1) The document discusses how companies can become more "consumer-centric" by structurally collaborating with consumers at all stages of decision-making. It emphasizes starting small with pilot projects to demonstrate value and build support before implementing more wide-ranging collaborations. 2) Successful pilot projects that involve confronting employees with consumer insights can help build understanding of consumer collaboration and establish a more consumer-centric culture. 3) Creating a chief consumer officer role can help lead the transformation to an outside-in, consumer-driven culture and ensure collaboration efforts are coordinated across departments.

2. What to
expect
This article discusses the journey towards becoming ‘a consumer-
centric thinking company’: a company that structurally collaborates
with the consumer world within all phases of decision making across
its departments and that has established an outside-in thinking
company culture. It elaborates on possible starting points for consumer
collaboration and the steps an organization needs to follow to start
collaborating in a more structural way. It also mentions the different tools one
needs along the way in order to bring all internal stakeholders on board and
activate them to take relevant action based on the consumer input. And finally,
the positive effects that internal and external leverage of consumer
collaboration has on the company’s culture and performance, and their
measurement are discussed as well. There will also be argued that a new
board member needs to be installed to lead and coordinate this
transformation from an inside-out to an outside-in thinking
company: the ‘Chief Consumer Officer’.
The piece is based on 15 interviews (Van Belleghem & De Ruyck, 2012) with
senior executives from major corporations and best practices drawn from over
200 projects we conducted for our clients around the world, over the last 2
years.

3. Structural Collaboration with consumers

4. These changes in the consumer and the business
world ask for an adaptive mind-set within
companies and more outside-in thinking.
Organizations need to become more open
and agile in order to become one of the
winners of tomorrow. They need to embrace
the empowered consumer by having a
continuous dialogue with the outside world
and starting to collaborate with consumers.
This way, they will be able to react quickly on new
trends, emerging consumer needs, expected
improvements to products/services and anticipate
the actions of the competition.
“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of
Today, consumers are empowered. Through
social media channels, they have the power
to make or break brands. And, they want to
have a say in the future of the brands and product
categories they have emotional or functional
affinity with (Van Belleghem et al, 2012).
Moreover, most businesses need to operate in
an economic climate that is harder than
ever before. They have a hard time; but
consumers do not show any compassion as they
expect even more service and better products
from companies, almost by the day. Finally, new
entrants with new technologies or business
models are disrupting many industries and are
changing competitive landscapes at the speed of
light (De Wulf & De Ruyck eds., 2013).
change on the inside, the end is near” – Jack Welch

5. An online consumer community or Consumer
Consulting Board is an efficient and effective
medium for such consumer collaboration. It is an
online closed platform on which one brings
together a larger group of consumers over a
longer period of time. The platform is
invitation only, so the companies’ secrets are
safe. The fact that it is online makes it convenient
for the participants (no travel involved) and it results
in having no boundaries - nor in geography (it is
easy to bring people from different parts of a country
together), neither in time (one has 24/7 consumer
input at his/her fingertips).
Finally, more people brings a certain richness
and diversity of consumer input to the table
and ‘more time’ makes that we can really
work together with people in different stages
of, for example, product or campaign
development (De Ruyck et all, 2010). Having a
Consumer Consulting Board makes you a more
open company as you invite consumers to be a part
of the decision making process. But this does not
mean you are also more agile per se. In order to
reach that second goal, you need to start using the
Board in a structural way: almost every single day,
for most decisions that affect the consumer, across
different departments of the organization. By doing
so, companies will be able to make better
decisions faster and create more successful
products, services and marketing campaigns
that can be constantly improved (De Wulf &
De Ruyck eds., 2013).

6. Stakeholder involvement and
building the right culture are crucial

7. Our interviews with senior executives from around
the globe have taught us that it is not possible to
create a consumer-centric thinking company
overnight. A step-by-step approach is needed.
And every project and initiative needs to be rather
seen as a part of the way towards the end-goal,
than as the ultimate solution itself (Van Belleghem
& De Ruyck, 2012). On the next pages, we
elaborate on the 5 steps to go through in order
to get the most out of consumer collaboration
initiatives and how it helps one to create a
more consumer-centric thinking company
culture, one project at a time. Finally, it is
discussed how crucial the role of the Chief
Consumer Officer will be in terms of leading and
coordinating these projects and the overall
transformation of the company into a consumer
driven one.
Having consumer knowledge within the walls
of your organization is one thing, but using it
all the time is a different one. The former is a
matter of having the right consumer collaboration
tools and initiatives; the latter is about creating
stakeholder involvement and building the right
company culture. A culture of empathy, consumer
understanding and willingness to take action upon
that knowledge in order to serve consumers in the
best possible way while at the same time taking the
company into the right strategic direction. It is
about creating a culture in which consumers
are not seen as an asset, but as a reason of
existence.

