Prosumers Spark Innovation and Growth

Innovating in an Always Changing Environment

A fast-paced economy creates intense competition between companies a growing need for innovation. Many companies have found that a key way to differentiate their company or brand is to co-create products and services that are initiated and refined directly by their customers through establishing on-going relationships of collective feedback and collaboration.

While theoretic concepts have merit, many of the best ideas are originated by those who will ultimately receive the most value. The entire marketplace then indirectly or directly has the opportunity to benefit from what its most highly-engaged customers are able to offer.

The intellectual capital provided by the consumer often becomes thin line between success and failure. By combining external resources with internal ones, customer-centric organizations are more likely to identify that critical inflection point that provides a breakthrough of technology, product innovation and process improvement.

Higher Level of Demand

Prosumers are the types of customers companies seek out. They are different from traditional customers in many ways. They are much more engaged and demanding. Prosumers seem to thrive in a constant environment of mobility, accessibility and connectability. They are motivated by continuous learning, inspired by new ideas and willing to embrace new processes to manage them. As early adopters, prosumers may or may not be fully are aware of their worth to companies that tend to seek them out to as valuable assets for innovation. If they do become aware, they often want to play an even larger and more significant role in designing or producing the goods and services they consume.

Generally prosumers are a good resource as they tend to be highly-educated and quite active. Research shows that they often have little distinction between their home and work lives. As a result, prosumers place a high value and embrace simplified solutions that they are willing to share with others. In their view, the use of advancing technologies is a way of balancing and managing busy lives to make them and those around them more productive and efficient.

Open to New Thinking

Successful companies realize that even if prosumers are a small portion of total their total consumers, they represent a disproportionate level of profit, insight and product generation. Prosumers are increasingly open to new concepts like: pricing alternatives, levels of service customization and distribution methods. Smart companies also realize that engaged prosumers are the ones that will be most likely to continue to purchase a product or recommend it to others.

Prosumers have diverse interests — and not all interests are purely economic. Many will use their voices to contribute to social and cultural innovation as well as products. They see new technologies as an empowering way to help them achieve this goal.

Innovation and Impact

The impact of the prosumer will continue to grow on many fronts by initiating new startups and challenging traditional thinking of larger organizations. The only thing that remains to be seen is at what exponential rate they will create transformations and influence change.

Impacting Innovation. ProsumerIndex.com is an independent research site focused on identifying and following innovative prosumer-driven thematic trends that are driving the new economies and impacting global markets. This article is for informational purposes only and to provide general knowledge about Prosumers, related brands and companies. We do not provide investment advice or product recommendations. The information on this site should not be used as a substitute for business, professional financial, legal, accounting or tax guidance.