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I have been working amongst the busy bodies at Face for around six months now and am still enjoying it just as much as my first week! Working at Face for one year is part of my Business Studies with Marketing degree, in September I will be going back to student life at Brighton University to complete my fourth and final year. Whilst looking after the logistics at Face co-creation workshops and helping with the recruitment of co-creators for new projects, I will also be busy working on my dissertation!

The aim of my dissertation is to investigate how a key issue/problem of the market research industry is influencing Face.

Face performed extremely well in 2009 and their client base, range of products offered and team are all still growing rapidly! This growth has been largely due to new clients and brands that require international as well as UK based co-creation communities and workshops. Evidently, as Face grows they are being requested to work on a larger variety of briefs, including projects across a range of countries with varied cultures. I will be exploring this topic in my dissertation as it would be beneficial for Face to know how different cultures influence the outputs of co-creation. Therefore, the title that of my dissertation is, wait for it…. ‘How Do Diverse Cultures Influence The Outputs Of Co-Creation?’

Whilst carrying out my initial research, I found plenty of information on how the market research industry is affected by different cultures but I found virtually nothing about how cultural diversity affects co-creation. Initially, I will analyse the principles behind market research in countries across the globe and then apply these theories to co-creation using Face case studies. I will then identify ways to measure the success of online communities and co-creation workshops, using a specific set of KPI. This will then lead to recommendations that seek to improve the international co-creation process further – these may be small practical factors or larger ideas that concentrate on taking cultural differences into account when co-creating abroad.

It will be interesting, from a student and a company perspective, to see how people of different cultures react to being open,(and) being innovative with brands and co-creating. All of these factors play a key role in contributing to the success of a project. My report will explore how Face can keep co-creators engaged and how they can adapt their process further to better fit the culture of the country in which co-creation is taking place. This will ensure that Face’s future international projects are just as successful as of all their previous ‘First Class’ projects!

I am currently finding some interesting information about market research and cultural differences but I’m saving this up to share with you in my next blog!

Katherine