Customer-focused approaches to innovation in housebuilding

Customer focus has become a catch phrase not only in the service industry but also in the housebuilding industry. Furthermore, UK speculative housebuilders have increasingly been searching for ways to be more customer focused. This study, through an analysis of the concept of customer satisfaction in the service industry, identifies three key aspects in customer focus that may be applied to the housebuilding industry: good service, customized house design on top of quality products, and good information flows between customers and the housebuilder and within the company. This paper explores how these key issues are dealt with in UK speculative housebuilding in two empirical studies to search for ways forward.Customer satisfaction, good service, good communication, customized house design,

Adopting and consuming innovations

This paper aims to improve understanding of how innovations are diffused through combining perspectives on the adoption and consumption of innovation. The literature on the adoption of innovation mainly examines issues such as technical functionalities, utility and personality factors. In contrast, research on the consumption of innovation is concerned with the context and meaning of consumer decisions and the values that underlie them. The paper is conceptual and uses Weber's categories of meaning in action to argue the value of combining the primarily 'rational' innovation adoption literature with the more 'emotive' consumption literature. By reference to the consumption of hybrid cars, we show how the innovation adoption literature can be valuably supplemented by an understanding of what consumers of innovation do, why they do it and what doing it means to them. We argue that this combination provides a more holistic understanding of how innovations diffuse and has implications for those delivering, using and researching innovation.