communities as Niels Kornum underlines: “3.4% of the

members make 80% of the postings” (Kornum, 2007:14). Another just as important part is to

properly use all the information received from the customers, which currently seems to be miles

away from how B&O is thinking business and innovation today. Getting the users to participate

in this idea generation will be the focus of this paper. In this paper we will only focus on the

participation part of this problem, by analysing a few of the most relevant bullet points found in

the earlier mentioned article by Niels Kornum. Moreover we will only focus on motivation

concerning the experienced users, as these might have the greatest interest and the most insight in

B&O. In regards to these thoughts we have chosen to look into the firm recognition, feedback

and unsatisfied product needs in order to establish long-term value enhancement and innovation

intelligence for B&O. This leads us to the following research question.

Research question

Which elements of the motivation motives should B&O focus on to get their Facebook fans to

participate in creating user-driven innovation and value-creation on the company’s Facebook

page?

! How is B&O giving recognition to their users, and how do the customers perceive this?

! How is B&O giving feedback to their users, and how do the customers perceive this?

! How is B&O responding to unsatisfied product needs from users, and in what way do the

company involve the customers regarding this?

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Structure For investigating how to get B&O’s Facebook fans to participate in the debates concerning

product development, we have chosen to make use of both a survey and netnography. The

structural question is then whether to analyse the survey or netnography first. The idea for

working with the netnography first would be that we could use the survey to underline our

findings in the netnography. Though this could be useful, we think it’s better to do it the other

way around and analyse the survey first. In this way the survey can tell us which of the

motivational factors that are of most importance to the users, and which of these factors the

costumers think are not so important, so that we can focus our netnographical analysis to the

most relevant factors. This is important as we are dealing with motivation, which has much more

to do with how the costumer perceives the situation, and not how the situation is seen from

outside. Moreover we are only studying motivational factors concerning the experienced

members and by analysing the survey first, we will have a better chance to separate the

experienced and novice users’ perception of B&O from each other, to tell which answers are

most relevant to this project. Our findings will lead us to conclude which elements of the

motivational factors that should be emphasized by B&O, and if any of our findings in the

netnography are contradicting the responds from our survey. Finally, in the recommendations, we

will give more practical suggestions to guidelines for B&O in dealing with this problem.

Survey findings We created an online survey and invited fans from the B&O page to participate (the invitation

can be seen on appendix 1). We got 50 responses, but we decided to focus only on the people we

categorize as experienced users. Though we know that this sample might not be 100% exact, we

see this selection as covering the most relevant customer base. For getting the revised sample we

have cut out all the responses from respondents with less than three B&O products and

respondents visiting the site less than once a month. After doing this we ended up with 22 users

whom will be the basis of our analysis (the complete data set can be found in appendix 2 and 4).

The first question shows that 78% of the respondents have three or more B&O products, which

confirms that B&O’s Facebook fans are not only showing interest online, but are also actual

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offline users. We have specifically chosen people who are active and not just fans of the B&O

page, and we must therefore assume that the general trend for the fans is that they have less

products in average compared to our sample. We see, in question two, that 40% of our sample

only uses the page less than once a month. The result is a surprise to us, since we had expected

our very specific selection of respondents to be heavy users. This might be due to the lack of

activity or a poorly administered page. Moreover we found that only 3 out of 50 respondents did

not own a B&O product, which means that only 6% of the active users are non-customers.

From our third question we found that more than ! of our respondents thought that B&O did a

really bad job responding to posts, comments and ideas. This is very interesting, as social media

is all about dialogue. If we look at question three and four combined, we see very clearly, that

B&O is ignoring important aspects in regards to their experienced users, namely that the users

think corporate feedback is important, and there is a major lack of such from B&O’s side. This

could indicate that B&O, just like many other companies, only is present on Facebook because

everyone else is. The company is not paying attention to the needs of the specific media and are

ignoring the opportunities.

The feedback the consumers are asking for seems to be very different. Almost half of the

respondents would like short answers or “likes” and the other half wants longer answers. We

assume that those respondents who like short answers and “likes” are looking for firm

recognition, as this is what you can obtain with the likes from a posters point of view. Users who

are posting because they have some unsatisfied product needs want longer and more thorough

answers instead, on whether or not this is an option for B&O. The latter mentioned group must

also be assumed to count for those who would like feedback in the future if or when their product

ideas are being released.

