Companies should encourage customers to misbehave with their products and services

In 1998, when eBay manager Simon Rothman discovered a seller trying to sell a real Ferrari in the collectable model section of the then fledging auction house, it piqued his interest.

At the time, eBay exclusively sold low ticket items and, his suspicions aroused, Rothman called the car owner to establish his bona fides.

The seller’s wife was an avid eBay fan and together they lived in a remote area of the US, where there was no local market for the second-hand sports car. Why shouldn’t he use eBay to sell what was a collectable item, the seller reasoned.

Rothman agreed and set about persuading his bosses to launch a new category of used cars with all the attendant extra functionality associated with supporting such a section on the site. It quickly exceeded all revenue expectations.

This is a classic example of customer misbehaviour, according to Michael Fisher, co-author of The Power of Customer Misbehavior – and it's a behaviour that companies should encourage, he says.

Fisher, a serial technology entrepreneur, consultant and an adjunct professor in the Design & Innovation Department at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, says research shows that "high levels of co-creation and co-production results in increased fan-out and retention".

Self-identity
Put simply, this means that when a customer finds a unique way of using a product or service, they tend to act as an ambassador for it and the effects tend to be lasting.

“We’ve discovered that a lot of this is motivated by customers’ self-identity because they want to demonstrate something about themselves.

"A good example is when Facebook customers started opening accounts for their pets. Facebook encouraged it by developing apps while its then key rival site Friendster thought these pet accounts were bogus and shut them all down," he tells The Irish Times.

Catbook and Dogbook therefore fall into this disruptive category of “co-production”, an extension of mere co-creation, which is what happens on sites such as Facebook, Fisher adds.

Usefulness and ease-of-use are long established reasons why products achieve sustained success but a third and increasingly important factor is self-identity, he argues.

For example, an innovative consumer might find a way of using a shipping container to make furniture. In doing this they may be trying to say that they are environmentally friendly or alternatively it could be an expression of creativity.

“Addressing all three factors significantly improves the chances of creating products and services that have viral growth possibilities,” he says.

Numerous stories of innovation, enthusiasm, growth and changes in company strategy can be seen when companies identify misuse and leverage it and the book is peppered with examples.

“Most successful companies in the fast growing Web 2.0 or social networking arena did exactly what eBay did – they learned quickly to actively identify new and unusual usage and then worked to enable it, to promote it and to learn to derive value from it. The less successful companies mostly ignored it or in some cases actually tried to block it,” he notes.

The web has certainly exploded the possibilities associated with misbehaviour but it has been around for many years. The fashion industry positively thrives on it – think distressed and slashed denim, for example.

Open to change
But while it's great when individuals take the initiative, allowing but how do companies encourage this type of behaviour from customers? "Companies have to be open to it. If you come up with an idea for a product or service, it's typically your baby and you want people to use it in a certain way. As soon as you invite customers to use it, it is their product as well. You have got to have a mechanism for monitoring and that's certainly easier if it's a web-based product or service.

“You have to find a way of filtering through the data to find the people who are being innovative with the product. It’s not easy but it’s very powerful when you do,” he says.

According to Fisher, among the key learning from the research the authors undertook for the book is that across multiple industries, consumers are innovating and that companies that are responding quickly to this innovation are the winners. By contrast, the companies that continue to dictate product offerings based on internal innovation are increasingly finding themselves marginalised and incapable of competing against the fast movers consumer-centric innovators.

The authors do concede that the term “customer misbehaviour” may be over-stating the case somewhat.

Helpfully, they note that the French have a word that seems more appropriate – bricolage, a term describing the unexpected usage of a product, which makes for a much more positive descriptor. Pressed on the issue by this correspondent, we also discover that the Ferrari mentioned at the outset never actually got sold on the auction site – not that it mattered in the long run to eBay.