Working customer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term working customer describes a social and economic development in relation to the change in the relationship between consumers and companies , in which operational functions are specifically outsourced to private consumers (customers, clients, patients, citizens, etc.). The aim of the company is to save costs and / or to use productive services of the customers (product development, innovations, quality control, marketing, advertising etc.) directly or indirectly for the added value.

The working customer thesis

The expression and the thesis of the "working customer" go back to the work psychologist Kerstin Rieder (University of Applied Sciences Aalen) and the work and industrial sociologist G. Günter Voss (TU Chemnitz). The corresponding considerations were elaborated in the book of the same name (Voss / Rieder 2005) against the background of a “subject-oriented” position in sociology (→ subject-oriented sociology ) and placed in a socio-theoretical and socio-diagnostic context.

It will u. a. showed that development began many years ago with self-service, then with the use of the customer as an advertising medium (logos on clothing), the transfer of the final production of products to the buyers of products (e.g. IKEA ) and the Obligation of guests to clean up in system catering reached a new level. This is currently being systematically expanded again, primarily through the Internet and a new generation of machines.

Important examples are:

The result is that consumers are more and more often (not always voluntarily and usually without financial compensation) taking on work that was previously done by the companies. Largely unnoticed, customers become unpaid informal employees of the company - and more and more economically used productive functions in the narrower sense are moving into the private lives of many people.

This is similar to a development that the American futurologist Alvin Toffler (1980) described as increased “ prosuming ” (the combination of “consuming” and “producing”) in the 1980s . For Alvin Toffler, this was a step in which consumers want to and can regain a piece of production sovereignty, this is currently primarily proving to be an economic development in which an entrepreneurial shift of costs or an expansion of value creation potential is taking place. The American sociologist George Ritzer drew attention to similar processes with his widely acclaimed thesis of McDonaldization (1995). In 2015, the US journalist Craig Lambert took up the topic under the heading "Shadow Work".

Against the background of individual early ideas, the trend towards increased relocation of work to customers is meanwhile intensely propagated by the relevant management literature with informative terms or concepts: Customers should become "service providers for service providers" (O. Grün / JC Brunner 2002), if not even to “partial employees” (Mills / Morris 1986), which enables “outsourcing to customers” (H. Corsten 1997, 2000). It is particularly attractive to try to involve customers in the value chain with productive (especially innovative) services (" Open Innovation ", The customer as "Value creation partner", Reichwald / Piller 2006). In the current discussion on the interactive Internet ( web2.0 ) and the possibilities of its economic use, this is being discussed intensively and increasingly controversially under the heading of “ crowdsourcing ” (“outsourcing” of services to the “crowd” of Internet users).

See also

literature

Directly to the thesis of the working customer (chronologically):

  • GG Voss, K. Rieder: The working customer. When consumers become unpaid employees. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2005.
  • GG Voss: The next level of self-service is the working customer…. In: GDI impulses. Winter 2005, pp. 56-65.
  • F. Kleemann, GG Voss, R. Rieder: Un (der) paid Innovators: The Commercial Utilization of Consumer Work through Crowdsourcing. In: Science, Technology & Innovation Studies. 4 (1), 2008, pp. 5-26 ( download ).
  • F. Kleemann, GG Voss, R. Rieder: Crowdsourcing and the working consumer. In: AIS studies. 1 (1) 2008. ( download ).
  • K. Rieder, GG Voss: The Working Customer - an Emerging New Type of Consumer. In: Journal Psychologie des Alltagshandelns / Psychology of Everyday Activity. Vol. 3 (2), 2010, pp. 1-10.
  • S. Hornung, F. Kleemann, GG Voß: Managing a New Consumer Culture: Working Customers in Web 2.0 as a Source of Corporate Feedback. In: V. Wittke, H. Hanekop: New Forms of Collaborative Innovation and Production on the Internet. Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen 2011, pp. 131–152. ( download book )
  • F. Kleemann, C. Eismann, T. Beyreuther, S. Hornung, K. Duske, GG Voss: Companies in Web 2.0. For the strategic integration of consumer services through social media. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012.
  • T. Beyreuther, K. Duske, C. Eismann, F. Kleemann, S. Hornung (Eds.): Consumers @ Work. On the new relationship between companies and users in Web 2.0. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012.
  • W. Dunkel, F. Kleemann (Ed.): Customers at work. New perspectives on interactive service work. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2013.

Selected other literature (alphabetically):

  • M. Bartl: Open Innovation! (PDF; 7.0 MB). White paper. Munich 2008.
  • O. Green, J.-C. Brunner: The customer as a service provider. From self-service to co-production. Gabler, Wiesbaden 2002.
  • J. Howe: The Rise of Crowdsourcing. In: Wired. June 14, 2006
  • J. Howe: Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. Crown Business, New York 2008.
  • C. Lambert: Shadow Work. The unpaid, unseen jobs that fill your day. Counter Point, Berkeley 2015. (German: Zeitfresser: How industry makes us its slaves. Redline Verlag, 2015)
  • PK Mills, JH Morris: Clients as "Partial" Employees of Service Organizations: Role Development in Client Participation. In: Journal of Management Review. 11 (4), 1986, pp. 726-735.
  • Ch. Papsdorf: How surfing becomes work. Crowdsourcing in Web 2.0. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2009.
  • R. Reichwald, F. Piller: Interactive added value. Open innovation, individualization and new forms of division of labor. Gabler, Wiesbaden 2006.
  • G. Ritzer: The McDonaldization of society. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • A. Toffler: The third wave. Future opportunities. Perspectives for 21st Century Society. Goldmann, Munich 1980.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ C. Lambert (2015). Shadow work. The unpaid, unseen jobs that fill your day . Berkeley: Counter Point (German: Zeitfresser: How industry makes us its slaves , Redline Verlag 2015). Note: The title seems misleading: "Shadow work" (or "hidden work") has so far been understood differently in the specialist discussion and refers to work that is not systematically considered socially (housework, family work, etc.) or to work in social gray areas, from “ undeclared work ” to illegal and even criminal activities.