The use of social media in different phases of the new product development process: a systematic literature review

Han, Runyue; Brennecke, Julia; Borah, Dhruba; Lam, Hugo K. S. Article — Published Version The use of social media in different phases of the new product development process: a systematic literature review R&D Management Provided in Cooperation with: John Wiley & Sons Suggested Citation: Han, Runyue; Brennecke, Julia; Borah, Dhruba; Lam, Hugo K. S. (2024) : The use of social media in different phases of the new product development process: a systematic literature review, R&D Management, ISSN 1467-9310, Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, Vol. 55, Iss. 1, pp. 108-126, https://doi.org/10.1111/radm.12687 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/313809 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 108 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. The use of social media in different phases of the new product development process: a systematic literature review Runyue Han1, Julia Brennecke1,2,* , Dhruba Borah1 and Hugo K. S. Lam1 1 Management School,University of Liverpool, Chatham Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZH, UK. runyue.han@ liverpool.ac.uk, [email protected], [email protected], hugolam@liverpool. ac.uk 2 University of Potsdam, AugustBebelStraße 89, Potsdam, 14482, Germany. [email protected] Using social media is high on the list of priorities for many firms looking to enhance their innovation performance in the different phases of the new product development (NPD) process. Mirroring this rising practical importance of using social media for NPD, scholars have presented a diverse range of perspectives and underscored the need for a systematic literature review. Accordingly, this study reviews 110 papers from 2002 to 2023, to synthesize the use of social media across three phases: discovery, development, and launch. Our analysis identifies nine NPD objectives that social media addresses and discusses challenges encountered. Building on this analysis, we develop an organizing framework to guide practitioners on how to adopt social media to achieve better NPD performance and propose directions for future research. 1. Introduction In recent years, companies have increasingly turned to social media – internetbased applications rooted in Web 2.0 technology that facilitate the creation and exchange of usergenerated content (Du etal.,2016) – to engage, collaborate, and interact with both internal and external stakeholders. Prior research has suggested that firms use a wide range of social media applications to support new product development (NPD), leading to performance improvement (Bashir etal.,2017; Zhan etal.,2020; Rakshit etal.,2021). Social media helps firms draw insights from a diverse information pool that can benefit the NPD process (Iacobucci and Hoeffler,2016), for instance, to develop new ideas, solve problems, and accomplish collaborative NPD. A prominent example is Adidas, which created the Adidas Creators Club, a platform where customers and athletes can share ideas, participate in the design process, and contribute to new product innovation (Dreher and Ströbel,2023). While researchers increasingly investigate the potential value of social media in the NPD process, the results remain inconclusive. Much of the literature is fragmented into case studies of heterogeneous study contexts (e.g., Cao and Ali, 2018; Zhang, Gupta, etal.,2020). Moreover, while some scholars celebrate the significance of social media © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Social media in the NPD process R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 109 in facilitating product ideation and innovative product designs (Schemmann et al., 2016; Mirtalaie etal.,2017), others suggest that reliance on social media may lead to imitative and unimaginative products (Roberts etal.,2016). This stateoftheresearch is problematic as the results generated from each individual study tend to be limited and, in their entirety, the multiple disjointed studies fail to offer a generalizable, indepth understanding of how companies can use social media to create value in each NPD phase. What is missing is an integrated understanding of research findings across the various studies of social media as an enabler for innovation throughout the NPD process. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review guided by the following overarching research question: How does the use of social media differ in different phases of the NPD process, and what are the challenges of using social media in each phase? Like other novel domains that have benefited from systematic literature reviews – such as smart products (Raff etal.,2020) or big data analytics (Mikalef etal.,2018) – a rigorous systematic review of the literature on using social media in NPD helps develop a comprehensive overview of this interdisciplinary and multifaceted research domain (Watson and Webster,2020). Building on prior research (Durmusoglu and Kawakami,2021; Giannakis etal.,2022) and following the recommendations of the Product Development Management Association (Cooper, 2008), we distinguish between the