Zweifel - User-Initiated Crowdsourcing

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Description

Katarina Stanoevska-Slabeva:

"According to the basic definition of crowdsourcing, its main initiators are companies. However, existing online platforms which support the creation sharing and collaborative creation of user generated content in many cases provide suitable environments where users can become the initiators of crowdsourcing as well. This can be illustrated on the example of the relaunch of ‘Snacketti-Zwiebelringe’, the onion rings product of the company Zweifel in the Swiss market (see also Kowalski, 2011 and Lüscher, 2010).

In summer 2009, two Facebook users established independent of each other a group on Facebook dedicated to the request and wish to have the product Snacketti-Zwiebelringe (onion rings) back on the Swiss market. The same product was produced earlier by the company Zweifel. It was taken off the market 14 years ago because the market was not considered big enough by the company. Within 1 year of the launch of the groups, the groups were able to recruit together 12,000 ‘likers’ and contributors. The voices requesting the onion rings back on the market became louder and more demanding.

The company Zweifel at first only observed what was going on at the two groups. As the groups became more popular and were able to recruit a critical mass of users, they started to communicate with the groups and considered the request on strategic level. As soon as the company started to think about the request of the users on a strategic level, they started also to communicate the different steps of the process within the two groups. Finally the users were informed that Zweifel has decided to start the production of onion rings and to introduce the product again to the Swiss market. In September 2010, 380 users, members of the two groups, participated on the opening event of the production of the onion rings." (http://berlinsymposium.org/sites/berlinsymposium.org/files/crowdsourcingenabledinnovation.pdf)

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