Consumer Creativity Research Articles

It is emergent: five propositions on the relationship between creative consumers and technology

Drawing on four research papers and case studies, this paper explores the interaction between creative consumers and technology. While prior research has taken either a technology ‘push’ stance (technology shapes consumers) or a ‘pull’ posture (technology results from identifying consumer needs), the view adopted here is that the interplay between technology and consumers is mostly non-linear and emergent. From Facebook, where the consumer is the product, to user generated information systems (UGIS) where the consumers creates the product; and from Rev Billy who uses technology to creatively deconstruct consumption to mobile phones where technology is enabling the creative consumer, there is much to learn about how technology and creative consumers interact. Using these case studies five researchable propositions regarding technology and creative consumers are developed and illustrated, and it is hoped that these propositions can serve as guides to future research in this interesting and important developing domain of scholarship.

On becoming creative consumers - user roles in living labs networks

Innovation is no longer solely undertaken by R&D organisations or academic institutions. Users are increasingly participating in all stages of innovation processes. Their role for innovation is especially important in living labs networks, whose idea builds on the co-creation of value with consumers and users. This study explores the conditions under which users co-create innovation in networks characterised by open innovation. In particular, we analyse user roles in 26 living labs in Finland, South Africa, Spain and Sweden. The paper proposes a typology of four user roles in living labs networks: informant, tester, contributor and co-creator. The results suggest that these different user roles form a figurative path towards the creative consumer that proactively co-creates value with companies.

Creative consumers in impoverished situations

This conceptual paper illustrates the presence of creative consumers in impoverished situations. This paper argues that consumers in the base of the pyramid are creative in their consumption and presents a series of propositions related to this phenomenon. Through the use of over 30 real-world examples, this paper aims to provide insight into creative consumption in the base of the pyramid. Understanding creative consumption in subsistence situations is interesting from an academic perspective, given the current dearth of literature on the topic, as well as from a managerial perspective. For organisations, understanding the role the creativity can and does play in the lives of consumers can lead to improved design of valuable solutions to this under-served market. This paper is intended to inform an audience including academics and practitioners interested in creative consumers and the base of the pyramid.

Consumer creativity and the world's biggest brand

There are many ways that consumers can be creative with products and services, however not all creations are made with equal creativity. Fifty-one consumer generated uses for Coca-Cola are evaluated on the two dimensions of creativity: novelty and utility. These dimensions form a four-category typology of consumer creativity: low value uses, marketed uses, unusual uses, and potentially marketed uses. Each of these types presents a unique set of risks and opportunities for brands and firms. Implications for how a firm may respond to these risks and opportunities are discussed.

Generation-C: creative consumers in a world of intellectual property rights

Generation-C is a generational movement consisting of creative consumers, those who increasingly modify proprietary offerings, and of members of society who in turn use the developments of these creative consumers. It is argued that their respective activities, creating and using modified products, are carried out by an increasing number of people, everyday, without any moral and legal considerations. The resulting controversies associated with existing intellectual property rights are discussed, and suggestions put forward that the future can only bring conflict if such legislation is not changed so that derivative innovations are allowed to flourish. The article concludes with important messages to organisations, intellectual property rights lawyers, owners of property rights, governments and politicians, suggesting they reconsider their respective stances for the good of society.

Prosumer-oriented Relationship Management Capability Development for Business Performance

Abstract In an always changing environment, companies must strive for business excellence. Corporate performance is determined by a firm's resource endowment and the organizational effectiveness at converting these resources into capabilities. In this line of reasoning the present paper outlines current consumer trends which give way to new CRM extensions like the Prosumer-oriented Relationship Management (PoRM) model. Prosumers are new creative consumers who participate in corporate activities and co-create value. Their innovative potential must be nurtured and enabled by adequate tools and processes. We propose five clusters of conceptual patterns for PoRM with the final purpose of converting them alongside other intellectual capital resources in PoRM capabilities for competitive advantage.

Egocentric Categorization and Product Judgment: Seeing Your Traits in What You Own (and Their Opposite in What You Don’t)

Previous research uses categorization principles to analyze the interplay between individuals and groups. The present research uniquely employs categorization principles to analyze the interplay between individuals and products. It proposes that consumers classify owned (but not unowned) products as integral to their personal self (experiment 1). Consequently, consumers judge product traits (e.g., masculinity) as consistent with their own traits (assimilation) if they own the product, but as inconsistent with their own traits (contrast) if they interact with the product but do not own it, even when owning the product is nondiagnostic of its properties (e.g., following random ownership assignment; experiments 2–4). For example, less creative consumers who enter a drawing for an iPhone may judge it as less creative (assimilation) if they win the product, but as more creative (contrast) if they do not win the product. Moderators of these effects are identified, and their theoretical and substantive implicati...

