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Co-Creation
Introduction
Co-creation has become a widely used term to describe a shift in thinking from the organization as a definer of value to a more participative process where people and organizations together generate and develop meaning. In business it has come to inform approaches to insight, new product and service development and marketing. However, much of the research in the field has been conducted with consumers and marketers rather than other stakeholder groups ([19] Hatch and Schultz, 2010). Similarly many researchers and writers have been focused on a managerial perspective that stresses the organizational opportunity to co-opt customer competence ([40] Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2000). The danger with this instrumentalising approach to customer involvement is that it has the potential to create a consumer backlash that has been foreshadowed by some commentators ([9] Cova and Dalli, 2009; [55] Zwick et al. , 2008) and observed in the comments of some community participants ([21] Ind et al. , 2012). To counter charges that co-creation exploits consumers and other stakeholders who gift their time and intellect for the benefit of organizations, it needs to move beyond the co-opting lens and engage stakeholders in a reciprocally useful way. In this paper we will explore the antecedents of the modern interpretation of co-creation and demonstrate how a broader perspective that draws on different disciplines can help deliver a more sustainable and diverse approach.
The origins of co-creation
Traditional approaches to customer relationships have stressed two elements: the primacy of the knowledge of the organization and the act of purchase. However, both of these are questionable. [39] Nonaka and Hirotaka (1995) note that individuals are always linked through social interaction, so that while an organization may believe it controls the meaning of its brand(s), it can be argued that brand meanings are created by consumers and other stakeholders in a process of interaction. [23] Kärreman and Rylander (2008) in turn stress that the marketing led approach to brands tends to focus on the organization and to ignore the meaning that emerges through social and communicative processes. The implication is that while organizations may be able to influence the field of possible meanings in that they write the narratives of the brand, meaning itself is dialogic ([36] Morris, 2003). This connects...