discovery, development, and launch phases of the NPD process. In the discovery phase, ideas are generated and customer requirements are analyzed (Marion etal.,2014). The development phase involves the finalization and subsequent testing of product design (Durmuşoğlu and Barczak,2011). In the launch phase, commercialization and execution are carried out, with companies developing a marketing strategy to achieve a successful launch (Du etal.,2016). After reviewing 110 related studies published between 2002 and 2023, we find that social media is used differently in each phase of NPD. For each phase, we identify distinct NPD objectives (e.g., idea generation, team collaboration, and new product promotion) addressed by four different types of social media: companybuilt social media, company collaboration platforms, public social media platforms, and innovation intermediary social media (Guinan etal.,2014; Bhimani etal., 2019). Along with the phasespecific utilization, we also explain those social media functions that can add value across phases, to the entire NPD process. Furthermore, we elucidate the challenges of using social media in each phase as well as the overarching challenges that affect the whole NPD process. Our systematic review makes several contributions to the literature and to practice. Academically, we respond to calls for a more comprehensive, systematic understanding of the use of social media in the NPD process (Ko et al., 2017; Roberts etal.,2017). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the phasespecific uses of social media, specifically the types of social media employed, the objectives they address, and the associated challenges. Moreover, we identify several important questions for future research to advance our understanding of the role of social media in NPD and encourage more researchers to engage in this growingresearch area. Practically, our review reveals a lack of applied management guidelines to enable companies to integrate social media into their NPD processes. Accordingly, based on our synthesis, we develop an organizing framework that conceptualizes the usability of social media in different NPD phases to guide managers in achieving better NPD performance. 2. Methodology To date, while more and more studies acknowledge the potential value of social media in NPD, few systematically synthesize the literature on companies’ social media use.1 A systematic literature review is a methodical approach to summarize existing evidence, identify gaps, and suggest future research directions (Thomé et al., 2016). Compared to other literature review methods, such as bibliometric analysis and metaanalysis, the systematic literature review offers distinct advantages (as also discussed in Chang and Taylor,2016; Turzo etal.,2022) that align well with our aim to offer a generalizable and indepth understanding of how companies can effectively leverage different types of social media across various NPD phases. For instance, while bibliometric analysis focuses on publication patterns and citations, it may lack the depth of understanding offered by a systematic literature review, which synthesizes and interprets content from selected studies. Additionally, while metaanalysis uses quantitative data, a systematic literature review incorporates diverse evidence, providing a broader understanding of the research topic. The review process involves data collection, analysis, and synthesis, guided by widely accepted principles. Our search for relevant literature comprises four steps: database search, title/abstract screening, content evaluation, and backward citation analysis. © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Runyue Han, Julia Brennecke, Dhruba Borah and Hugo K. S. Lam 110 R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 Figure1 reports an overview of the literature search and selection process, which is described in detail in the following. It resulted in 110 articles and was conducted in March 2023. 2.1. Step 1: Data search across different disciplines The Web of Science database provides a comprehensive collection of relevant academic literature for a systematic search (Bhimani etal.,2019). The overall structure of the literature search and filtration process was broad and inclusive, aiming at bringing together different literature streams to comprehensively gather all articles that may contain social mediaand NPDrelated content (Templier and Pare, 2018). Given social media and NPD are inherently interdisciplinary fields, a broad literature search was performed across all document types and business domains, including innovation, entrepreneurship, marketing, information systems, operations, and technology management. To establish boundaries for what should be included in our review, we developed the final search strings for identifying relevant studies through an iterative process of reviewing the extant literature with similar themes (Du et al., 2016; Roberts etal.,2016; Füller and Bilgram,2017) and discussion with experts from academia and practice. We used two groups of search terms (i.e., social media and NPD) to find the most appropriate articles (see Table1). We only included English articles for our review, and the initial search generated 1019 articles. 