Towards an understanding of the role of trade fairs as facilitators of consumer creativity

Towards an understanding of the role of trade fairs as facilitators of consumer creativity

Design in the Age of Prosumption: The Craft of Design after the Object

ABSTRACTThis article establishes a taxonomy of consumer response to the possibility of becoming a producing consumer (prosumer), through an analysis of the prosumer's relationship to the tools and materials that facilitate production. I have developed three characterizations of the prosumer dependent on how the tools, materials, and advice provided by companies who incite consumer creativity are used: the prosumer who follows the rules; those who reject such provision and pursue self-sufficiency; and the prosumer who adapts tools and materials in processes of ad hoc bricolage. This emphasis on how prosumers harness their potential productivity will help us challenge boisterous claims of consumer sovereignty in light of increasingly accessible and powerful technologies, which have proliferated since Alvin Toffler's first enthusiastic assessment of the prosumer in The Third Wave (1980). With reference to case studies from a broad geographical and chronological range, my intention is to develop characterizations that help designers and theorists navigate the complex impact of the consumer-as-designer today, avoiding both denigration of the consumer as naive and unskilled, or their promulgation as the savior of modern production.

When Social Media Can Be Bad for You: Community Feedback Stifles Consumer Creativity and Reduces Satisfaction with Self-Designed Products

Enabling consumers to self-design unique products that match their idiosyncratic preferences is the key value driver of modern mass customization systems. These systems are increasingly becoming “social,” allowing for consumer-to-consumer interactions such as commenting on each other's self-designed products. The present research examines how receiving others' feedback on initial product configurations affects consumers' ultimate product designs and their satisfaction with these self-designed products. Evidence from a field study in a European car manufacturer's brand community and from two follow-up experiments reveals that receiving feedback from other community members on initial self-designs leads to less unique final self-designs, lower satisfaction with self-designed products, lower product usage frequency, and lower monetary product valuations. We provide evidence that the negative influence of feedback on consumers' satisfaction with self-designed products is mediated by an increase in decision uncertainty and perceived process complexity. The implications of socially enriched mass customization systems for both consumer welfare and seller profitability are discussed.

Consumer creativity: Effects of gender and variation in the richness of vision and touch inputs

This study investigates the influence of vision and touch inputs and gender on the creativity of consumer-derived product concepts. Manipulating vision and touch richness affects how much information is apprehended from product components. Tests include solid three-dimensional components (rich inputs) and line-diagram two-dimensional components (impoverished inputs). In a controlled laboratory setting, consumers imagined products, and the product concepts' creativity was assessed on functionality and novelty. Results show that higher vision levels and touch inputs enhance the product concept's functionality, while lower levels of vision and touch inputs enhance novelty. Gender modestly affects both functionality and novelty, with women generally more creative in designing products than men.

Processes of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Sphere of Prosumerism

The term prosumer, first introduced by Toffler in the 1980s, has been developed by sociologists in response to Web 2.0 (the set of technologies that has transformed a predominantly static web into the collaborative medium initially envisaged by Tim Berners-Lee). The phenomena is now understood as a process involving the creation of meanings on the part of the consumer, who re-appropriates spaces that were dominated by institutionalized production, and this extends to the exploitation of consumer creativity on the production side. Recent consumption literature can be re-interpreted through the prosumer lens in order to understand whether prosumers are more creative or alienated in their activities. The peculiar typology of prosumption introduced by Web 2.0 leads us to analyze social capital as a key element in value creation, and to investigate its different online and offline forms. Our analysis then discusses the digital divide and critical consumerism as forms of empowerment impairment.

Advice from creative consumers: a study of online hotel reviews

This studyexplores what creative consumers are compelled to say about hotels throughonline reviews. Online reviews arehighly influential, with consumers preferring the advice of other consumersove ...

