Hypothesis Testing of Lead User Search by Gaming

Focusing on the Diffusion of Needs and Solution Information

Abstract

Recent researches point out that companies could get competitive advantage if they focus on lead users(LU) of a market of concern, who are ahead of a market trend and have preferences to solutions to the needs found in the market. Though LU search methods are found to work for some specific cases, the reasens why the LU search method succeed or fail in finding LU are not clear yet. This paper proposes a method of searching LU and confirm its effectivity by using gaming simulation designed for needs and solution information diffusion among users community including LU.