2.2. Step 2: Practical screening Following recent reviews from the field that have faced equally large samples in their first search round (Micheli etal.,2019), we performed a cursory manual analysis of the articles based on title and abstract. Specifically, we applied practical screening making sure that all articles focused on social media and NPD. Similar to Mikalef etal.(2018), we excluded conference papers, books, chapters, and student dissertations to ensure our sample’s quality. This step reduced the sample to 200 articles. 2.3. Step 3: Content evaluation We thoroughly read and evaluated the 200 articles to ensure that their research objectives and findings are related to social media and NPD. We excluded papers that were only related to social media but not related to NPD (e.g., Paniagua and Sapena, 2014; Broekemier etal.,2015; Duane and O’Reilly,2017) and papers only related to NPD but not related to social media (e.g., Ordanini and Parasuraman,2011; Von Hippel et al., 2011; Chang and Taylor, 2016). This step resulted in 101 articles. 2.4. Step 4: Backward citation analysis Backward citation analysis was performed on all cited references in the articles identified in steps 1 to 3 as it increases the comprehensiveness and reliability of the resulting literature list (Tranfield etal.,2003). Following this procedure, we identified 9 additional articles, bringing the final literature list Figure 1. Literature search process. Step 1: Database search across different disciplines 1019 articles identified in the topic search (WoS database) bases on the defined search terms Step 2: Practical Screening (by title and abstract) 1019 articles screened by the inclusion and quality criteria Step 3: Content Evaluation 200 articles evaluated based on content Step 4: Backward Citation Analysis Backward screening of citations of the remaining 101 articles Final Sample 110 articles formed the final literature sample 819 articles excluded 99 articles exclude d 9 articles included © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Social media in the NPD process R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 111 for indepth analysis to 110 articles. All articles in this final sample are listed in AppendixS1 of the supplementary materials. 2.5. Sample description The 110 identified papers are published across 61 academic journals. About 86% of the papers are published in journals ranked on the ABS list,2 with approximately 54% of the publications in threeor fourstar journals. We present the distribution of articles by journal in AppendixS2 in the supplementary materials. Figure2 reports the chronological publication distribution of the reviewed literature. It shows the increasing body of knowledge after 2015, mirroring the emerging nature and growing relevance of the research field. From the final literature sample, 21% (23 of 110) of the articles were published between 2002 and 2014, and 79% (87 of 110) were published between 2015 and January 2023. 2.6. Coding process To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the themes and topics explored in the 110 articles included in our review sample, we conducted a detailed coding. Firstly, we categorized the 110 papers according to the NPD phases they studied. In the discovery phase, ideas are generated and customer requirements are analyzed (Marion etal.,2014). In the development phase, the product design is finalized and tested (Durmuşoğlu and Barczak, 2011). The launch phase involves commercialization and execution (Du etal.,2016). Secondly, we identified the social media studied in the 110 papers and categorized them into four functional types recognized in the literature (Guinan et al., 2014; Bhimani et al., 2019). Companybuilt social media relates to platforms based on social networking functionalities developed inhouse by companies. They are used to boost internal interactions (e.g., NASA@work) or evaluate customers’ perceptions externally (e.g., Dell IdeaStorm, My Starbucks Idea). Companies usually adopt companybuilt social media to build connections with stakeholders, crowdsource ideas, and provide customer service (Weinberg and Pehlivan,2011). Company collaboration platforms refer to proprietary solutions designed by service provider organizations. This type of social media is typically used internally as a company’s social networking and collaboration platform (e.g., Yammer, IBM Connections) (Bhimani et al., 2019). Firm employees use these tools to cooperate and communicate on their projects, collect and share unstructured information (e.g., video, images), and find subjectmatter specialists. Public social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, offer social technologies to companies for communicating with external stakeholders and create spaces for NPD discussions (Kaplan and Haenlein,2010). Finally, innovation intermediary social media represents the recourse for online communities to specialized innovation intermediaries (e.g., Get Satisfaction, InnoCentive) to create innovationcustomized services such as external or internal ideation contests (Guinan etal.,2014). Table2 provides an overview of these social media types. Beyond these two main categories, we also coded the research methodologies, contextual settings, and key findings from the 110 papers. Appendix S1 in the supplementary materials contains the detailed outcomes of our coding. 