Question six shows that only 14% are using B&O’s Facebook page for discussing unsatisfied

products needs at the moment, but question seven shows that 42% could imaging themself

discussing unsatisfied product needs. This could indicate that the respondents do not believe that

B&O is taking them seriously or gives them decent feedback, and therefore they do not bother to

discuss this topic at a place like Facebook, as there is no benefit in it for themself. This

assessment is reinforced by the answers in question ten, where 74% of the respondents answer

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that they do not feel that B&O is taking their comments and ideas seriously. In relation to these

findings we see from question eight that 66% of the experienced users would share their product

ideas with B&O, if they could just get some relevant feedback and additional 16% would if they

were economically compensated for their effort. It is very interesting to see that ! of the

company’s most relevant users, in our opinion, would share their ideas for free if B&O would

show some interest in them. With very little effort B&O could get valuable customer-insights,

which could be used to come up with new innovative products related to customers’ experiences

and needs.

Looking at the general perception and assessments of B&O in the media, it becomes clear that

B&O can’t afford to miss out on such valuable product ideas. An article from business.dk1 shows

that B&O is ranking lower than previously in the survey conducted by ‘IFO - Instituttet for

Opinionsanalyse’, ‘GCI Mannov’ and ‘Berlingske Nyhedsmagasin’. B&O used to have

innovation as one of their unique selling points, but within the last couple of years B&O has lost

market shares to competitors like Apple, Sony and Samsung, who are working more innovatively

with their products. The need for involving new young brains in the product innovation process is

no news for B&O, as they have previously been really good at doing this, for instance by hosting

a product innovation summer camp (elektronikbranchen.dk, 2011). The 40 participants in

Innovation Camp 2010 were carefully selected from universities in Poland, England, Portugal,

the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and from the Engineering College of Aarhus. The summer

camp ended up with B&O taking out a patent on one of the products idea, which was created on

the camp (iha.dk, 2010).

Question nine tells us that the experienced members of B&O’s Facebook page are almost split

50/50 when asked if they feel like being a part of the B&O society by being active on the

Facebook page. This is a high percentage that feels as being a part of the society, when taking

into consideration that the same people do not feel that they are being taken seriously by B&O.

This indicates that it is the connection to the other users, which gives the users the feeling of

being part of the society. This could lead us to believe that these users are more identity based

than bond based to B&O’s Facebook page (Ren et al., 2007), as the feeling of being part of a 1 http://www.business.dk/bny/innovation-bo-bag-af-dansen

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society reflects a common identity with the others in the society. This could be relevant in

regards to how to manage, interact and build the site.

In order to answer the last part of our research question on whether or not recognition is

important for the users, we chose to formulate the question in regards to other users of the forum,

as many people will not admit to their own need to get recognition. By asking “do you think

others would appreciated recognition?” we hoped that we would get a more accurate view of how

important recognition are to the respondents, since it is always easier to project your own need

for recognition onto others. Question eleven show that 58% of the respondents believe that

recognition would be appreciated, if you have posted a new product idea on B&O’s Facebook

page. We had expected this to be much closer to 100%, as we think most people fell good when

being appreciated for their effort, especially when it is done for free. We must admit, that maybe

this mentality is not present on Facebook, or maybe the users of B&O’s page has just been used

to a lack of recognition for so long, that they don’t even care about it anymore. Another

explanation is that when you as a user have to explain to yourself why you see others keep

posting ideas without getting any recognition from B&O, you expect that those people do not

need recognition at all. Of course there is also the straightforward explanation that this might not

be as big a deal as we expect on this Facebook page.

Netnography We have chosen to use netnography in order to analyse how B&O’s Facebook page is working.

Netnography will give us a window to the cultural realities of consumer groups, and will provide

us with bottom-up information regarding symbolism, meanings, consumption patterns and

statements about how satisfied the consumers are with B&O’s administration of the company and

Facebook page. We also hope that this tool we give us a better understanding of the consumers

and the way they communicate with each other in order to conclude, what the consumers are

missing on the Facebook page. We are aware of the fact that netnography can be very time

consuming while monitoring the community in order to becoming familiar with the users. It can

be hard to assess whether some statements are relevant or irrelevant data, since consumers on

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online communities often uses slang and culture codes, which sometimes only makes sense to

hard-core users of the communities.

With this in mind, we have used netnography in the following section, in order to analyse these

follow issues as best possible:

! Firm recognition

! Feedback in the future

! Unsatisfied product related need

B&O has a lot of loyal fans on the Facebook page (almost 50.000), but it is remarkable that

almost 100% of the post done at the site is by B&O them self. The page looks like a one-way

promotion platform for B&O products, and that is by far the most common use of Facebook and

will certainly not support innovation. The reason for this kind of ‘follow-only’ behaviour from

the fans could be due to the lack of feedback from the company on posts, which have resulted in

a total neglecting of fan-posts. It can also be due to the fact that B&O is very strict in the

administration of the page, which we experienced when conducting the survey, even though the

visible involvement level is very low. We posted a message in a gentle tone asking people to fill

out the survey, but within less than an hour the post was removed.

