Abstract
Newly launched products in the consumer goods and services markets show high failure
rates. In order to reduce the failure rates, companies can integrate innovative and knowledgeable
customers, the so called ‘lead users’, into the new product development process. However, the
detection of such lead users is difficult, especially in consumer product markets with very large
customer bases. A new and potentially valuable approach towards the identification of lead users
involves the use of Virtual Stock Markets, which have been proposed and applied for political
and business forecasting, but not for the identification of experts such as lead users.
The basic concept of Virtual Stock Markets is bringing a group of participants together
via the Internet and allowing them to trade shares of virtual stocks. These stocks represent a bet
on the outcome of future market situations and their value depends on the realization of these
market situations. In this process, a Virtual Stock Market elicits and aggregates the assessments
of its participants concerning future market developments. Virtual Stock Markets might also
serve as a feasible instrument to filter out lead users, primarily for the following two reasons.
Firstly, a "self-selection effect" might occur because sophisticated consumers with a higher
involvement in the product of interest decide to participate in Virtual Stock Markets. Secondly, a
"performance effect" is likely to arise because well-performing participants in Virtual Stock
Markets show a better understanding of the market than their (already self-selected) fellow
participants. So far, only limited information exists about these two effects and their relation to
lead user characteristics.
The goal of this article is to analyze the feasibility of Virtual Stock Markets for the
identification of lead users. The results of our empirical study show that Virtual Stock Markets
can be an effective instrument to identify lead users in consumer products markets. Furthermore,
the results show that not all lead users perform well in Virtual Stock Markets. Hence, Virtual
Stock Markets allow identifying lead users with superior abilities to forecast market success.
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