In my endnote of this subject, I note that offline do-it yourselfers are well known. Alvin Toffler called them "prsumers" to empahsize the combination of roles of "producer" and "consumer".
Kim and Maubourgne's HBR article disucessed how thiese new user-producers transformed the value chain and business models of companies as diverse as IKEA and iMAX theathres.
Try a few thought experiments and value-chain mappings in your research notebook:
1. Draw a value chain for IKEA and for a traditional furniture retailer. What vaue chain roles does the consumer take over from the traditional furniture retailer? How does that change IKEA's business model and cost structure. How does that relate to customer experience, engagement and economic "switching cost"? But ine the end, who designs the furniture? What is the "collective user value" and how is it captured at IKEA? Which curve is IKEA likely to be following in Figure 1-9 p.33?
2. How does drawing a value chain and looking carefully at the roles, responsibilities of consumers/users in the value chain help you make generatlizations about offline and online business models?
3. Is being an "assembler" and self-delivery prosumer as valuable or highly rewarded as being a "designer" or "orchestrator" in the furniture and interior design business?
4. what's different about "collective user value" compared to individual "prosumer" value?
1. The consumer takes over the actual assembly and delivery of the furniture from Ikea. This allows Ikea to save money on the assembling and delivery of the furniture and to pass on those savings to the consumer. I believe Ikea followed the Web 1.0 curve. The reasoning behind this is that I believe Ikea had initial costs involved such as stores, advertising, production, and store associates. The initial costs would have caused the company's curve to go into the negative until the brand caught on and sales began to be made.
2. Drawing the value charts assist in visualizing the various states that the business models go through.
3. I don't believe that being a prosumer is as valuable to the company as the designer. Without the designer, there would not be any furniture to purchase and assemble. Prosumers cannot be designers because the cost to make one peice of furniture would be much higher than to mass produce furniture.
4. I may be way off base in my understanding, but to me mass collective user value is exemplified by Ikea being able to save all consumers money by leaving the assembly and delivery to the customer. The collective savings passed on to all consumers is very valuable. Meanwhile, the individual value is important but Ikea couldn't lower the prices if only a few people were prosumers. It is in the collective that there is real value. I think that is the same on the Internet with Web 2.0. Web content on a site such as Flickr is only valuable because of the numbers of prosumers that provide content.
Posted by: Justin | July 22, 2008 at 01:04 PM