Furthermore the site does not support any fan-activities, only in the debate forum, the rest of the

site is build to promote B&O products and nothing more. In the debate forum the post are also

neglected by B&O, and here it is only customers who runs the dialogue, again B&O misses out

on a obvious opportunity for customer insights by being passive and not engage in the dialogue.

This part of the site is probably where most fans feel like they are a part of a society – a B&O

society – but a society run by fans and not supported by the company.

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The only activity relating to B&O on the debate site is from local suppliers, who help unsatisfied

customers with their problems. An example of this is Andrew Widger, who tries to help some

unfortunate customers with their broken products. A way of measuring user satisfaction on

B&O’s postings is to calculate the comment to like ratio (Lemberg, 2011). We will not use this

measurement in this project and do not think it is a useful tool to measure how good a forum is

driven in regards to user innovation. If this score is to be used in an innovation forum the

reciprocal score of the same ratio is a much better tool as a company seeks to get as many

comments and as few likes as possible.

The way the debate site is used underlines the customers’ dissatisfaction of lack of firm

recognition. Instead of using the Facebook site as a tool for dialogue and valuable customer

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feedback, which is one of the strength of social media, it seems like B&O has chosen to ignore

this opportunity and instead focus on the old fashioned product promotion (one-way

communication) strategy, which supports the fact that the brand is regarded as old.

Turning towards the main part of the Facebook page, the ‘wall’, we see the same pattern

repeated. B&O is using this part of the site to promote different products, share short videos and

talk about product benefits, all things that are very relevant for the consumers. The problem is,

that even though some of the fans comment on the different posts, they are totally ignored by the

company, and other fans must answer any questions asked here. A clear example is Rick Totty, a

loyal fan of B&O and a perfect representation of the affectionate B&O lovers, who asks for firm

recognition. It is not recognition for his innovation idea, but just recognition for being a loyal

customer through 35 years. We thought that the one like on his comment was from B&O, but it

wasn’t, it was from another fan.

It does not look like B&O is commenting or liking any of the users comments, feedback,

pictures, links or other. B&O is only posting new products, advertising videos and sharing

positive articles from the worldwide press, and that confirms the costumers’ dissatisfaction with

the company’s way of acting on the page. Below is an example of the type of posts, that B&O is

using the page for - all of which is pure promotion:

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Looking at the feedback on this post, it becomes clear that B&O is not even letting their

customers know the full potential and new features of the products - they might as well have

posted a printed ad. In the above example, the customers are approving the choice of making the

screen white, but further down in the comments users ask for other colours as well, but again we

see no feedback from B&O. A quick win for the company could be to leave a small comment like

“Thanks for your comments we take your colour wished into consideration when inventing a new

product”, but instead the customers are left with the impression of a promotional site, where the

products are in focus, and not the customers.

Another kind of comments left by the users are the one shown above. Thomas Gb is unsatisfied

with the features on B&O’s new product, a situation which on Facebook can be rewarding for

both user and the company, since they can engage in a dialogue about possible improvements for

the products. Sadly, there is no proof that B&O is reading this comment or taking this comment

serious enough, since instead of engaging in dialogue or give any form of feedback, B&O just

stays anonymous. This can lead to even more frustrated customers, since the company is now not

only providing unsatisfying products, but is also seen as ignorant to their customers wants and

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needs. Had B&O just replied that this need would be passed on to the development department

and thereby might or might not be included in future products, then both Thomas and the users

who see this comment would perceive B&O as being much more customer oriented and they

might get a more positive attitude towards the company. This comment is far from he only

appearance of its kind as is seen in the following post.

Here is some very good feedback from B&O users and even from a former B&O salesperson. Ira

is posting what seems to be a popular product improvement for B&O, and is getting recognition

from 2 likes and a comment from Paul Winn who agree. The third comment shown is also

positive towards the new product and colours and shows a direct buying wish from a customer,

which is what every company aims at. The problem here is that the product is not available for

purchase online, a way of shopping that is used by many customers, but again B&O does not feel

the need to answer this criticism. In this case B&O is loosing an actual customer by following

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what seems to be a no-response strategy. A simple explanation to why this product could not be

bought online could possibly satisfy Thomas, and make him buy the product in the nearest store

instead.

