Supervisor: Dr Ariana Polyviou

Topic: Product Innovation in the Metaverse

Brief Description: Zafeiria Karlou is a PhD Marie-Curie Fellow at the Department of Department of Management, Entrepreneurship and Digital Business at Cyprus University of Technology, supervised by Ariana Polyviou. Her work focuses new channels for collaboration and communication which are made possible by the metaverse's increasing growth. The metaverse serves a digital setting with a plethora of advantages that revolutionize relationships, interactions and the creation of new products. As metaverse is constantly growing, new opportunities for product innovation arise through co-creation processes. Co-creation between brands and consumers holds great promise thanks to metaverse's ideation, collaboration and socialization affordances. The goal of this study is to understand how the metaverse facilitates consumers and brands co-create in the new product development process, with an emphasis on the mechanisms and tools that make this possible. Understanding these dynamics is essential for both academic knowledge and practical applications in fuelling innovation and finding out consumer-brand collaboration interplays.