ساخت یک چهره : تصاویر گرافیکی از موضع گیری مدیریتی نسبت به خلاقیت مشتریان

Creative consumers – consumers who adapt, modify or transform a proprietary offering – represent an intriguing paradox for business. On the one hand they can be a black hole for future revenue, with breach of copyright and intellectual property, while on the other hand they represent a gold mine of ideas and business opportunities. This problem is central to business – business needs to both create and capture value; the problem is that creative consumers demand a shift in the mindsets and business models of how firms both create and capture value. We develop a typology of firms’ stances to creative consumers based upon their attitude and action towards customer innovation. We then consider the implications of the stances model for corporate strategy, and examine a three-step approach to dealing with creative consumers, namely, awareness, analysis and response.

How do firms feel about consumers who alter and modify their proprietary offerings? How do managers measure their stances toward this, and what will firms do, or be prepared to do about this behavior? How can the type complex data that would result from this type of investigation be summarized and communicated succinctly and effectively? Recent reports in the popular business press and in the media in general have highlighted corporate dilemmas in the face of the relentless meddling of “creative consumers”. Apple’s iPhone 4 was hacked, unlocked or jailbroken (depending on one’s views). Microsoft’s Kinect gaming device suffered a similar fate, as did a range of Sony’s gaming devices. Yet it is not just the marketers of digital technologies that are exposed to the creative wiles of their customers – even simple consumption products suffer a similar fate. The video hosting website YouTube features literally hundreds of videos showing what happens when the well-known chewy candy Mentos is dissolved in Diet Coke (King, 2007). One of the best-known illustrations of this explosive phenomenon, featured on the David Letterman show, drew mixed reactions from the two brands. Mentos contacted the experimenters and said that they loved what they were doing, and asked how they could help. A Coca-Cola spokesperson, quoted in the Wall Street Journal was far less enthusiastic, stating, “We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke] more than try experiments with it”, adding, “the craziness with Mentos…doesn’t fit with the brand personality of Diet Coke.” (King, 2007) Some time later, however, Coca Cola changed its stance, and became enthusiastic supporters of the Mentos-Diet Coke experiments. The firm used its corporate Web sites—http://www.coke.com and http://www.cocacola.com—to add The Coke Show, a series of user-generated video challenges, featuring the Mentos-Diet Coke experiments. The Mentos-Diet Coke experiments emphasize a number of simple, but important facts. First, consumers are creative when it comes to the proprietary offerings of firms, and their creativity is not limited to programmable, high-tech, digital products – it spans a wide spectrum. Second, their creativity is not necessarily focused on making products better, or easier to use – often it is simply about having fun. Third, their attempts at creativity are far more easily broadcast and disseminated in this age of digital social media – one of the Mentos-Diet Coke videos, dubbed “Experiment #137”, has attracted more than 8 million viewers on YouTube. Fourth, different firms adapt different stances to the phenomenon of consumer creativity: Mentos was positively disposed toward it, while Coca Cola was (initially) negative. Finally, firms can and do change their stances toward consumer creativity: After becoming aware of, and analyzing the phenomenon, Coca Cola changed its stance and the way it acted – from being placidly against the phenomenon to actively supporting it. Importantly, this required the management of Coca Cola to become aware of the phenomenon (“What are consumers doing with our products apart from consuming them, and how are they doing this?”) (King, 2007). Having become aware of it, the firm needed to analyze what was happening and the effect it could have (it needed information not only on the creativity phenomenon, but also on general market sentiment toward it). Having analyzed the phenomenon, Coca Cola had to take action. It changed from a firm mildly annoyed by consumer creativity, to one that exploited it for the positive consumer engagement it fostered with the brand. These are the questions on which this paper focuses. First, is it possible to measure the stance of a firm toward consumer creativity, and more specifically, how well a firm becomes aware of it; how effectively it analyzes it, and how prepared the firm is to take action concerning it? Second, is it possible to summarize these measurements for the individual firm, and at aggregate level, to portray these graphically in an effective way? In other words, is it possible to portray the stance of a firm toward consumer creativity in a simple, yet powerful manner, so that it can be communicated to whoever the firm decides is a target audience – management, employees, customers, or a broader public? The paper is structured as follows: First, we briefly review the literature on consumer creativity, and illustrate the notion of firm stances toward the phenomenon by means of recent examples of consumer creativity and firm reactions to these. Next we describe the use of an instrument to measure firm stances toward consumer creativity within a large sample of firms. However, the focus is not so much on the psychometric properties of the instrument, or on a sophisticated analysis of this data as it is on the use of a powerful statistical graphic technique that is used to summarize and display the various stances toward consumer creativity. Therefore, the next section of the paper introduces the Chernoff Faces technique and applies it to the results of the study as a way of illustrating the technique’s use in this regard. The paper concludes by acknowledging some of the limitations in the approach, by identifying managerial implications and outlining some avenues for future research.

While firms have paid little attention to the phenomenon of creative consumers in the past, this situation is changing. Creative consumer will be an increasingly important force for change and innovation in many markets so that firms will have to enhance their awareness of the phenomenon, analyze its impact, and devise a suitable response. The scale provided by Berthon et al. (forthcoming) offers one way for firms to assess these characteristics, and Chernoff Faces are an effective way of both summarizing and communicating this information. As firms have varying situational factors, strategies, and offerings, their response to creative consumers will also vary – this needs to be communicated effectively both within the firm and beyond its borders. As technology, markets, and consumers advance and develop, there will undoubtedly be a migration between stances, and firms will need to reflect this both in their thinking and in their communication with various stakeholders. As Berthon et al. (2008) advise, responding to the threats and opportunities of creative consumers will require firms to manage a three-way fit between their stance, the relative ability and desire of consumers to adapt, modify, and transform their products, and the firm’s ability to scan, track, and control consumer-produced innovations. In doing so they will need to use every tool at their disposal. We suggest that Chernoff Faces can be a simple yet powerful tool in the manager’s arsenal that will allow them to assimilate complex information quickly, track the market dynamics that create this information over time, and to communicate this to the various stakeholders who impact on it, and are in turn affected by it. What can a manager do with creative consumer stance data and Chernoff Faces in a marketing sense? In summary, we would argue that a marketer can use the faces to assess their own firm’s stances, track these over time, and compare themselves to competitor firms. From a customer perspective, marketers can use the faces, and the data contained therein to communicate what their attitudes towards customer creativity with their products is and what the firm will be prepared to do about it. In times of rapid technological and social change, coupled with a concomitant reduction in attention span, graphic devices such as faces might prove to be a useful marketing communication tool.