9. #1
consumer collaboration: think big, start small

10. In our book ‘The Consumer Consulting Board’ (De Wulf
& De Ruyck eds., 2013), we admit that it will take
several steps within a company before structural
collaboration is a true fact. Our advice is to start with a
pilot consumer collaboration project in order to get the
ball rolling. A successful pilot project will result in
new projects and applications and step by step
the company will move forward. By demonstrating
and communicating the value of the consumer
dialogue and collaboration with consumers well
internally, even stronger support from higher
management is earned and a more consumer-centric
thinking company culture is established one step at a
time. True involvement of employees through
confrontation and connection with consumers is crucial
in order to be successful here. Employees need to
feel the need and urgency of consumer
collaboration first hand.
“Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember.
All companies are different, so there are also
different ways to get started. An easy way to start is
for a specific strategic project within one unit or team:
consumer collaboration will help that team to craft the
strategy. If that team is excited about the results of the
ad hoc collaboration, they can opt for a more structural
integration of the voice of the consumer within their
team to constantly fuel the strategy. An example of the
former is the ad hoc project we conducted for PepsiCo
Turkey (De Ruyck et al, 2013). They wanted to
reposition their Ruffles chips brand. To do so, we
confronted the whole brand team and their ad agencies
with the target group for 6 weeks, to discover insights
and shape the new strategy together with us -
consultants - and the end consumer. An illustration of
fuel the strategy is our always-on Board at Heinz in the
Netherlands: the Food&Co Community allows the whole
marketing team to ask feedback from and co-create with
consumers almost every single day. All aspects of
marketing across different brands are constantly
checked with consumers to make well-informed
decisions fast.Let me do and I understand.” – Confucius

11. This asked for an immersion into this new
consumer world first, before diving into
specific projects from the new category. At
Mars Pet Care in Verden (Germany) the
leadership wanted to emphasize on the
importance of listening to customers’
needs and wishes, as the goal of the
project was to demonstrate the value of
consumer input and feedback. In both
companies the whole plant was involved in
the project and confronted with the consumer
world, resulting into a feeling of urgency to do
this more and a clear belief in the value of
consumer collaboration.
In larger, more complex organizations or in changing environments; it can be beneficial to first gain ground for a
pilot project. We do that by setting-up a program that needs to change the mind-set of the employees.
Examples here are the projects we ran for Unilever R&D (De Ruyck et all, 2011) and Mars Pet Care. Unilever’s
R&D plant in Vlaardingen (the Netherlands) moved from inventing functional laundry products to creating more
emotional beauty products.

12. It was the well-designed internal
communication plan about the pilot project
and the constant activation of all stakeholders
along the way that paved the path here.
As one can see, creating a more consumer-centric
thinking company is a journey, not a destination! For
many CxOs starting that journey is one of their
current top priorities. According to PwC’s Global
CEO Survey of 2013, 80% of the world’s top CEOs
believe that customers should have a significant
influence on a business’ strategy (PwC, 2013).
The path towards our goal is known now; let’s take a
closer look at the different steps to take along the
way and the consistency and persistency that will be
needed once we get closer to that goal.
The end-goal should be that the companies’
strategic goals are managed through constant
consumer input across all departments of the
organization. We are currently rolling this out at
Marktplaats (part of the eBay Classifieds Group). NPS
is one of their key metrics and it is managed by a
constant stream of relevant user feedback towards the
appropriate team within the company. This system is
empowering every employee to do his/her part of
the work involved in reaching the user
satisfaction and service recommendation targets.
As Marktplaats is a smaller organization and as we had
management’s buy-in from the start, they were able to
move immediately from an ad hoc pilot project
(on the creation and roll-out of their renewed
online classifieds platform) towards full
integration and activation of consumer
collaboration and the revolving knowledge
within the whole company.

