PAN FRESCO E INDUSTRIAL

Another perspective of consumer productivity has emerged recently in consumers’ role as integrators of resources. In marketing, Vargo and Lusch (2008) have recognised resource integration as a role of value co-creation within a marketplace that is dominated by the exchange of services more than the exchange of goods. Drawing from the S-D logic of marketing, Arnould (2008) suggests that individuals and households are like firms and can integrate resources as participant co-creators of their products and services (Arnould, 2008;

32 Vargo and Lusch, 2008). This perspective of consumer productivity, therefore, is more relevant to prosumption and the role of prosumers as producers of their products.

Such notion of the individual consumer as an integrator of resources is not entirely new. For example, Becker (1965) suggests that households play roles in the marketplace which maximise utilities and reduce costs in a manner which is similar to the traditional theory of the firm. The work by Becker (1965) focuses on the role of households as allocators of their working and consumption time in exchange for producing their commodities. In his view households are producers of commodities by combining (i.e. integrating) resources such as goods and time similar to the cost-minimisation rules applied by firms. Becker (1965) argues that a decline in the income of a household is correlated with a decline in the time spent at consumption activities, since time for consumption becomes more expensive to households.

This indicates that consumers can allocate or reallocate resources and apply the same cost-minimisation basis employed by firms.

Consistent with later revisions on their service-dominant logic (hereafter S-D logic), Vargo and Lusch (2008, p, 9) suggest that “all social and economic actors are resource integrators”. Consequently, they agree with Arnould (2008) that individual consumers can be viewed equally as integrators of resources similar to firms in the marketplace. This implies that most consumers focus on using goods supplied by firms as service-based resources for value creation more than goods to be acquired for individual possession. This also means that consumers are constant integrators of resources who co-create value through the use of firms’ resources (Vargo and Lusch, 2008).

Lusch and Vargo (2006) acknowledge that their conceptualization of a service-dominated market has been overly oriented to a managerial (i.e. firms, marketing) rather than a

33 consumer perspective. This means that individual consumers are rarely described as dependant integrators of resources. Rather, consumers are largely viewed as integrators of resources who are only enabled to act on firms’ resources. This illustrates that resources are needed in order for consumers to become producers of their products. It would be then easier to note that the nature of resources available to consumers go beyond the material (i.e. tangible) assets that are supplied by many home improvement stores for the use of consumers and businesses. This suggests that an individual consumer can be viewed as a producer of his products through the integration of diverse resources similar to firms.

Vargo and Lusch (2004) refer to two types of resources using ideas from Constantin and Lusch (1994) which are available to firms and customers: operand and operant resources.

Constantin and Lusch (1994) associate the productive effect to the operant resources (e.g.

knowledge and skills) which are used to perform an act on operand resources (e.g.

materials). For example, an organisation such a public library may have operand resources such as building/space and books and operant resources such as staff and visitors. In this case, staff and visitors are perceived as operant resources because they can produce effect through acting on other operand resources. Operand resources therefore may include goods which can be changed in terms of their form, time, place and possession, while operant resources may include knowledge workers who can act on these operand resources as appliances and utilities (Vargo and Lusch, 2004).

Constantin and Lusch (1994) attempt to distinguish operand resources as finite and tangible as opposed to operant resources which are infinitive, invisible and intangible. The literature puts more focus on operant resources since these are perceived as the producers of effect.

Hunt (2004) offers a useful review to help researchers understand the nature of operant resources and how these resources can be used to act on operand resources. He proposes

34 four categorisations of operant resources with exemplars which are typically used in the literature of business: human resources (e.g., the skills and knowledge of individuals), organizational resources (e.g., controls, routines, cultures, competences), informational resources (e.g., knowledge about market segments, competitors, and technology), and relational resources (e.g., relationships with competitors, suppliers, and customers). In this categorisation Hunt (2004) demonstrates the complicated nature of resource integration as applied by firms. This is consistent with the view of commercial products as outcomes of such integration of firms’ resources as stated by Grönroos (1997, p.413) “A product is a result of how various resources, such as people, technologies, raw materials, knowledge and information have been managed so that a number of features that customers in target markets are looking for are incorporated into it. Thus, a product as a more or less pre-fabricated package of resources and features that is ready to be exchanged has evolved.”

Such categorisations of firms’ operant resource by Hunt (2004) combined with the description of products by Grönroos (1997) enable us to recognise individual consumers as integrators of their operand and operant resources. For the purpose of this thesis, therefore, operant resources which can be found relevant to consumers refer mainly to two types based on the suggestion by Hunt (2004); human resources (e.g., the skills and knowledge of a consumer) and relational resources (e.g., relationships with other peer consumers).

Operand resources, however, refer to material objects available to prosumers (e.g. products, commodities) as theorised in many empirical studies in the resources literature (Baron and Harris, 2008, Arnould, 2006; Baron and Warnaby, 2011).

Several researchers, in line with Vargo and Lusch (2008) and Arnould (2008), have built on the theory of resource integration (e.g. Maglio and Spohrer, 2008; Kleinaltenkamp et al., 2012). But most of those researchers have adopted a firm rather than a consumer

35 orientation of resources’ integration. Those researchers have focused on the role of the consumer as a resource integrator of his/her operant resources with the operand resources of firms (Baron and Harris, 2008; Baron and Warnaby, 2011; Hilton, 2008, Madhavaram and Hunt, 2008; Ngo and O'Cass, 2009). For example, Baron and Warnaby (2011) examine resource integration in an organisational context and conclude that consumers integrate their operant resources in partnership with the operand resources of an organisation (the British Library).

The above discussion demonstrates that the view of consumers as resource integrators has been limited to two assumptions. First, consumers are primarily integrators of operant resources since they lack access to operand resources. Second, firms are needed to manage consumers’ use and integration of resources. Thus, the notion of consumers (individuals or groups) becoming producers of their products and services without the participation with firms has been greatly overlooked in the consumer and marketing literature. However, many existing consumer practices such as DIY, crafting, car modifying and home remodelling neither fit a firm-consumer co-creation model, nor require consumers to integrate their resources with firms. In a sense, these practices which often require the integration of consumer material resources with their skills replace the role of professional firms rather than participate with them. There are several noteworthy examples which demonstrate that some consumers can produce alternative products which replace those in the marketplace (Bekin et al., 2006;Campbell, 2005; Kozinets et al., 2008, Ravid et al., 2008). Additionally, there are other examples which suggest that consumers can also participate with other consumers in order to produce some of their products (Cova and White, 2010; Moraes et al., 2010; Ravid et al., 2008). So, these examples offer a view of

36 consumers as producers of their products on their own or through the participation with other consumers rather than the participation with firms.

Recently, Cova and Dalli (2009) have developed the concept of working consumers. They refer to multiple terms in marketing and consumer research to describe new consumer roles (e.g. prosumer, protagonist, post-consumer, consum’actor). They suggest a more active consumer who is engaged within productive relationships in the marketplace. But Cova and Dalli (2009) also view consumers as workers who can use their knowledge and competencies to act as producers alone, or with other customers or companies. This theorisation by Cova and Dalli (2009) of working consumers enables a new insight in which individual prosumers can be viewed as a segment of working consumers who like to produce some of their own products alone or through participation with other working consumers.