Creative Consumers: What’s your stance?

Creative consumers are "customers who adapt, modify, or transform a propriety offering" (Berthon et al. 2007: 39)

A few years back I wrote a paper with colleagues (Pierre Berthon, Leyland Pitt and Stephen Kates) on the phenomenon of creative consumers. These are individuals, or communities of individuals, who adapt or modify a proprietary product offering. They tinker and experiment with almost any product or service, ranging from automobiles to tours of Disney World.

Traditionally, companies have disliked consumers messing with their products and services. They have got annoyed when the product is modified and used in a way in which it was not necessarily designed e.g., networking several Sony PlayStation 3 consoles to make a super computer. They can also get irritated when consumers alter their products and use them in regions of the world where they are not yet available, e.g., when iPhones were first released in the US they were hacked to work in Canada where they were not yet released. And firms get really angry when consumers modify products, such as the Xbox, to use pirated content. Consequently, many companies have tended to view creative consumers as threats to their business revenues and damaging to the reputation of their product brands.

In our paper, however, we argue that even though some creative consumers might initially signify a black hole for future revenue because they breach copyright and intellectual property, they also represent a gold mine of ideas and business opportunities. To explain this we developed a framework to articulate and illustrate four strategic responses that firms might have towards creative consumers - see Figure 1 (Berthon et al. 2007). For a more detailed description of each stance, see the full article.

We argue that responding to the threats and opportunities of creative consumers will require firms to manage a three-way fit between:

1. A specific stance toward creative consumers;
2. The relative ability and desire of consumers to adapt, modify, and transform their products; and,
3. The firm’s ability to scan, track, and control consumer-produced innovations.

What stance does your organization have?

If it has more than one stance, how does it manage any potential conflict between the stances?

You can also download and view a presentation of these research ideas here:

When Customers Get Clever: Managerial Approaches to Dealing with Creative Consumers from Ian McCarthy

This post is based on research and ideas in the article:
Berthon, P.R., Pitt, L.F., McCarthy, I.P., and Kates, S.M. 2007. When Customers Get Clever: Managerial Approaches to Dealing with Creative Consumers. Business Horizons, 50(1): 39-47.

Ian McCarthy

For more information about me and my work, follow me on:

Subscribe via Email