13. #2
Activation of internal stakeholders to take relevant action

14. There are 3 stages to leveraging consumer knowledge within an
organization and to get the most out of it from a company culture and a
marketing perspective after every ad hoc project - or continuously, if the
organization has already installed a structural way of collaborating with the
consumer world. First, you work on the hearts and minds, then you work on the
actions of all employees and finally, you need to leverage this new way of working
towards the external world. Let’s take a detailed look at internal leverage first:

15. Hearts and minds
This phase of internally levering the results of consumer collaboration is
about engaging the organization with the consumer world (creating
empathy through consumer connection and confrontation) and
inspiring the employees with relevant consumer knowledge (create
consumer understanding). This happens via the use of the right
stakeholder activation tools. Here are short illustrations from different client
projects of those techniques that can be used to create stakeholder
involvement:

16. Consumer quotes and pictures
At the ad agency Famous, consumer quotes and pictures in the lobby
remind the creatives about who they work for: normal consumers that
are not as hip and trendy as they are. Moreover, it is also a great way to
remind them of the fact that 300 consumers are there to help and inspire them on
a daily basis in the two Consumer Consulting Boards of the agency.
Online quiz
For stroller manufacturer Quinny, we developed an online quiz about the most
striking findings about young urban parents that came out of their
global Consumer Consulting Board. The marketing and R&D teams could
play the quiz of ten questions before the closing workshop of the project. The
game confronted them with the new consumer knowledge for the first time and
evoked curiosity about the final presentation and the brainstorm.

17. FanFace
In order to confront the journalists and editors of the magazine Flair (a Sanoma title)
with the true face of their readership of young females, we built FanFace, a
Facebook-like profile page of the average reader that employees needed to
complete. Afterwards, we compared the profile of the perceived reader with the
profiles of the readers in our community. Confronting the editors and journalists with
the differences between both was really eye-opening for them. It created a sense of
urgency to get to know more and to work together with the readers in a very
intense way during the process of reworking both the design and content of
the magazine.
Fanface for Sanoma’s Flair

18. Bus safari
Belgian public transportation company De Lijn has sent its management on a bus
safari: they had to use their own services to experience the issues passengers
were discussing in the Consumer Consulting Board first hand. The
confrontation with customers’ daily reality has pushed things forward faster than ever
before.
Weekly newsletter
At the Italian pasta maker Barilla, the internal stakeholders received a
weekly newsletter about the main topics discussed on their Board that
week. The newsletter was created in a way that every stakeholder received
only the content that was relevant for his/her job.

19. Consumer news platform
In our project at Unilever R&D, we immersed the whole company into the world of the
consumer by launching an internal consumer news platform. Every single day, two
news articles about the main findings from the community discussion were
shared, over the course of 3 weeks. Reporting in an easy to digest format during a
longer period of time fitted the objectives of this project very well: it truly immersed
them into the world of consumers. Based on a pre- and post-survey we know that
knowledge about and confidence to work within the new category went up with 81%.
It also made R&D employees discuss consumer feedback at the workplace among
colleagues and at home among friends and family (rise from 12% before to 55% after
the project) (De Ruyck et all, 2011).

20. Interactive infographic
When it comes to offering consumer understanding in a creative manner, our
interactive infographic for Heineken’s ‘The Club of the Future’ project is a nice
example: we guided the design team that needed to work with the
results through a night out, in 6 different sceneries. Each of the sceneries
consisted out of 5 key consumer insights that were well visualized and made
concrete via a design action. The interactive format fitted very well with the
creative process designers go through. From the in-depth interview with the 19
designers after the project, we know that the tool was used by them on a
daily basis while they were making sketches and at the end, during the
review round, to make final decisions. The 30 insights have led to 8 new and
innovative concepts that have end-up in the final pop-up club (De Ruyck et all,
2012).
Magazine
A last example of sharing results in an engaging and inspiring way is the
magazine about its business readers, which we created for Bloomberg. Here,
storytelling and visualizations were used to bring consumer knowledge
alive within the company.

21. Actions
Engaging and inspiring internal stakeholders is crucial. By doing
so continuously and in a consistent way, step-by-step, a more consumer-
centric thinking company culture is created. But, it is important to take the
next step as well: activating employees to take relevant actions. this
phase is about activating employees and making them process
the new information. We need to activate them to take relevant
actions based upon the newly gained knowledge and consumer
understanding. Two nice illustrations of how to do that during
workshops come from projects we conducted recently for IKEA
and Heineken.

22. During the final workshop of our 2014 IKEA Catalogue study, we defined
strategically important areas to focus on in the next edition. In the
brainstorm session at the end of the day, the team members were
confronted with relevant quotes from the community. They were
asked to make an interpretation and turn the quotes into
relevant insights. That process made them think deeply about the
subject and it demonstrated the power of consumer input first hand. In
the next phase they used the newly generated insights as a springboard
for ideation and creativity.

