Creative Consumers

Creative Consumers are any “individual or group who adapts, modifies, or transforms a proprietary offering, such as a product or service”.^[1] They are central to user innovation,^[2][3] in that these consumers encompass users such as lead users, hackers and user-designers, who all modify products, adjust services, or hack code to meet their specific needs.^[4] Take the Apple iPod, for example, it was iPod users, not the Apple Corporation, who adapted the product for “podcasting” and launched a whole new form of media broadcasting.^[5]

Corporate Stances Towards Creative Consumers

Campbell et al (2010)^[6] identified a scale to measure a firm’s stance towards consumer innovation. The scale measures a company’s awareness of, its attitude towards, and the action taken due to the firm’s own creative consumers.

Berthon et al (2007)^[1] find that there are four general managerial approaches to creative consumers. These are defined by whether the firm’s actions toward these creative consumers are active or passive, as well as whether the firm’s attitude is either positive or negative (see the figure below).

Resist Stance (Active/Negative): restrain customer creativity (e.g. Sony AiboPet, FedEx)

Discourage Stance (Passive/Negative): tolerate or ignore (e.g. Nintendo Gameboy, Sony PSP, Apple Podcasting)

Encourage Stance (Passive/Positive): don't actively facilitate customer innovation (e.g. Skypecasting, Toyota)

Enable Stance (Active/Positive): actively facilitate customer innovation (e.g. Valve Software, BBC)

Interesting the authors do not recommend one stance over another. Rather they conclude that there are benefits and drawbacks of each stance. For example, by Enabling your customers to innovate, there may be legal, reputation, branding, and strategic issues to consider. The authors go on to say that "Firms that are able to master this fit and proceed to collaborate with creative consumers will discover an innovation and marketing capability that ingrates consumers into their organizations, one that presents enormous potential to successfully co-develop and even share intellectual property" (pp47).^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "When customers get clever: Managerial approaches to dealing with creative consumers". Business Horizons v50 pp40
2. ^ "The dominant role of users in the scientific instrument innovation process". Research Policy v5(3), pp. 212-239
3. ^ "Lead User Analyses for the Development of New Industrial Products". Management Science v34(5), pp. 569-582
4. ^ "The rise of the creative consumer". The Economist
5. ^ "Hackers can do good: SFU study". The Vancouver Sun
6. ^ "Creative Consumers: Awareness, Attitude & Action – Instrument & Preliminary Results". Proceedings of the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Association (ANZMAC) 2010 Conference