Beside the technology: when the customer becomes a co-creator. Virtual communities and Knowledge exchanges

- In Relationship Marketing the customer is usually viewed as an active player, involved in an explicit dialogue with manufacturers of products and services through which he expresses his preferences and gives an active contribution to the shaping of the offering. He is a co-creator whose competences can be leveraged by firms. The reciprocal advantages of this dialogue have been often emphasized in literature but, actually, how many firms are really able to involve their customers, transforming them in co-creators? Which are the difficulties they have to overcome in order to reach this goal? This working paper is aimed at analyzing these themes, underlying the “dark side” of the b-2-c relationship: the hidden work which is necessary to encourage and motivate the customer to participate. Even though ICT’s like Internet made the dialogue with customers easier, enabling it in new forms and on a wider basis, customers could not be naturally proclive to the participation. Undoubtedly there are some successful case histories such as Ducati Motors, who created a company blog bringing out the competences of thousands of customers or simply lovers of the Italian motorbike whose suggestions, ideas, expectations contribute to the final result: the co-creation of a new model, called Hyper-motard. The question is: does the success of Ducati blog depend on the particular nature of the product offered - which tends to be considered a “myth” more than a product, a life-style more than a mean of transport (just like Harley Davidson) – or has it been built on the company competences? This work will try to give an answer to these questions by a reconstruction of the Ducati case history in order to disclose the strategies that the firm has adopted faced to transform its web users in active partners, the lessons learned and the competences co-opted.