Innovative Consumer, What?

The wisdom of Consumer Crowds: Collective Innovation in the Age of Networked Marketing.  By Kozinets, R.V., Hemetsberger, A., Schau, H

The views and writings here are of the respected authors listed above. 

 

The current social environment contains collective consumer actions that are recognized by new online companies. Leisure activities of consumers are used as a resource for companies to develop their products. Online communities have been studied for product development for a decade already with only 10-40 % of users opposing that they develop products. Consumers are recognized in theoretical and practical views when considering the production of valuable products. Their creative input is directly monetized. The line between producers and consumers is breaking down.

Information and communication technologies has progressed and provided platforms of communication. The essence behind these technologies is connectivity in a networked context enabling widespread creation of online communities. Along with these communities comes collective production and innovation. Innovation is the basis for thriving societies and ultimately thriving companies. 

Studies show that consumer creativity is highly collaborative and “innovatively applied to real-world problems”. “Virtually all creation is based to some extent on the previous relations of others.” 

Individualized and Psychological conceptions of creativity

Curiosity and drive are the two components for creative work.

1. Curiosity: openness, external focus and playful urge
2.  Drive: perseverance, hard  work and inner focus.

Creativity consists of three types of thinking:

1. Synthetic : generating ideas, drawing connections between new, novel and interesting ideas
2. Analytical: critical thinking and appraisal in analyzing and evaluating thoughts, ideas and solutions
3. Practical: translate abstractions and theories into realistic applications

Collective Consumer Creativity

This type of creativity is different from the above. Consumer creativity occurs in social interactions prompting new discoveries and interpretations. These triggers occur from four activities:

1. Seeking help
2. Providing help
3. Reflective reframing
4. Reinforcing behavior

Consumer creativity comes from variation and selection meaning consumers having different backgrounds and different experiences provide a greater variety of ideas.  These consumer groups offer talents, networks and abilities to keep each other motivated which allow ideas to be brought to life, propagating and promoting them. In summary the group together is a driver of innovation.

Production and consumption are increasingly becoming one. Informationalism in a social context is turned to achieving higher levels of technology development. This is a revival of capitalism termed as “techno-capitalism”. Consumers comment, link, tag, review and share content. Consumers become involved based on feedback and self-identification which leads to social motivation and intellectual commitments. Some consumers become leaders and begin to critically evaluate and challenge ideas. They advise and mentor more inexperienced members, share similar thoughts of their own or others they find better. From these develop communities of expertise where ideas are shared.

Online communities provide an optimal environment for collective creativity providing the following atmosphere:

1. They are cultural 
2. Provide anonymous interactions
3. Members don’t have to commit
4. Experimental – members try different approaches
5. playful
6. educational
7. collaborative
8. visual
9. rich and diverse content
10. social and cultural depth
11. possibilities for belonging
12. possibilities to discover new things         

Innovation-oriented online communities (IOCC) are a result from contemporary consumer behavior online. There are four types of online consumer innovation:

1. Crowds: large organized groups who gather or are gathered together specifically to plan, manage and/or complete particular tractable and well defined projects. After the project the group disbands. This means crowds exist a certain timespan. Example Crash the Super Bowl.
1. crowdsourcing: act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined network of people in the form of an open call. example. Threadless.com
2. Hives:  online communities where members contribute much more to the community. Members also produce innovations for specific tasks or goals. example. group that produces a youtube series. Hives are centers of skills and excellence. Example: skibuilders.com: a community of expert ski builders who share knowledge.
3. Mobs: innovations oriented to a commune-lucid spirit of communal play and lifestyle exchange.  Based on contributions from specialists speaking to an interest group. Mobs are more individualistic in orientation. Example: blog Huffington report. Mobs are usually good sources for netnography as they provide targeted content.
4. Swarms: amassed collections of individual contribution that occur as a part of more natural cultural or communal practices. Example: rating or tagging or commenting. The aggregate value of swarms community is very high meaning all the comments, tags, ratings placed by swarms contribute greatly to innovation.  

Personal Response

The ideas presented in this paper are very true. Of course categorizing online activities is hard and saying one thing belongs to this group is not always possible, yet the arguments for these different types of communities are valid and represent thorough evaluation of the online empire. I think taking part in the different types of online communities are becoming part of consumers daily activities. Commenting, tagging and rating are actions performed by many. Writing personal blogs and gaining followers are emerging more and more. Taking part in on forums of interest is becoming a more “natural” activity. This is to say that the ideas presented are increasingly entering consumer’s daily lives and the continuation of this increase is likely to stay.