Читать книгу Sharing Economy and Big Data Analytics - Soraya Sedkaoui - Страница 40

“Ritzer (1983) deepened the notion of a prosumer by talking about the phenomenon of society’s ‘McDonalization’. In his opinion, the fast food industry in the United States began to involve the consumer in the work chain as early as the 1950s. The argument is that consumers have become the waiters (by carrying food and collecting garbage) and their own kitchen assistants for their meals (by adding condiments and certain ingredients or by composing their salads in salad counters). Consumers are happy that they feel the product is more in line with their tastes and are happy that they do not have to wait to be served (not to mention that this also reduces tips). For companies, this is a significant increase in productivity, since the consumer performs tasks that were previously the responsibility of salaried employees.”

For potential consumers, the evolution of this concept represents a perspective and an opportunity to express their opinions and update their preferences. Several researchers have studied this growing phenomenon. Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010) report that:

It is only recently that prosumption has become an important subject in the literature. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) describe this trend as ‘co-creation of value’.

Tapscott and Williams (2006) consider the prosumer as part of the new Wikinomic³ model, where companies put consumers to work.

In his book Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen (2007) opposes this idea and criticizes this model, as well as any thought process that promotes consumer dependence on the producer. However, Beer and Burrows (2007) see new relationships between production and consumption emerging, particularly on the web.