Dan Fisher

Cocreation is chaotic: What it means for marketing when no one has control

The co-creation of value is emerging as the new frontier in marketing. Value creation is now conceptualized as shared by both producers and consumers, making the terminology separating these roles increasingly archaic and obsolete. To date, the literature has emphasized this process primarily from the firm’s vantage point. Current understandings point toward a balanced, shared, harmonious relationship between producers and consumers, where controlling the co-creation process with consumers ensures a predictable and satisfactory outcome for a company. Because the consumer perspective has received less theoretical and empirical attention, we conducted an in-depth investigation that details the consumers’ experiences of co-creation within the context of a brand community. What we found is very different from a balanced, controlled process depicted in the literature. Based on these findings, we argue that the notions of control and predictability that have served as the established foundation for marketing theory and practice may require serious revision in light of examining how consumers create value. Because of this, our data lead us to propose some new ideas about managing brand experiences in increasingly interconnected and chaotic environments, where control is rapidly shifting more to the side of consumers, and no one now holds any sort of majority control.

The Lived Meanings of Fanaticism: Understanding the Complex Role of Labels and Categories in Defining the Self in Consumer Culture

Fandom is often stigmatized as abnormal, dangerous, or silly (Lewis 1992). At the same time, fanaticism and fandom in its various incarnations are becoming the story of the times and of central importance to marketing theory and practice. How to develop and utilize fanatical consumers is counterbalanced by the dilemma often encountered where the most committed fans resist the attempts by marketers to grow market share via the inclusion of less involved consumers. Examining so‐called fanaticism in an in‐depth manner provides new and unique insights into the processes and complexities that lead to deeply involved commitment to lifestyles and consumer products or brands. This research involved the interviewing of individuals who have experienced the “fanatic” label to attempt to understand the motivations that drive their consumption and to examine the way in which these stigmatizations are used, accepted, modified, or refuted in the definition and construction of identity. The use of videography was uniquely able to capture this experience from a first‐person perspective. This is particularly important where the label and designation of “fanatic” is highly contested and controversial.

Investigating the Effects of Active Control on Brand Recall Within In-Game Advertising

Through the use of an experiment, this research investigates the value of active user control of brand exposure in a racing-style video game, and the moderating effect of brand familiarity. It is found that, for familiar brands only, giving the game player active control to select a branded race car or racetrack results in better recall of the brand compared to low control (passive exposure on a billboard). The effect of active control via brand choice was found for both visual and verbal brand exposures, indicating that the effects are independent of visual placement proximity within the game. The findings are discussed with respect to the limited-capacity model of attention and processing fluency theory, and a conceptual diagram of the relationship between active control, attention, processing fluency, and brand recall is presented.

You Can Observe a Lot Just by Watching: Using Videography in a Retail Setting to Teach Observational Research Methods

This teaching innovation involves the hands-on use of video recording and production technology to facilitate learning observational marketing research methods and techniques. While observation as a research method is growing in popularity in business and marketing, videography is becoming one of the most highly utilized ways to collect and analyze observational data. This allows consumer behavior to be captured in real life and time contexts. Additionally, because video technology enables such things as repeated playback and slow motion, videography facilitates detailed, insight rich analysis. With the widespread availability and affordability of video recording technology it is now possible to incorporate technology-based research techniques and projects into the course curriculum. In order to demonstrate how student learning can be facilitated using videography, this project draws on the concept of the “transition zone” as described in Paco Underhills (2000) Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping to teach students cutting-edge observational market research methods that are becoming essential to those in industry.

How Do People Think Marketing Works? Teaching Students How to Build Theory, Develop Imagination, and Discover Deeper Consumer Insights

Building theory is a different skill than knowing theory. While the traditional consumer behavior course does a good job in exposing students to our well-accepted theories, much less emphasis in the course is placed on students working to develop new theoretical insights of their own. In this paper, we first discuss why teaching this skill is crucially important. Next, we detail an exercise we have developed and refined for our consumer behavior courses that encourages students to build their own theories from the ground up. We then detail the benefits and outcomes of the exercise and discuss several key ways that it enlightens and enriches the student learning experience throughout an entire semester in consumer behavior. Furthermore, we discuss its potential adaptability for other courses such as marketing research and marketing strategy. Ultimately, our innovation actively engages students, allows them to better understand how theory is built and works on a deep level, pushes them to think deeply and imaginatively, and teaches them the importance of theory in crafting strategic plans and implementations.

Consumers bite on the social web about the film Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane was more than a movie, it was an internet phenomenon that poignantly exemplifies the new role consumers on the social web are playing in co-creating value. With the growing interface culture enabled by computer-mediated communications, consumers are rapidly beginning to generate their own content as well as intervene and directly contribute to the value-creating processes of firms. These interactive technologies are in the beginning stages of rewriting the rules and ways that products are researched, developed, marketed and supported. This study offers new theoretical and empirical insights into the way value is co-created using the web.