Hello everyone,
The topic of last week was engaging costumers and prosumers. I will be giving you some insight of the 3 articles related to this topic. Then I will share with you guys the 2 examples that I’ve chosen.
As you already know prosumer is a word derived from a combination of two words, production and consumer. Where customers become part of a production, where they create or co-create something for personal need/use or for sale. Engaging costumers on the other hand is according to Advertising Research Foundation “Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context” (ARF, 2008).
The first article was Co-creation: Toward a Taxonomy and an Integrated Research Perspective, written by Zwaas (2010). In this article co-creation was the topic at hand and how this has a major force in the marketplace and that the activities of consumers drive or support the producers’ business models. Other aspects discussed in the article were virtual communities (VC) that are the primary locus of collective contribution to co-creation.
The second article is Online social interaction: A natural experiment on word of mouth versus observational learning written by Chen et al (2011). The main focus of this article was the influence consumers tend to receive from their social interactions with others, where opinion or word of mouth (WOM) and others actions or observational learning (OL) may lead them to decide “differently” when they make a purchase. The experiment the authors created and showed in the article was so they can examine three issues regarding the two types of social interaction, thus OL and WOM. They first examined their differential impact on product sales and furthermore their lifetime effect and interaction effect. The result will be elaborated in my poster presentation
The last article is Tweet me, friend me, make me buy. In this article the writers Giamanco and Gregoire try to explain the importance of social media and emphasizing that companies are not leveraging enough from social media itself. According to business.com, 55% of buyers turn to social media when they’re searching for information. This staggering numbers must be enough for companies to realize where their customers and buyers are and what they are doing.
The 2 examples that I will be comparing for you guys is Ponoko and eMachineshop. 2 “different” making systems, but in the end they both focus on the same thing; they let prosumers design what they want, need or may benefit of.
In my poster presentation I will give my opinion on the 3 articles, also an insight of my 2 examples. Besides I will give some strengths and weaknesses and also comparison between the 2 examples. So I hope you guys are still interested in this topic.
Take care!
Zwass, V. 2010. Co-Creation: Toward a taxonomy and an integrated research perspective. International Journal of Electronic Commerce 15(1) 11-48.
Chen, Y., Wang, Q., and Xie, J. 2011. Online social interactions: A natural experiment on word of mouth versus observational learning. Journal of Marketing Research 48(2) 238-254.
Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K. 2012. Tweet me, friend me, make me buy. Harvard Business Review 90(7/8) 88-93.
