The Web 2.0 and the globalization impact on new consumer emergence and classification

摘要

The advances in telecommunications and the rise of the Internet have empowered traditional consumers to act as value producers. They started with self-service technologies and developed unlimited reach and collaboration possibilities in the virtual world. By commuting principles and long established stages of development these new consumers are spreading in all domains, triggering an avalanche of prosumer-oriented features. The present study is trying to classify and explain the origin of all prosumer activities we are able to discover in the physical and the digital environment. The insight in the prosumer world helps us understand how the society and corporate entities could effectively relate to this new consumer role.