3. Findings Twentysix articles in our sample focused solely on the discovery phase, while 28 articles studied the development phase. Twentytwo articles explored the launch phase and 10 articles examined both the discovery and development phases. A smaller number of articles (3) investigated both the discovery and launch phases, two articles studied both the Table 1. Search strings for identifying relevant studies Topics Search terms Social media Social media, social network, crowdsourcing, social community, social platform, social site, digital media, digital network, digital community, digital platform, online media, online network, online community, computing platform, computing community, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, TikTok, QQ, Douyin, Weibo, Snapchat, Reddit, LinkedIn, virtual customer communities NPD NPD, innovation, research and development, R&D, product development, service development, process development, ideation, idea development, idea generation, idea creation, prototype, product launch, marketing, and product promotion © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Runyue Han, Julia Brennecke, Dhruba Borah and Hugo K. S. Lam 112 R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 development and launch phases, and 19 articles covered all three NPD phases. Table3 presents the frequency of the reviewed papers categorized by social media types and NPD phases under investigation. Our synthesis and integration of the studies’ findings show that in each phase, three distinct NPD objectives, that is, goals or planned tasks for companies to accomplish, are addressed by different social media types. These overall nine NPD objectives allow companies to identify and address the key tasks that social media can facilitate in each NPD phase. Alongside its benefits, we also discuss challenges that – according to the reviewed studies – companies may encounter while using social media in each NPD phase. As a final aspect of our review, we briefly summarize the common benefits and challenges of adopting social media across the whole NPD process. 3.1. Social media in the discovery phase Referred to as ‘the fuzzy frontend of innovation’, discovery – also termed ideation – is often regarded as the most challenging phase in NPD (Colombo et al., 2015; Kim and Park, 2019; Bashir and Malik,2021). Social media plays a critical role in the discovery phase and helps companies expand their knowledge and strengthen their customer relationships (Cao and Ali,2018). Our review finds social media is used to pursue three objectives in the discovery phase of NPD as summarized in Table4, namely, to (1) generate novel ideas/information from external users, (2) identify implementable business opportunities from target markets, and (3) screen and test new ideas/concepts collected from customers. With regard to the first objective of generating novel information and ideas for new product development, researchers have extensively studied the use of public social media platforms and companybuilt social media platforms as means of conducting realtime communication with customers (Poetz and Schreier,2012; Ko etal.,2017). From a company’s perspective, social media serves as a powerful communication channel that enables understanding of customer behavior and Figure 2. Publishing trend between 2002 and January 2023. [Colour figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Before 2011 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 Publicaons Table 2. Social media classifications Social media types Purposes Examples Companybuilt social media sites • Generate customer ideas • Build connections with customers • Provide customer service • My Starbucks Idea • Dell IdeaStorm • Workplace Company collaboration platforms • Enable internal employees to cooperate and communicate on their projects • Collect and share unstructured information • Find subjectmatter specialists • Mi community • IBM connections • Yammer Public social media platforms • Enable the connection between external stakeholders and internal employees • Create spaces for NPD discussions • Facebook • Twitter • YouTube • Instagram Innovation intermediary social media • Provide professional solutions • Crowdsource specialized information and ideas • Innocentive • Get satisfaction © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Social media in the NPD process R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 113 preferences. For example, Bayus (2013) studies the use of companybuilt social media platforms in product innovation and found that these sites can foster collaboration between customers and companies, resulting in practical and valuable ideas. From the customer’s standpoint, social media offers access to a wealth of information and communication with other customers and companies without geographic limitations. Public social media platforms are ideal for customers to voice their opinions about new products and engage in flexible