Putting Consumers to Work

TLDR

Co‑creation is a new paradigm that has captured the imagination of marketing and management professionals and scholars. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of government and neo‑Marxist theories of labor and value, the study critically interrogates the cultural, social, and economic politics of this new management technique. Co‑creation is portrayed as a political power that simultaneously frees and controls consumers, shifting corporate influence from disciplining to collaborating with consumer freedom to continuously generate and exploit creative labor.

Abstract

Co-creation is a new paradigm that has captured the imagination of marketing and management professionals and scholars. Drawing on Foucault's notion of government and neo-Marxist theories of labor and value, we critically interrogate the cultural, social, and economic politics of this new management technique. We suggest that co-creation represents a political form of power aimed at generating particular forms of consumer life at once free and controllable, creative and docile. We argue that the discourse of value co-creation stands for a notion of modern corporate power that is no longer aimed at disciplining consumers and shaping actions according to a given norm, but at working with and through the freedom of the consumer. In short, administering consumption in ways that allow for the continuous emergence and exploitation of creative and valuable forms of consumer labor is the true meaning of the concept of co-creation.