Dear students,

The costs of computing power and telecommunications have been dramatically reduced and, in this information intensive economy, products and services have been extensively digitized. In addition, consumers are becoming more and more knowledgeable and demanding and contact firms in many different situations. These consumers require the formation of tailored value creation systems to better match their needs. The emerging challenge for firms is how to best support and activate consumers and also learn about their product needs? Increasingly firms and consumers work closely together in the value creation process. Firms such as Dell and Nike allow their customers to tailor products to their own taste. Other firms like Amazon and Facebook rely heavily on consumer input to create value for other consumers. To be successful, these new business models often use non-conventional marketing channels, and strongly rely on new information technology such as the Internet and mobile technology to interact with consumers.

This blog is part of the Seminar in Consumer Channel Dynamics taught at the MSc in Economics & Business (Marketing) at Erasmus University Rotterdam on the general topic of consumer co-creation and empowerment. In this blog, we hope to co-create a platform incorporating insights from academia and business practices, in order to gain a better understanding of how firms and consumers interact in order to create greater value. Your participation in the blog is part of your final assessment. Interaction via comments and follow-up materials on other students’ posts will be also valued.

During the seminar, each team needs to write a blog post (approximately 500 words) that discusses the main findings from their real-world case examples (mini cases). Also, each team is required to write a report of their final business case proposal. Individually, each student is also required to post two blog posts. In these blogs you should discuss examples of current businesses that apply business models that involve active customer participation. They can be firms in any part of the world and the main aim is to develop a rich set of illustrations of up-to-date applications of active customer involvement. You may also share articles (academic or managerial), news, interesting and informative photos or videos. All content needs to be related to the materials we cover in class:
(1) How can individual consumers be best supported in the value chain?
(2) How can consumers be activated to become value creators in the value chain?

Be aware that the blog is public! Therefore, by participating you are making the content accessible to everyone. Therefore, be aware of copyright issues. You will be responsible for all the content you post. Do not share material (e.g. videos or photos) for which you do not have permission to use. If you do so, explicitly refer to the source.

Let the journey begin!! We hope it will be an exciting learning process for all of you (as it will certainly be for us)!!

Let’s co-create some knowledge!!

Dimitris & Benedict