collaboration with companies (Chirumalla etal.,2018; BartosikPurgat and Bednarz,2021). Studies have shown that the use of social media improves customertocustomer and companytocustomer communication, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction with new products, and reducing the risk of failure (Scuotto et al., 2017; Allen etal.,2018). The second objective of evaluating potential business opportunities from social media information has led researchers to investigate the use of companybuilt social media and innovation intermediary social media platforms for monitoring brand performance and usercreated content (Ko etal.,2017; Chirumalla etal.,2018; Jeong etal.,2019). Füller et al. (2008) find that social media users are more willing to contribute to and create value by sharing their needs and insights. This customer willingness helps companies to be more creative and profitable by developing innovative new products. A case study of CocaCola’s online community illustrates the use of a company’s social media platform to discover new business opportunities and target the right market (Puventheran et al., 2021). CocaCola is able to access a large number of lead users through its social media platform, which not only facilitates opportunity identification but also strengthens CocaCola’s relationships with its customers. By leveraging the insights gained from social media, companies can gain a better understanding of their target market and make informed decisions about the development of new products (Bugshan,2015; Zhao and Balagué,2015). Innovation intermediary social media also enables companies to use online information crowdsourcing to seek feasible business opportunities (Zhu et al., 2019). Online crowdsourcing assumes that companies should use external information for new product ideation (Schemmann et al., 2016). For instance, Quirky – an online crowdsourcing social media platform – creates value by bringing together a community of inventors, filtering the information with screening algorithms, and community voting (Allen etal.,2018). Ko etal.(2017) find that innovation intermediary social media provides companies with public crowdsourcing platforms for new product developers tasked with identifying feasible business opportunities for radical innovations. Regarding the third objective, we find that many companies utilize social media to test new product concepts and increase their chances of success (Hoornaert et al., 2017). By interacting directly with customers through these platforms, companies can evaluate the market viability and customer demand for their new product concepts (Roberts and Piller, 2016). Such interactions can also provide valuable feedback to improve or finetune the Table 3. Frequencies of reviewed papers categorized by social media types and NPD phases NPD phases social media types Discovery Development Launch Companybuilt social media 26 27 20 Company collaboration platforms 1 5 1 Public social media platforms 29 31 29 Innovation intermediary social media 7 10 3 Table 4. Social media in the discovery phase NPD objectives Social media types Outcomes Example studies To generate novel information/ideas for further product developing Public social media platforms/companybuilt social media Conducting realtime communication with customers Mirtalaie etal.(2017), Dong and Wu(2015), Schemmann etal.(2016) To evaluate business opportunities from the social media information Companybuilt social media/innovation intermediary social media Monitoring brand performance and usercreated content on social media platforms Ko etal.(2017), Chirumalla etal.(2018), Jeong etal.(2019) To screen and test concepts/ ideas collected from customers Public social media platforms/companybuilt social media Gaining highquality ideas and reducing the new concepts’ failure rate Schemmann etal.(2016), Hoornaert etal.(2017), Bugshan(2015) © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Runyue Han, Julia Brennecke, Dhruba Borah and Hugo K. S. Lam 114 R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 concept (Hossain and Islam, 2015). Iacobucci and Hoeffler (2016) highlight the importance of using social media in the discovery phase of NPD to gather insights about the concept’s potential. Both public social media and companybuilt social media are commonly used for this purpose. Public social media provides a wide reach and accessibility, allowing companies to gauge consumer acceptance of new product concepts before investing in their development (Bugshan,2015). Companybuilt social media, on the other hand, allows companies to interact with a more targeted group of existing and subscribed customers and gather highquality feedback (Hoornaert etal.,2017). As discussed above, using social media in the NPD discovery phase benefits NPD. However, research shows that it also entails significant challenges (Roberts etal.,2016; Hoornaert etal.,2017). For instance, it can be difficult to control the quality of new product ideas collected from social media. Studies show that these ideas may be of low quality and lack creativity. Some platforms generate large amounts of ideas, but only a few are useful for product development. For example, only 2.2% of the 25,186 ideas submitted to Dell IdeaStorm since 2007 have been adopted. Roberts etal.