Sometimes the customers only need a simple reply or a small amount of recognition to change

their attitude or buying behaviour, and we do not see that B&O can ignore their customers in the

way they do, especially not when the interaction is on Facebook. It seems that the company is

ignoring the ‘social’ aspect of the media, and simply uses it as yet another promotional tool.

Discussion and recommendations Our findings in the survey and the netnography are very similar in all aspects. Activity level is

low from B&O’s side concerning responding to users, and our netnography study also showed

that B&O is controlling the site very strictly. In regards to the Paradox matrix by Hargadon (see

appendix 3) we see that a high level of company interaction has a positive effect on incremental

innovation. We assume, though, that what B&O needs is radical innovations, as this has earlier

been one of their core competencies and incremental innovations are comparable much easier to

spot yourself as a company. Also with the brand image and competition that B&O is facing in the

market, incremental innovation will only have a small effect for the company. Therefore we

believe that B&O has to control their Facebook page much more loosely as this will lead to more

radical innovations in regards to the Paradox matrix. We believe, that the company should use

it’s on responding to users questions and comments and engaging with them in the community,

instead of controlling the page very strictly and ignoring the users. We wanted to compare

B&O’s Facebook page to pages from competitors such as Bowers & Wilkens, Sonon, Loewe, Hi-

Fi Klubben, Sony or Samsung to see how these companies are involved in their pages in regards

to innovation and motivating the users. Unfortunately, after looking at different pages and trying

to draw parallels, we had to admit that this was too specific for us to conclude anything useful

from. Moreover, the sites differ significantly in activity level, fan base and applications.

There is no doubt that B&O is not using the full potential of their Facebook page. There is much

improvement to be done in relation to the three main focus points of this paper - unsatisfied

customer needs, firm recognition and feedback - and in doing so B&O has the opportunity to tap

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into a vast amount of valuable customer insights and value-creation innovation. An opportunity

for B&O to approach the users’ unsatisfied product needs could be to involve them in a

competition of some sort. Looking at the experiences from Innovation Camp 2010 it is clear, that

there is potential for idea-generation in a focused forum and providing the huge amount of

Facebook fans with the chance to win an attractive price could create such focus. There is no

doubt that many of the ideas wont work or do not fit the company, but if just a single great idea

comes up once in a while, it is still a cheap and easy way to get a new idea or design.

To improve on firm recognition and feedback B&O must become much more active on the site.

The company has to face the fact, that the site is of little value when overlooking the interaction

with the user and therefore the focus has to be much more customer-oriented instead of only

product-oriented. Asking the users give them a feeling of being taken seriously by the company

and this can enhance the feeling of being part of a society, which in turn might make the users

more willing and comfortable with sharing thoughts and ideas. By interacting with the fans and

give them feedback, B&O can create a more personal face for the company, so that customers

feel they are a part of the company instead of only following it. To succeed in this, B&O must

constantly stay updated with the activity on the Facebook page and they must be allocated the

necessary resources. In return the users might change both their own attitude towards the

company, but can also become brand ambassadors.

Giving firm recognition, much like feedback, is a simple way to keep your Facebook fans happy.

If B&O became more active on the page and gave necessary feedback, the users might feel more

as part of the company. Instead of only posting links to new products and production videos,

B&O could use the Facebook page to update their users about current activities and things

happening within the company. An example could be to involve the customers already in the idea

generation phase for new products and keep them updated throughout the entire process with

simple post like “The design for our new speaker-dock is now in place - next is the choice of

colour”. This could again lead to customer insights, and let the users on the Facebook page feel

special, since they will get the information first. Moreover this could also be beneficial to B&O

in the sense that they had the opportunity to change the products under development to the better

if they at that point had some feedback from the forum.

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Conclusion After having analysed B&O’s Facebook page we can conclude that they have a decent Facebook

page, a nice welcome page, many passionate users and they are doing a good job in regards to

using their Facebook page as a one-way communication platform. When it comes to using the

Facebook page as a two-way communication platform, as Facebook was indented and usually

works the best, it seems like B&O is almost completely ignoring the value that social media can

provide. The activity level for feedback and recognition is extremely low, almost non-existing,

which does not inspire customer-innovation in any way.

Our survey shows that feedback and recognition is important for the users of B&O’s Facebook

page. This fact is not reflected in the strategy, which B&O seems to has applied to the page. It is

actually doubtful whether B&O has or follows a strategy in regards to their Facebook page. If

B&O’s strategy is to be non-responding it is very doubtful that they will be able to extract any

innovative products ideas. Having this non-responding approach has also led to the fact that a lot

of the users do not feel like being a part of the B&O society. In relation to recognition and

feedback we also found that users were unwilling to post unsatisfied product needs compared to a

situation where the these factors were better implemented.