23. For Heineken we worked together with
consumers to gain insights about the ideal
lounge experience. To let the results come
alive after our presentation, we went
lounging with the design team. During that
Lounge Tour we gave them an observation card.
On the observation card they had 6 tasks or
themes to observe that seemed to be crucial in
the experience of lounging, based on our
presentation. They were asked to take pictures
of those aspects. The day after, together with the
Heineken team, we organized the second
part of the workshop in which they used
their pictures and comments to define the 6
areas again and to brainstorm about
possible design actions.
Activation workshop on day two for Heineken’s ‘The Lounge of the Future’ project

24. #3
inspiring and empowering employees at all levels

25. Activating internal stakeholders to take
relevant actions should result in products,
services and marketing campaigns that are
created or improved based on consumer
input. Previous research has taught us that those
products/services and campaigns are more
successful in the market. An experiment we made in
collaboration with Heinz compared ideas for new
cold sauces coming from marketing and R&D
people with consumer generated ideas, in a concept
test among a representative set of the Dutch
population.
This experiment showed us that ideas from
consumers while being perceived as less unique
than those of marketers (7 of the ‘uniqueness’ top-
10 came from employees), score higher on
perceived consumer relevance (8 of the
‘relevance’ top-10 came from consumers) and
buying intention. An experiment with the ad
agency Famous with a campaign for Nutricia on baby
food, showed that in an online ad campaign, copy
created based on consumer stories did a better
job in reaching the target group than copy
coming directly from the creative team. The
consumer driven ad was 50% better at reaching the
right socio-demographic. It is clear that collaboration
with consumers brings ‘relevance’ to the table.

26. So, consumer collaboration pays of, but there
is more needed than just the insights and
the collaboration with consumers on the
platform: activation of internal
stakeholders. The right internal people.
Research at MIT (Whelan, 2011) indicates
that the difference between organizations who
are successful in integrating the voice of the
customer into their strategy and
developments, differ from the ones that fail, in
the regard that the former are good in
identifying the movers and shakers within the
organization and in giving them a leading role
and all the support they need. The platform
that we use to distribute consumer input within
organizations is able to identify these so-
called scouts and connectors.
The scouts are good at spotting new opportunities in what
they get back from the outside/consumer world. The
connectors are great at bringing together the right team to
realize it. It is important to identify these people as early
as possible and bring them on board within the core
team that will realize the transformation of the
company (culture). They will play a crucial role in
embedding the philosophy and practice of consumer
collaboration and outside-in thinking within their team or
department.

27. We may conclude that in order to make consumer
collaboration initiatives successful within
organizations, you first of all need the right consumer
collaboration tool. From that point, it is all about engaging,
inspiring and activating senior managers with the newly gained
knowledge. In this phase, it will be crucial to identify and
support the ‘scouts’ and ‘connectors’within the
organization so that they can make it happen. But it does
not stop here. If you want to become a true consumer-centric
thinking company, you need to make sure that not only top
and middle managers understand consumers and act upon
that. It is important that everyone within the company
knows the basics of who the customer is and what their
wishes are. Also, the people who are running the frontline of
the business need to be inspired. At De Lijn, the bus drivers
are also immersed into the world of the consumer through
their own magazine and articles/videos on the intranet.

28. Within their specific role they now know what drives passengers’
happiness and what they can do about it. Kitchen appliances
manufacturer ATAG trained their sales staff on what they can do
in different phases of the customer journey, based on insights and
stories coming from the members of their Consumer Consulting
Board. Leading to a more emphatic sales talk and so, better sales
results. This means empowering line-managers and
frontline employees by giving them knowledge and
allowing them to take relevant actions. Doing so will have a
positive impact on customer experience, satisfaction and
recommendations (NPS). Hotel Radisson Blu Edwardian in
London, for example, allows every employee facing guests to
take action (up to a certain investment involved), to do everything
to make guests happy. All of this leading to high levels of
customer satisfaction and word-of-mouth. And in this case,
a happy guest definitely leads to a happy employee as well
(Pantelidis, 2002).

