The need for consumer involvement in innovation processes has been recognised for decades, first by von Hippel (1978). During a shift from linear (science-driven) to more systemic and market-pull innovation models, the concept of consumer-led product development was introduced in the early 1990s by Urban and Hauser (1993). Consumer involvement is a market-oriented strategy for enhancing consumer acceptance and promoting successful market introduction and diffusion of innovation (Urban and Hauser, 1993). The utility of this strategy for safeguarding a company’s competing power has also been confirmed in the food sector (Costa and Jongen, 2006; Grunert and Valli, 2001; MacFie, 2007; Stewart-Knox and Mitchell, 2003). The primary innovation strategy for involving consumers is open innovation (OI). OI is not a concept with clear boundaries (Huizingh, 2011) but rather takes a variety of forms (Sarkar and Costa, 2008). Chesbrough et al. (2006, p. 1) define OI as “[…] the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation”. OI processes involve not only external knowledge at initial stages, but also continuous participation by internal and external stakeholders at all stages. OI strategy seeks to establish organisational networks and benefit from cooperation with customers, suppliers, research institutes and teaching institutions to enhance an organisation’s innovation capacity (Chesbrough, 2003). Typically, OI strategy includes a multitude of different actors; thus, consumer integration is only one issue in the food sector (Fortuin and Omta, 2009; Sarkar and Costa, 2008). Consumer involvement in the food sector can be classified as “inbound open innovation” because consumer knowledge is a type of external knowledge exploited by companies to develop innovations (internal use) (cf. Huizingh, 2011). A broad range of concepts are dedicated to consumer involvement. In certain instances, different terms are used to describe the same phenomena. This variety leads to complexity and, sometimes, confusion. Table I provides an overview of the terms used and their definitions in the literature. Within these various consumer-involvement concepts (Table I), a wide spectrum of approaches to and methods for involvement have been developed with different potential applications. Methods for early innovation stages in the food industry, especially for identifying opportunities, were described and analysed by van Kleef et al. (2005) and van Kleef and van Trijp (2007). Van Kleef et al. (2005) determined the methods’ strengths and weaknesses to provide guidance for the level of appropriateness in food product development. Nevertheless, Grunert et al. (2008, p. 599) identified, among other issues, a lack of mapping and analysis for the various “forms of user-driven innovations” and their “degree of consumer orientation” in the food sector. These research needs are consistent with the consumer-led product development deficiencies in the food sector identified by Costa and Jongen (2006). Currently, scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals do not describe consumers’ role in an approach, method or innovation paradigm. German innovation literature (discussion papers and academic anthologies) addresses consumers’ role in the methods and level of integration for empirical implications but does not discuss consumers’ role in the approaches on a theoretical level (cf. Kunz and Mangold, 2004).