Working consumers: the next step in marketing theory?

Abstract

In marketing and consumer research, consumers have been increasingly theorised as producers.However, these theorisations do not take all facets of consumers' productive role into account. This paper mobilises both post-Marxist economics and post-Maussian socio-economics to develop the concept of working consumer. This concept depicts consumers who, through their immaterial labour, add cultural and affective value to market offerings. In so doing consumers increase the value of market offerings, although they usually work at the primary level of sociality (interpersonal relationships) and are therefore beyond producers' control. However, given certain conditions, companies capture such a value when it enters the second level of sociality (the market). The concept of the working consumer summarises and enriches extant approaches to consumer (co)production, while challenging right-minded developments, such as the service-dominant (S-D) logic in marketing, which try to create/construct an ethereal marketscape in which consumers and producers live in harmony.

Possession Work on Hosted Digital Consumption Objects as Consumer Ensnarement

“…Our analysis therefore adds to emerging critiques of 'value-co-creation' and 'service-dominant logic' perspectives (Cova and Dalli 2009;Zwick et al 2008;Bonsu and Darmody 2008) by exploring the implications of prosumer reliant online business models on the possession of DCOs. As a result of this inability to escape the market consumers must deal with the tension that arises where hosted digital consumption objects are possessed but not legally owned, and in some cases consumers may be forced to choose between either abandoning treasured digital virtual possessions or continuing indefinitely to pay for access to goods that they themselves largely created.…”

“…Previous work (for example, Terranova, 2000;Arvidsson, 2005;Zwick et at, 2008;Cova & Dalli, 2009;Banks & Deuze, 2009;Scholz, 2013) has done much to open up this critical area. Such analysis deals broadly with the concept of 'free' or 'immaterial' labour.…”

Developing a Communicative Imagination Under Contemporary Capitalism

“…Consumers produce information, and information is the key resource in branding. Sometimes consumers are aware of the model of value generation and choose to participate without compensation because they enjoy participation (Cova & Dalli, 2009). In other instances, it is not so conscious, such as when consumers use corporation-provided free resources to shop, network, search, and chat online.…”

Sustainable consumption and marketing

“…Though it may be bold to extend the results of consumer research to the supply side of the market, the behaviour of producers and consumers as economic actors within a market system show sufficient similarities (Cova & Dalli, 2009;Kozinets et al, 2004;Layton, 2009;Smith, 1784;Vargo & Lusch, 2004) to generate conjectures from this thesis that can be tested in marketing organisations.…”

“…In this thesis the explanation by construal level theory of psychological distance of economic behaviour relative to sustainable development is tested among consumers. Studying consumers preliminary to studying producers is considered legitimate because the roles of producer and consumers are to a large degree interchangeable in the market (Cova & Dalli, 2009;Kozinets et al, 2004;Layton, 2009;Smith, 1784;Vargo & Lusch, 2004), as both are economic actors within the same system. In this way the thesis contributes through consumer research to the explanation of the perceived dilemma between economic and sustainable outcomes that hampers sustainable marketing.…”