Cocreation is chaotic: What it means for marketing when no one has control

The co-creation of value is emerging as the new frontier in marketing. Value creation is now conceptualized as shared by both producers and consumers, making the terminology separating these roles increasingly archaic and obsolete. To date, the literature has emphasized this process primarily from the firm’s vantage point. Current understandings point toward a balanced, shared, harmonious relationship between producers and consumers, where controlling the co-creation process with consumers ensures a predictable and satisfactory outcome for a company. Because the consumer perspective has received less theoretical and empirical attention, we conducted an in-depth investigation that details the consumers’ experiences of co-creation within the context of a brand community. What we found is very different from a balanced, controlled process depicted in the literature. Based on these findings, we argue that the notions of control and predictability that have served as the established foundation for marketing theory and practice may require serious revision in light of examining how consumers create value. Because of this, our data lead us to propose some new ideas about managing brand experiences in increasingly interconnected and chaotic environments, where control is rapidly shifting more to the side of consumers, and no one now holds any sort of majority control.