(2016) emphasize the importance of controlling the quality and reliability of public social media data to improve NPD efficiency and suggest developing technologies to screen social media information. 3.2. Social media in the development phase The product development phase focuses on transforming a product concept into a new product entity (Chan etal.,2016; Ernst and Brem,2017; Zammit etal.,2018). An integration of findings across studies shows that social media is used to (1) improve NPD team communication and collaboration efficiency, (2) facilitate suppliers’ involvement, and (3) enable product codevelopment between customers and companies. Table5 summarizes these objectives in the development phase and how social media addresses them. First, companies are using social media as a powerful communication tool to facilitate team collaboration, innovation, and productivity in the development phase (KetonenOksi et al., 2016). Gao and Bernard (2018) argue that using social media in NPD teams can encourage employee engagement and increase employee satisfaction. Compared with the traditional teamwork methods (i.e., facetoface meetings), company collaboration social media platforms (e.g., Slack and Trello) allow team members to communicate, share knowledge, and follow up without time and location restrictions. For instance, Banker etal.(2006) show that an NPD team using social media performs better than a facetoface team not using social media in hightech companies. Additionally, they found social media to be more flexible and convenient in improving decisionmaking speed and quality for developing new products. Marion etal.(2016) state that company collaboration social media has become an essential team collaboration tool in the product development phase, especially for many multinational companies. In these companies, typically the development of new products needs to be supported by multiteams located in different countries. Due to the geographical distance, using social media to conduct NPD team training, meetings, and collaboration becomes more efficient and less timeconsuming, and costly (Leonardi,2014). Also, social media use brings an ‘informality’ to communication, bridging hierarchical gaps and distance. For instance, as an internal enterprise microblogging platform, Yammer has been widely used by Fortune 500 companies for NPD team members’ internal interaction. Employees can share their ideas, company activities, and working Table 5. Social media in the development phase NPD objectives Social media types Outcomes Example studies To improve the efficiency of team communication and collaboration Company collaboration platforms/Innovation intermediary social media Speeding up problemsolving and reducing costs and uncertainty Qin etal.(2016), Zhu etal.(2019), Kock etal.(2006) To facilitate suppliers’ engagement and connection with companies Company collaboration platforms Ensuring the smooth manufacturing of new products and reducing risk Cripps etal.(2020), Cheng and Shiu(2020), Cheng and Krumwiede(2018) To encourage customers to participate in new product codevelopment Public social media platforms/companybuilt social media Ensuring new products fit in the current market demand and increasing their acceptance rate Mahr and Lievens(2012), Wu etal.(2017), Piller etal.(2012) © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Social media in the NPD process R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 115 results on Yammer anytime and anywhere (Cheng and Krumwiede,2018). Second, social media facilitates supplier involvement in product design and prototyping (KetonenOksi etal.,2016). Cheng and Krumwiede(2018), by drawing on a longitudinal survey of 367 manufacturing firms, reported that social media plays a vital role in enhancing NPD performance in these firms’ collaboration with their suppliers. Specifically, they find that manufacturing companies adopt company collaboration social media (e.g., Line and WhatsApp) as knowledgesharing platforms for collaboration with their supply chain network partners to develop their new products efficiently and effectively. Cripps etal.(2020) observed a positive relationship between social media use and the effect of supplier involvement on NPD performance in terms of new product innovativeness, market and financial performance. For instance, suppliers can share their unique market knowledge resources regarding customer requirements and decisionmaking patterns and thereby help companies develop successful new products (Cheng and Shiu,2020). Companies that involve suppliers in their NPD projects can foster deeper relationships with their suppliers through social media, which helps establish mutual commitment and trust in NPD activities and in turn, enhances NPD outcomes over time (Zhang, Gupta, etal.,2020). Social media use, coupled with solid marketing knowledge processing capability, can enhance the NPD performance gains from supplier involvement (Devi and Ganguly,2021). To leverage suppliers’ NPD knowledge obtained through social media effectively, companies need to consider market trends against individual