From Authority to Trusted Advisor: The Utility's Changing Role
Utilities will need more and more capable customers who take greater ownership of their energy and make good decisions with regards to the product, service, and program innovations that enable energy ownership. Trusted advisors, whether live or automated, who are credible, reliable, intimate, and customer oriented, can help customers with these choices in a way that establishes a stronger relationship between customer and utility.
Corporate venture capital programs of European electric utilities: Motives, trends, strategies and challenges
Abstract The forthcoming paradigmatic changes in the energy sector point to innovation as being one of the main drivers of growth for utilities. In search for their future business model, open innovation and, in particular the collaboration with startups, is recognized as a means to keep the leading position in a changing industry. In this respect, utilities deriving from the European market, which is considered as a reference case for many other regions in the world, follow the 4th wave of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) by initiating relevant programs.The aim of the paper is to examine the state of CVC programs of the European electric utilities and, more broadly, to examine their motives, to identify trends and strategies and to discuss the associated challenges. As our current knowledge on the subject is limited, the purpose of the study is to investigate this evolving phenomenon. To this end, a multiple case-study methodology is used by examining the CVC programs of four major European utilities (E.ON, EDF, Enel and Iberdrola). Findings suggest that CVC programs are now integrated in an Open Innovation approach and thus complemented by numerous other initiatives. All CVCs conduct investments tightly linked to the parent’s firm operations and the majority of them have more of a strategic (than financial) rationale in their investments. As a result, the cooperation between startups and the parent company is of great importance and poses a number of challenges related to the development of initiatives that would create linkages, achieve the alignment of the time frame and set up mutually beneficial commercial collaborations, including the ‘if’ and ‘how’ startups may work with competitors.
Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research
Although the relationship metaphor dominates contemporary marketing thought and practice, surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted on relational phenomena in the consumer products domain, particularly at the level of the brand. In this article, the author: (1) argues for the validity of the relationship proposition in the consumer-brand context, including a debate as to the legitimacy of the brand as an active relationship partner and empirical support for the phenomenological significance of consumer-brand bonds; (2) provides a framework for characterizing and better understanding the types of relationships consumers form with brands; and (3) inducts from the data the concept of brand relationship quality, a diagnostic tool for conceptualizing and evaluating relationship strength. Three in-depth case studies inform this agenda, their interpretation guided by an integrative review of the literature on person-to-person relationships. Insights offered through application of inducted concepts to two relevant research domains — brand loyalty and brand personality — are advanced in closing. The exercise is intended to urge fellow researchers to refine, test, and augment the working hypotheses suggested herein and to progress toward these goals with confidence in the validity of the relationship premise at the level of consumers’ lived experiences with their brands.