29. Becoming a company that is more and more driven
by consumer input also means that you need to let
go of something else: being a process, product
or technology led company. Employees have a
natural inertia for change. It is important to take
away as much burdens as possible and to
trigger the right motivations at their end to
make the new way of working a success in
terms of adoption. It is important to make the
process of engaging, inspiring and
activating/empowering employees a fun learning
experience. That can be done through gamification
(the quizzes we play before a workshop are a great
example) and the format of the used communication
tools (think of things like the interactive infographic
for Heineken). Next to that make the information
relevant for the receiver at the moment of
reception and make sure it is bite size (the platform
we are rolling-out for Marktplaats is a perfect
illustration of how that can be done).
Furthermore, it is vital that they feel close to
consumers, so that, if possible they experience the
consumers’ feedback first hand. Especially if one
wants to involve all employees at all levels of the
company (line managers and frontline employees) the
inspiration needs to be very short, lively, sharp and
clear. It is also crucial that stakeholders and
employees immediately see how the shared info helps
them to do a better job in the short and long term. That
is where the measuring bit will pop-in later on.

30. Finally, it is vital to have a clear mission & purpose as a company and
summarize this in a catchy phrase. No matter what, the consumer should
be central in this one, next to strategic goals. IKEA's mission for example is to
'create a better everyday life for the many people'. Aligning the goals of
consumer collaboration with this mission & purpose will help
employees to see the importance of the initiative.
It is clear by now, that it not only takes the right consumer collaboration
platform to become more consumer-centric, it is also about distributing the
respective results internally in the best and most impactful way. It is
about activating the internal stakeholders and let them bring the
new knowledge into practice. They need to integrate it into their new
plans and strategies (among managers) and by doing so making consumers
happy with more relevant products and campaigns that are tailored to their
needs; or they need to improve their day-to-day way of working and behavior
to create more customer happiness (for frontline employees and customer
service helpdesks).

31. #4
leverage the collaboration initiatives and the culture externally

32. It is great to be proud of the fact that you listen to consumers and that you act upon what you
have heard. But you also need to talk about it to the outside world. Not communicating about it to
the external world would be a missed opportunity as it evokes positive effects as we will see later on.
To consumers
You can communicate this to consumers, but also through them. The first option is telling the
world that you have a Consumer Consulting Board, and that you are looking for
members for it to help you out crafting a new product, like the CEO of Telenet (a Belgian
telco company) did during a live press conference. Or using the insights from your projects as
marketing material just like Chiquita used consumer insights and quotes in the campaign to launch
their new smoothie offering into Europe. Another option is to do what Heineken did and show-off
‘The Club of the Future’ you co-created with consumers to the press and the (design)
world. A final way to show that you are an outside-in thinking company is by combining closed
collaboration with open crowd-sourcing (an open call to the world for ideas through the
company’s social media channels). It gives a wider group of consumers the opportunity to take part
in something and, from a marketing perspective, it will built awareness about your way of working
and great company culture. The generated ideas can serve as input for further collaboration and
fine-tuning in the closed Consumer Consulting Board.

33. Through consumers
The other option is to communicate about it through consumers. At Marktplaats, four members of
the Consumer Consulting Board that helped them make the right decisions while
renewing their online platform introduced the new platform and its features to a group
of 50,000 beta users. It was much more powerful when done by ordinary consumers who were
part of the project than if Marktplaats executives had done this announcement via a short video
message.
A Consumer Consulting Board member announces the new features to beta users in a video

34. By consistently following and continuously repeating the different steps we
outlined above - working on the hearts and minds by engaging and inspiring
employees, activating them to take relevant actions and communicating about the
consumer collaboration initiatives undertaken to the external world – for every
single project; this is how a company works on becoming a more consumer-
centric thinking company project by project.

35. #5
Measure the impact on the company’s culture and performance

36. What is the impact of all of this on the performance of a company? We ran a series of
experiments with a series of clients that taught us it has a positive impact on a companies’ company
culture, the performance of their employees and products/services/campaigns and the perception the
external world has about the company as a whole and their respective brands:
Company culture
By constantly engaging the internal world with the external world
and by inspiring them with what drives consumers’ happiness, it
becomes clear that passion for the consumer within the
organization is vital. It makes employees more service
oriented towards the outside world, but also towards their own
colleagues, which is a positive side effect. Both at Mars Pet Care
and Unilever R&D employees who were part of the project
indicated that this was the way forward. KPIs here are
‘employee happiness’and ‘internal believe and support’
for the initiatives.

