Prosumers knowledge sharing to develop and manage products

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to advance research on prosumers knowledge sharing with enterprises and public organizations by examining as well as improve the understanding of what knowledge about products, prosumers share and would like to share in order to improve products. This paper provides and verifies a new theoretical framework depicting prosumers knowledge about products, which they can share with business and public organizations. The reported outcomes are the result of a questionnaire survey that yielded responses from 783 Poland and 171 United Kingdom (UK) based prosumers. The research findings reveal that prosumers mainly share their knowledge about products functionality, ease and intuitiveness of use, as well as a products reliability and durability, whereas they rarely share knowledge related to products design or the packaging of products. It is also found that there are significant differences between knowledge about products that prosumers share and would like to share. In addition, Poland prosumers share and would like to share various kinds of knowledge about products more frequently than UK based prosumers.

Using knowledge exchange between prosumers and enterprises to implement circular economy activities in businesses

“…While the APQC framework contains five operating processes, and seven management processes, our amended framework comprises four operational processes in which prosumers' engagement can be specifically exploited for creating offerings, and this framework was applied to prosumers in Poland and the UK. As a result of this analysis, and other research previously reported (Ziemba et al, 2018), it was possible to further modify the framework for each of these four processes. The revised framework provides specific information about the specific types of knowledge prosumers share at the operational level, defined in the four Business Processes (BP) from BP2.0 Develop and Manage Products and Services through to BP5.0 Manage Customer Service.…”

“…There are many models and classifications of business processes featured in the literature. Ziemba and Eisenbardt (2015) as well as Ziemba et al (2018) used the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) Process Classification Framework (PCF) to propose a conceptual framework of prosumer engagement in creating business process innovations…”

Value added knowledge by prosumers in Poland and the UK specifically for service process stages

“…The term prosumer is directly connected with a prosumption term which means the process in which prosumers actively share knowledge with enterprises or other prosumers (Bylok, 2013;Fine, Gironda, & Petrescu, 2017;Hernández-Serrano, Renés-Arellano, Graham, & Greenhill, 2017;Rayna & Striukova, 2016;Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010;Tapscott & Williams, 2006;Xie, Bagozzi, & Troye, 2008). Prosumers' activities are also referred to as the activities undertaken to produce new products and services of value for enterprises, as well as for themselves (Ziemba, Eisenbardt, Mullins, & Grabara, 2018).…”

“…Consequently, prosumers' knowledge can be embedded into the business process. Detailed analyses showed that their knowledge can lead to development of new products, upgrading of existing products or improvements of the products (Ziemba et al, 2018). Likewise, their knowledge sharing may lead to the development of services and in turn could aid those business processes that relate to service developments, upgrading and improvement of existing services.…”

“…Table 1 indicates the types of services development knowledge that prosumers can share with enterprises. Ziemba et al (2018). Thus, BP2.0 has not been included in this analysis as it involves a number of detailed knowledge types that are too broad to include in the analysis and discussion in this paper.…”