Prosumers' toolkit
Prosumers want and use advanced technology, including social media, with ease and confidence. They use it to connect with others -- to share ideas and opinions. They use it to influence the next revolution of everything important to them.
Web 2.0 has created a platform where prosumers get to experience the latest offerings that will impact, enhance and influence their lifestyle and where manufacturers get to hear what prosumers want, and then reflect this influence in the marketplace. Prosumers thrive through Web 2.0 and the new landscape it offers to become more engaged and to establish greater influence in the availability of professional-quality consumer electronics products.
Chief among prosumers' tools are blogs, social networks, interactive and virtual environments, and mobile communications.
- Blogs: The blogosphere has grown immensely, and represents the single most influential new channel for prosumers to reach each other and manufacturers and retailers.
- Social networks: Social networks, such as the popular Facebook, MySpace.com and Digg.com, increasingly are seen as an opportunity to not only connect with prosumers but also influence their thinking and decision-making around product and service purchases.
- Interactive and virtual environments: Prosumers are most likely to be active participants and leaders in virtual environments. Through Second Life and other virtual environments, prosumers are creating and participating in new areas related to product and service choices.
- Mobile communications: The ability to connect and participate through mobile communications, anywhere, anytime, is adding urgency and immediacy to prosumers' ability to influence
Prosumers' need to critique and create
Underlying prosumers' interests is a desire to be heard: to critique and create. Generally, prosumers are not just discussing what's new but are also taking an active role in giving birth to new products and experiences. Web environments fueled by platforms like Second Life empower prosumers to create personalities for themselves and interact with others. Their behaviors and choices become models for future offerings from digital content providers and manufacturers who want to penetrate that space.
Prosumer-generated content appears on social networks like YouTube and the thousands of blogs dedicated to new consumer technologies and innovations in diverse markets such as video on cell phones and online gaming. For example, recent postings on a CNET blog created a spillover in traditional media around the development and introduction of "surface computing." It is not hard to see why the consumer electronics industry is particularly likely to be influenced and affected by prosumer-generated content, social networking and blogging, especially around the "latest and greatest" industry gadgets and services.
Also interesting to watch is the activity of the "prosumer-in-waiting," who is now just coming online. True, they influence more reactively and certainly in a less sophisticated manner (email or online survey), but will soon join the community and become a certified prosumer themselves.
Prosumers' active participation
Marketers have much to benefit from prosumers' participation in this new interactive exchange of information and ideas. A great example of a brand that has had tremendous success doing just this is Apple with its easy to use authoring and creation tools that can and often do turn consumers into professionals. Today, there are people earning a living creating videos with Apple's iMovie.
Another company that has successfully capitalized on prosumers' need to participate and interact is iRobot. When hackers began hacking iRobot's Roomba and using its robot technology to make other robotics, iRobot released a hackable version for all those would-be robotics designers, called the iRobot Create.
A brand that is starting to engage prosumers better and better is Dell. Dell was one of the first major computer manufacturers that promoted a social network on its site. At first, this network was hidden as images on Dell's homepage rotated between consumer to enterprise offerings. Now it is front and center, a definite enhancement and a real testimony to prosumer relations.
Another company that is prime to jump on the prosumer bandwagon is Radio Shack. The long-time supplier of electronic parts is now successfully marketing itself as the place to "do stuff," not just "get stuff," which is a real attraction to prosumers.