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The concept of co-creation was
first introduced in the year
2000 by C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy in their
article, "Co-opting Customer Competence" published in the Harvard Business Review. According to them, value
creation cannot be confined to the firm alone, but would be co-created by
the customer and the company. Central to this strategy is the realization
that customers are the powerhouses for churning out new ideas for
services, products and communications alike. Co-creation does not restrict itself
to customers of the firm alone, but extends to anybody who might be
interested in a brand and would want to contribute ideas for its
improvement. While ideation is done by the customer, technical expertise in
design, production and manufacturing is provided by the manufacturer,
while the rights to the resulting product can belong to both parties (company
and customer) or a single party (company or customer).
The implementation of co-creation has been made possible by
the new breed of customers who are ready to define and create value
for marketers. Moreover, these customers are global citizens with
phenomenal access to information and a tremendous zeal for
experimentation. Companies today, are well aware
of the power that resides in this tribe of networking individuals, and
are therefore, willing to utilize their intellect and insight to create and
market products better.
The process of product or service development has at its helm the stage
of idea generation; and the concept of ideation in marketing requires
ideas/feedback from the consumer. Till recently, the free flow of ideas
between the company and the consumer was constrained due to the lack of
adequate communication modes with the company. As a result,
consumers kept their thoughts and insights related to the product and the
consumption experience bottled up. The enhanced customer engagement
facilitated through online interaction has now allowed consumers to
communicate their expectations to companies utilizing text, sound,
images and videos. |
