The roles of businesses and consumers are continuously in flux (Saarijärvi et al, 2013). While beforehand businesses called the shots in the exchange and interaction with consumers, nowadays, due to modern communication possibilities and information technology, the power of consumer’s increased dramatically with as a consequence that companies and organizations need to operate more client-oriented than ever before. On the other hand, companies have become more interested in consumer’s specific needs and opinions in order to translate these to relevant products that satisfy the market segments (Jansen et al, 2013). In the light of these developments, co-creation, which means that companies and consumers work together in order to create, design and develop products, services and so on, started to emerge.
It is still debatable what the term co-creation actually means and what is considered to be co-creation and what not. Some authors argue that co-creation already occurs when consumers are providing input in different business processes, while others argue that the active and continuous involvement of a consumer, indicating a productive collaboration between the business and it’s consumers, is the essence of co-creation (Jansen et al, 2013). Furthermore, co-creation is also associated with creating added value which would not have occurred without the input of both parties. However, obviously added value is difficult to measure and moreover, it is also difficult to determine for whom exactly the added value is beneficial (Saarijärvi et al, 2013). Anyway, basically co-creation can be viewed as a process in which firms and consumers redefine their roles towards each other and in which two-way communication and interaction are important aspects.
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Consumer Value Creation 