Towards an understanding of the role of trade fairs as facilitators of consumer creativity

Trade fairs are an integral part of the marketing strategy for many products and services. The aim of this article is to investigate how trade fairs as a means of marketing communication bring about new ideas, desires and wants in consumers and by so doing facilitate everyday consumer creativity. The results imply that trade fairs play an important role in setting the stage for consumer creativity. Based on an empirical study of trade fair visitors carried out using an ethnographic method, the study demonstrates how consumers communicate their visit to a trade fair. The findings indicate that trade fairs have an influence on consumer creativity in the different phases of the process. As an outcome, two metaphors describing the role of trade fairs as facilitators of everyday consumer creativity are proposed. These are trade fairs as a tool and a vantage point. The implications for effective trade fair management and postmodern marketing are explored.

Chinese online literature: creative consumers and evolving business models

PurposeThe internet is transforming possibilities for creative interaction, experimentation and cultural consumption in China and raising important questions about the role that “publishers” might play in an open and networked digital world. The purpose of this paper is to consider the role that copyright is playing in the growth of a publishing industry that is being “born digital”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper approaches online literature as an example of a creative industry that is generating value for a wider creative economy through its social network market functions. It builds on the social network market definition of the creative industries proposed by Pottset al.and uses this definition to interrogate the role that copyright plays in a rapidly‐evolving creative economy.FindingsThe rapid growth of a market for crowd‐sourced content is combining with growing commercial freedom in cultural space to produce a dynamic landscape of business model experimentation. Using the social web to engage audiences, generate content, establish popularity and build reputation and then converting those assets into profit through less networked channels appears to be a driving strategy in the expansion of wider creative industries markets in China.Originality/valueAt a moment when publishing industries all over the world are struggling to come to terms with digital technology, the emergence of a rapidly‐growing area of publishing that is being born digital offers important clues about the future of publishing and what social network markets might mean for the role of copyright in a digital age.

Proposing an expanded theoretical framework of innovation adoption linking to consumer innovativeness and creativity and their driving factors

This exploratory study attempts to explore the relationships between innovation adoption and its potentially direct and indirect determinants including global innovativeness, domain specific innovativeness, creativity, and the two sets of potential determinants of creativity, i.e. modern technology hobbies and environmental variables. A series of tests have been conducted in order to lend support to our results and arguments. By integrating all the key results, we propose an expanded theoretical framework of innovation adoption including variables that hitherto have been omitted in previous studies.

Web 2.0, social media and creative consumers—implications for public policy; introduction to the special edition

Web 2.0, social media and creative consumers—implications for public policy; introduction to the special edition

Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy

The 21st century has brought both opportunities and challenges in our global, boundaryless world. Importantly, managers face a dynamic and interconnected international environment. As such, 21st century managers need to consider the many opportunities and threats that Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers present and the resulting respective shifts in loci of activity, power, and value. To help managers understand this new dispensation, we propose five axioms: (1) social media are always a function of the technology, culture, and government of a particular country or context; (2) local events rarely remain local; (3) global events are likely to be (re)interpreted locally; (4) creative consumers’ actions and creations are also dependent on technology, culture, and government; and (5) technology is historically dependent. At the heart of these axioms is the managerial recommendation to continually stay up to date on technology, customers, and social media. To implement this managerial recommendation, marketers must truly engage customers, embrace technology, limit the power of bureaucracy, train and invest in their employees, and inform senior management about the opportunities of social media.

Focus! Creative Success is Enjoyed through Restricted Choice

A common belief states that more choice of creative inputs boosts consumer creativity because it expands consumers’ creative solution space. Two experimental studies, run in a knitting and a crafting context, challenge this intuition and suggest that restricting the choice of creative inputs actually enhances creativity for experienced consumers. The authors find that this outcome is due to consumers’ ability to enjoy the creative process more, which in turn positively affects their creative output, as judged by experts. In contrast, consumers perceive themselves as more creative (regardless of experience level) when they have a greater rather than a limited choice of inputs. The authors discuss how these findings open up new avenues for research on creativity and choice overload.

Making a face: Graphical illustrations of managerial stances toward customer creativity

Creative consumers – consumers who adapt, modify or transform a proprietary offering – represent an intriguing paradox for business. On the one hand they can be a black hole for future revenue, with breach of copyright and intellectual property, while on the other hand they represent a gold mine of ideas and business opportunities. This problem is central to business – business needs to both create and capture value; the problem is that creative consumers demand a shift in the mindsets and business models of how firms both create and capture value. We develop a typology of firms’ stances to creative consumers based upon their attitude and action towards customer innovation. We then consider the implications of the stances model for corporate strategy, and examine a three-step approach to dealing with creative consumers, namely, awareness, analysis and response.