suppliers’ suggestions (Cheng and Shiu,2020). Third, adopting social media in the product development phase can attract customers to participate in the codevelopment process (Cheng and Krumwiede, 2018). Companies must effectively utilize social media to engage customers and other stakeholders (Sun and Liu,2021). User codevelopment, which refers to knowledge synergies that emerge from collaborative NPD on social media, is becoming increasingly popular. For instance, companies like Lego, Samsung, and Xiaomi have launched highly customizable smartphone applications for developing new products (Luo and Zhang,2013; Hienerth etal.,2014; Wu et al., 2017). These applications allow customers to provide realtime feedback and suggestions, making them an important part of the development process. Social media platforms such as discussion forums, ratings and reviews, blogs, branded social networks, and online innovation hubs are also useful for gathering customer feedback. The bestperforming companies, as shown by a survey conducted by Markham and Lee (2013), gather significantly more customer feedback than underperforming ones by using these tools. Encouraging customer involvement via social media can also improve new product acceptance and satisfaction rates during the launch phase. Studies also identified challenges associated with using social media in the development phase. Although social media can improve NPD team collaboration, its overuse can distract employees from their work, resulting in lower efficiency and productivity (Leonardi, 2014). For example, Marion etal.(2016) compared social media and traditional information technology tools used within small and medium companies’ NPD teams during the product development phase. They observed employees to be spending too much time viewing and managing their social media platforms without making many workrelated contributions. 3.3. Social media in the launch phase NPD launch constitutes the final and often the costliest phase of the NPD process. This phase involves decisionmaking about the launch timing, the launch region, the targeted customers, strategic marketing, branding, and promotion (Xiao et al., 2018; Seidel etal.,2020; Yang and Su,2020). The articles reviewed for this phase concentrate on social media use for the objectives of (1) creating brand awareness, (2) product promotion, and (3) customer feedback generation (see Table6). During the product launch phase, companies’ first objective is to create awareness of their brand, products, and offerings. Thus, companies try to maximize their touchpoints with target customers, so that traffic is built toward their public social media platforms for improved brand awareness (Wang etal.,2016; Sung etal.,2018). 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Notes 1 As a notable exception, Bhimani etal.(2019) conducted a systematic review about social media as an enabler of innovation in general (rather than NPD and its different phases) with a specific focus on methodological perspectives, regions, and research topics. Of the 110 studies included in our review, only 17 are also included in Bhimani etal.’s(2019) review, indicating a low degree of overlap in content. 2 https:// chart ereda bs. org/ acade micjourn alguide - 2021/ . Ruyue Han is a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include social media analytics, new product development, corporate R&D, and operational efficiency. Her research © 2024 The Authors. R&D Management published by RADMA and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Runyue Han, Julia Brennecke, Dhruba Borah and Hugo K. S. Lam 126 R&D Management 55, 1, 2025 has been published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change and Industrial Management & Data Systems. Prior to that, she had 2 years of experience in a leading hightechnology company in London. Julia Brennecke is a Professor of Innovation Management at the University of Potsdam, Germany and at the University of Liverpool, U.K. Her research interests include intraand interorganizational networks, knowledge transfer, innovation, and the organization of corporate R&D. Her research has been published, among others, in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management and Research Policy. Dhruba Borah is a Senior Lecturer in Innovation Management at the University of Liverpool. His research interests include the management of emerging technologies, innovation in emerging economies, and crosssector collaborations for innovation. He is a former R&D Management Association (RADMA) scholar. His research has been published in leading innovation journals such as Research Policy, R&D Management, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Hugo K. S. Lam is a Professor in Operations Management at the University of Liverpool Management School. His research focuses on the operational implications of emerging technology adoption and sustainable supply chain management, with relevant papers published in the Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, and International Journal of Operations & Production Management, among others. Supporting Information Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher’s web site.