What is Consumer Co-Creation

The rise of Web 2.0 technologies increasingly promotes a new openness of production and services. In contrast to the former production within closed systems, companies have to open up for new ways of value creation. The openness can be implemented either with regard to interdepartmental cooperation or in terms of collaboration beyond company boundaries – in cooperation with other companies (B2B) or with customers or users (B2C). The latter is also known as consumer co-creation, where users participate voluntarily without compensation or treaty-defined tasks. Core challenges are the successful coordination of all participants as well as the trustworthy producer-consumer relationship, irrespective of whether or not a company initiates such a co-creation actively. The chapter analyses the mechanisms of consumer co-creation and discusses the required confidence and motivation on the basis of a case study to explain opportunities and challenges of a user-generated approach to media production.