The use of consumer voice in the process of service innovation creation

Current models of innovation development assume cooperation between multiple entities. The inclusion of consumers is treated as an essential condition for the effective marketability of innovative solutions. Innovations that start with understanding of the current behavior of target customers have a much greater chance of success. Therefore, satisfying the needs of a customer is no longer the primary objective of a company. It is the search for opportunities and ways of enriching the lives of consumers by goods and services which are co-created by them. An important aspect is also the current trend of product-centric firms, which in order to remain competitive in the market, add services to their portfolio, which requires a greater focus on service innovation for all kinds of companies. The objective of the paper is to present the concept of the Consumer Voice and to present and analyze research methods that enable active involvement of the consumer into the process of searching and creating ideas for innovative products. The products are classically understood as "anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a need or a want" - so by products authors mean both tangible goods and services, with a special emphasis on services. The paper uses the methods of literature review, case study analysis and synthesis. There are 2 case studies presented and analyzed. The conclusion is that companies that properly use VOC research methods are successful on the market, which has been confirmed by the conducted case studies analysis. This conclusion is based on literature research and presented case study analysis.