Summing up, all three factors have to be more in focus as none on them live up to the standards,

which the consumer needs to interact in an optimal way for B&O. As feedback improves, firm

recognition will improve as well and through improving these factors consumers will be willing

to post their unsatisfied product needs among other postings. This doesn’t mean that feedback is

the only thing to focus on, but probably the most important, recognition the second most

important and responding to unsatisfied product needs the least important element to improve

consumer participation in the forum.

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List of references Articles:

Kornum, Niels (2009): “Three types of online communities”, CBS.

Ren, Yuqing, Robert Kraut and Sara Kiesler (2007): “Applying Common Identity and Bond

Theory to Design of Online Communities”, Organization Studies 28(03): 377-408.

Websites:

kalypso.com (2011):

http://www.youtube.com/user/KalypsoLP and https://www.kalypso.com/spike

comon.dk (2004):

http://www.comon.dk/art/147984/b-amp-o-i-boersfremgang-trods-faldende-overskud

bang-olufsen.com, 2011:

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/page.asp?id=600

elektronikbranchen.dk (2011):

http://elektronikbranchen.dk/nyhed/studerende-skal-udvikle-morgendagens-bo-produkter-til-unge

iha.dk (2010):

http://www.iha.dk/Default.aspx?ID=5573&PID=9744&NewsID=611

Course slides:

SM50 Culture, network & communities: “community innovation”, 2010, CBS (slide 37)

Presentation by Facebook analytic Mikael Lemberg, Komfo on experiences from different firms

and cases to use Facebook for creating relations with users, CBS, 12-09-2011.

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Appendix 1

Mail to members of B&O’s Facebook fan page asking them to participate in our survey.

Dear XX

We are 3 students at Copenhagen Business School who at the moment are working on an

assignment about B&O and the use of their Facebook Page. We can see that you have been active

at the site, and therefore we hope that you will use a few moments to answer our questionnaire

regarding the Facebook page?

Thank you very much.

The same request was posted on the wall of B&O’s Facebook page.

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Appendix 2 Results of our survey from Kwik online survey www.kwiksurveys.com.

Numbers in parentheses are the percentage including all 50 respondents.

Question 1

How many B&O products have you owned or own at the moment?

0 " (6%) 0%

1-2 " (16%) 0%

3-5 " (54% ) 69 %

6 or more " (24% ) 31 %

Question 2

How often do you visit B&O's Facebook page?

Every day " (6%) 10%

2-3 times a week " (12%) 20%

Once a week " (20%) 33%

2-3 times a month " (6%) 10%

Once a month " (16%) 27%

Less " (40%) 0%

Question 3

How good do you think B&O is at giving feedback on your's and other's posts, ideas and

comments?

Horrible " 68 %

Acceptable " 28%

Perfect " 4%

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Question 4

Do you think it is important to get feedback from B&O on your ideas and comments?

Yes " 88%

No " 12%

Question 5

How would you prefer your feedback from B&O?

No feedback " 2%

Likes or short answers " 44 %

Detailed (long answer) "54 %

Question 6

Why are you using B&O´s Facebook page? (several answers allowed)

Because I am passionate about B&O's products " 58%

Because I am unsatisfied with the current products (and want to help B&O to innovate their

products " 14%

Because I like want to entertained and be updated about B&O's new products " 58%

Other reasons " 20%

Question 7

Could you imagine yourself using B&O's facebook page for any of the following? (Several

answers allowed)

Give comments and feedback on products " 88%

Discuss your's and other's unsatisfied product needs " 42%

Engage with B&O to influence future product innovation " 22%

Participating in long term collaboration " 8%

21

Question 8

If you knew that you would get relevant feedback, would you then share your product ideas on

B&O's Facebook page?

Yes " 66%

No " 18%

Yes, (but only if i got economic compensation) " 16%

Question 9

Do you feel like being a part of a B&O 'society' by being active on the page?

Yes " 48%

No " 52%

Question 10

Do you think that B&O is taking you and your comments/ideas seriously on Facebook?

Yes always " 8%

Sometimes " 18%

No never " 74%

Question 11

Do you think others would appreciate recognition from B&O when posting a new product

idea?

Yes " 58%

No " 20%

I don’t know " 22%

22

Appendix 3 The Paradox matrix.