Consumers as Producers : Who Produces Value for Whom?

Consumers produce. Consumers (co)create. Consumers assign cultural and economic value to goods and services. Consumers collaborate with companies in developing new products. On the whole, both theory and practice seem to suggest that consumers are increasingly responsible for market value creation. In this article, consumers’ new role in the market process is acknowledged by illustrating cases of and conditions for their contribution to market value creation. The article follows a critical stance: consumers collaborate in the development of market offerings in a number of ways, but they usually receive no tangible rewards, other than some sort of psychological gratification (recognition). Companies usually capture the value produced by consumers. In certain conditions, however, consumers can protect the result of their “work” and are able to appropriate the value they have produced. They can do this by means of consumption communities that – as collective agents – have the power to counteract the value capturing activities of market agents