37. Performance
Both managers and front-desk employees create
more empathy for the consumer and know better
how they can play a role in ensuring happiness
among customers. Managers do this by creating more
consumer relevant products and services, frontline
workers for example by knowing exactly what to do and
how to behave. Being in constant touch with the
consumer world makes a company more successful, also
in its marketing actions that will become more relevant to
consumers as well. KPIs to keep track of the
performance of the company can be: consumer
satisfaction and the success in the market of co-
developed products/services and campaigns.

38. External communication
Research by the University of Wageningen (van Dijk,
2011) has shown that products that claim to be
created together with consumers are perceived as
being better and that companies who show that
they listen to and work together with their
customers are seen as more contemporary,
consumer relevant and genuine. Out of the member
satisfaction survey that we run on all the Consumer
Consulting Boards of our clients we learn that
consumers who have closely collaborated with a brand
or company become what we may call emotional
shareholders of the brand/company. They become
very involved and start to perform consumer brand
related actions for the company:
recommendations, content creation, etc. Moreover,
happiness of customers due to great service by frontline
employees leads to online and offline word of mouth as
well (Pantelidis, 2002). External KPIs can go from
measuring brand perception and brand identification to
word-of-mouth, NPS and all kinds of other consumer
brand related actions.

39. In conclusion, a company needs to be consistent and give
constant feedback to its Consumer Consulting Board-
members and the consumer world in general about
what it does with the results of consumer collaboration
initiatives. In this new world of perfect information (all
information is available for all online), companies need to be
very transparent and open about their actions.
Especially the younger, digital native and marketing savvy
generations (Gen Y and Z) will get after a lie or pure marketing
stunt without real impact and hunt a company down. An
interesting case here is Starbucks. They do a great job on
social media in terms of consumer listening and collaboration,
but when it comes to their financial structure they act against
what is perceived as ethical. This hurts their brand perception
and is counterbalancing the positive effects of their listening
and collaboration initiatives.

40. The Chief Consumer Officer
change manager and ambassador

41. This white paper describes the process of changing the culture of an
organization from one that thinks inside-out to one that has an outside-in
vision. As described above, this asks for a step-by-step approach, but also a clear
vision and strategy behind it is needed. The latter emphasizes the need for
coordination by a new member of the company’s board: Chief Consumer
Officer.

42. What are the tasks of a CCO?
1 Creating buy-in among top management for structural consumer
collaboration;
2
3
4
Guiding the company through this transformation from an inside-out
towards an outside-in thinking company. Leading the change and
coordinating the strategic projects;
Identifying the ‘movers and shakers’ within the organization, supporting them
and giving them the necessary responsibilities within the project so they can bring
their department or team on board;
Embedding consumer listening and collaboration through-out the
company: making it part of every phase of decision-making across different
departments and at all levels;

43. 5
6
7
8
Linking consumer collaboration to the long term strategic goals of the
company;
Making sure that every project is leveraged internally: maximize the
impact on actions and the company culture;
Convince the Board of the company that it is not only about being
proud, but also loud: making external leverage happen to get positive
marketing effects;
Defining and measuring KPIs at different levels of impact as described above;
It needs a senior executive to take on this role. The person needs to be
networked very well within the organization and be able to turn a vision into
reality. It is a challenging new role within a company, but those who accept
know that the journey will be at least as exciting as the destination!

44. References

45. Van Belleghem, S. and T. De Ruyck (2012). ‘From Co-creation towards Collaboration’, InSites Consulting
Working Paper
Van Belleghem, S. et all (2012). ‘Social Media Around the World’, InSites Consulting Working Paper
De Wulf, K. & T. De Ruyck eds. (2013). The Consumer Consulting Board: Consumers Shaping your
Business, InSites Consulting Working Paper
De Ruyck, T. et all (2010). ‘How Fans Become Future Shapers of an Ice-cream Brand’, Proceedings ESOMAR
Qualitative
De Ruyck, T. et all (2013) ‘Think Big & Connect to the Max: How PepsiCo (Re)connected the Ruffles Brand
with Generation Y’, Proceedings ESOMAR Congress
De Ruyck, T. et all (2011). ‘Engage, Inspire, Act: 3 Stepstones towards Developing more Impactful
Products’, Proceedings ESOMAR Congress
PwC (2013), ‘Global CEO Survey 2013’, PwC Working Paper
De Ruyck, T. et all (2012). ‘Designing the Club of Tomorrow: Consumer Understanding Guiding Creativity
towards Success’, Proceedings ESOMAR Congress
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University

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Tom De Ruyck
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