Article summaries
Wageningen University
MCB20806 – Principles of consumer studies
2020/2021
In this document the following articles are summarized:
- Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation
- Social classes and lifestyle
- The group self
- Vaping as a social practice
- Consumer heterogeneity in the willingness to pay for local and organic food
- Spatial consumer behaviour in small and medium-sized towns
- An introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s key theoretical concepts
- To be or not to be unique? The effect of social exclusion on consumer choice
- Not so different after all: A cross-discipline view of trust
- The art of dialogue
- Liquid consumption
, Co-creation of experiences
Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18, 5-14.
The firm-centric view is challenged by active consumers. Experience has appeared as
the basis of unique value to customers. What needs to be created is an experience
environment in which consumers can create their own personalized experience. Co-
creation experiences cannot be modified (as opposed to products).
Building blocks of interaction between consumers and companies is the start of building
a system of co-creation of value. The building blocks are dialog, access, transparency
and risk-benefit. Markets can be seen as a set of conversations between customer and
firm, in which both are equal. For a successful dialog access and transparency are
important. These three building blocks can lead to assessment of risk-benefit.
The personalization of co-creation is not the same as “customers as innovators”, or the
conventional view (aka mass customization). Co-creation is not transferring or
outsourcing of activities to customers, not customization, not scripting or staging of
customer events around the firm’s offerings. Co-creation is creation and extraction of
value at all points of consumer-company interaction. Firms must learn as much as
possible about their customers. The information structure must be centered around the
consumer.
Co-creation of value fundamentally challenges the traditional distinction between
supply and demand. The focus is on the total experience environment. The market is
viewed as a space of potential or forum for co-creation experience. Firms must invest in
new capabilities (infrastructure, functional and governance) that are centered around
co-creation through high quality consumer-company interactions and personalized co-
creation experiences in order to compete effectively.
In the traditional firm-centric view, marketing focused on the point of extraction in the
point of the market. However, interaction between customer and company must be built
on the earlier mentioned building blocks.
, Social classes and lifestyle
Dubois
Social stratification is the process by which power, authority and prestige are
unequally divided among members of a group, this leads to a separation of levels (aka
strata). Social class is “a division of society made up of persons processing certain
common social characteristics which are taken to qualify them for intimate, equal-status
relations with one another, and which restrict their interaction with members of other
social classes”. Five characteristics describing social classes.
- Large aggregates: social classes are secondary groups, which means that there
is no direct or interactive communication between members.
- Stratified: there is an inferiority and superiority between de levels of social
classes. Important here is public consumption behavior.
- Evolving: social classes are not rigid or closed, there is room for upward
mobility.
- Multidimensional: there are any factors defining social class.
- Relatively homogenous: members of a social class share consumption patterns
and products become status symbols.
There are two approaches to measuring social class, objective and subjective
approaches.
Subjective
Self-classification refers to asking people to indicate in which social class they belong
the disadvantage of this is that people tend to choose the middle class.
For the method measuring based on reputation well-informed persons are asked to
indicate social class of others. This method relies on the qualifications and objectivity of
the researcher
Objective – Single criterion
Karl Marx identified three classes based on the relationship to the means of production:
workers, capitalists and landowners.
Currently classification is made based on socio-economic criteria, which are income,
socio-professional category and education. These are single-criterion methods. The
ABCD-structure defines four categories based on income: relatively upper class, upper-
middle class, lower-middle class, and lower class. The limitations of this approach are
the cut-offs are arbitrary and there is need to adjust for inflations. The socio-
professional category divides between four categories of professions, unfortunately
also using ABCD. These two classifications overlap only partly.
Objective – multidimensional indicators
There is no universally accepted method for measuring social classes. Even methods
with multidimensional indicators do not agree upon one system.
Wageningen University
MCB20806 – Principles of consumer studies
2020/2021
In this document the following articles are summarized:
- Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation
- Social classes and lifestyle
- The group self
- Vaping as a social practice
- Consumer heterogeneity in the willingness to pay for local and organic food
- Spatial consumer behaviour in small and medium-sized towns
- An introduction to Pierre Bourdieu’s key theoretical concepts
- To be or not to be unique? The effect of social exclusion on consumer choice
- Not so different after all: A cross-discipline view of trust
- The art of dialogue
- Liquid consumption
, Co-creation of experiences
Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2004). Co-creation experiences: The next practice in value creation. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 18, 5-14.
The firm-centric view is challenged by active consumers. Experience has appeared as
the basis of unique value to customers. What needs to be created is an experience
environment in which consumers can create their own personalized experience. Co-
creation experiences cannot be modified (as opposed to products).
Building blocks of interaction between consumers and companies is the start of building
a system of co-creation of value. The building blocks are dialog, access, transparency
and risk-benefit. Markets can be seen as a set of conversations between customer and
firm, in which both are equal. For a successful dialog access and transparency are
important. These three building blocks can lead to assessment of risk-benefit.
The personalization of co-creation is not the same as “customers as innovators”, or the
conventional view (aka mass customization). Co-creation is not transferring or
outsourcing of activities to customers, not customization, not scripting or staging of
customer events around the firm’s offerings. Co-creation is creation and extraction of
value at all points of consumer-company interaction. Firms must learn as much as
possible about their customers. The information structure must be centered around the
consumer.
Co-creation of value fundamentally challenges the traditional distinction between
supply and demand. The focus is on the total experience environment. The market is
viewed as a space of potential or forum for co-creation experience. Firms must invest in
new capabilities (infrastructure, functional and governance) that are centered around
co-creation through high quality consumer-company interactions and personalized co-
creation experiences in order to compete effectively.
In the traditional firm-centric view, marketing focused on the point of extraction in the
point of the market. However, interaction between customer and company must be built
on the earlier mentioned building blocks.
, Social classes and lifestyle
Dubois
Social stratification is the process by which power, authority and prestige are
unequally divided among members of a group, this leads to a separation of levels (aka
strata). Social class is “a division of society made up of persons processing certain
common social characteristics which are taken to qualify them for intimate, equal-status
relations with one another, and which restrict their interaction with members of other
social classes”. Five characteristics describing social classes.
- Large aggregates: social classes are secondary groups, which means that there
is no direct or interactive communication between members.
- Stratified: there is an inferiority and superiority between de levels of social
classes. Important here is public consumption behavior.
- Evolving: social classes are not rigid or closed, there is room for upward
mobility.
- Multidimensional: there are any factors defining social class.
- Relatively homogenous: members of a social class share consumption patterns
and products become status symbols.
There are two approaches to measuring social class, objective and subjective
approaches.
Subjective
Self-classification refers to asking people to indicate in which social class they belong
the disadvantage of this is that people tend to choose the middle class.
For the method measuring based on reputation well-informed persons are asked to
indicate social class of others. This method relies on the qualifications and objectivity of
the researcher
Objective – Single criterion
Karl Marx identified three classes based on the relationship to the means of production:
workers, capitalists and landowners.
Currently classification is made based on socio-economic criteria, which are income,
socio-professional category and education. These are single-criterion methods. The
ABCD-structure defines four categories based on income: relatively upper class, upper-
middle class, lower-middle class, and lower class. The limitations of this approach are
the cut-offs are arbitrary and there is need to adjust for inflations. The socio-
professional category divides between four categories of professions, unfortunately
also using ABCD. These two classifications overlap only partly.
Objective – multidimensional indicators
There is no universally accepted method for measuring social classes. Even methods
with multidimensional indicators do not agree upon one system.
