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”Consumer roles and obligations in the (post)-digital media society”

Conference:Teaching consumer competences

- implementing strategies for consumer education

Norw. Ministry of Children, Equality

and Social Inclusion

February 16 – 17, 2010

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SIFO, www.sifo.no

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A consumer perspective

• Seeing markets and market relations from the consumer perspective

• Products and services (should be) accommodating consumer wants and needs

• Consumers (should be) acting as rational and reflected citizens

• Relevant market information (should be) available and visible tothe consumer

• However; often asymmetrical information access. Businesses have the upper hand: experts on their own product portfolio manipulate through marketing hide information relevant for market competition

• In later years:• Consumer role has become more orientated towards: sustainability, ethics, moral choices awareness of production processes effects that consumption has on society

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• Digitalisation and the information society:• Increasing digitalisation of commercial activity; content (products), communication

(marketing), distribution platforms (multi-channel), feed-back-mechanisms (interactive), information access (global reservoir).

• Structural changes:• Not only new technology and more information introduced to society…• Information and technology are facilitators for deep changes in the societal structure• Implies new logics ownership/rights, business models, roles, power relations, time-

space compression, etc, etc.• Increasing technology dependence• Potential for “the digital” becoming an exclusion mechanism

• Technological inclusion:• Information society can be viewed as ”technology deterministic/optimistic”• Everyone should participate therefore; support digital access for all• Access and use in “absolute” terms increases for (almost) all groups…• But increasing ”relative” differences.

• Key challenges:• Commanding and controlling the digital technologies at hand (not being commanded)• Harnessing and navigating information (information abundance)• Providing access to these opportunities for all (on several levels)• Equipping consumers with the necessary tools and knowledge to practice the consumer

role (skills / competence / literacy / motivation)

New context for practicing consumption

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Information – a core challenge

• Information abundance:• Information abundance information overload• Too much choice – actual freedom increasing while feeling

of freedom may be reduced• Less time to evaluate every product / consumption activity /

information piece before deciding • More information, more choice greater risk of apathy

among consumers.• Hence; less informed and rational consumption choices.• Information about same phenomenon/product stems from

various resources. Who to trust?• Harder to evaluate information quality

• Information relevance:• When everything ”goes digital” only the digital becomes

relevant.• Digital information is manageable in terms of

systematisation and navigation analogue information is less so.

• Hence, in practice, analogue information is out-defined does not “exist” when choices are made.

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• Information management

• Skills to handle information abundance and securing relevance• Consumer guidance third parties, consumer agencies, consumers• Technological navigation tools for simplification, search, comparison:

» Search engines» Infomediaries – agents providing advice» Shopbots – price comparison tools » Amateur testing sites» Power-buy amalgamations – negotiating prices/volume» Test sites by consumer organisations » Blogs» Petition sites – consumer-relevant utterances» User forums» Social media

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• Information market: • Information increasing value in the market through digitalisation• Information is collected, sorted, systematised, altered, stored, analysed and

distributed in a range of ways• Commercial actors see a potential for new business models and value

creation based on general data, public data and consumer data• Building and controlling profiles of consumers + permission to use = valuable

– Can tailor products– Target marketing– Secure loyalty

• Attention economy:• Abundance of information and commercial messages available

• Background for ”the attention economy”– Basic premise: information wealth gives attention poverty

– Attention becomes a scarce resource that need to be priced.

• Consumers must be aware of these advantage, capitalize on their own attention as a resource.

• Personal information management:• Secure consumers’ own data (i.e. identity and privacy management)• Extract benefits from possessing such information• Establish consumer as an ”information product” with value in the market

(must be voluntary and informed).

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• Information power:

• Digitalisation and information produces shifts in market powerfrom business to the individual consumer / consumer groups

• Consumers can use this power (both individually and as an aggregate) and compete with business and the technocracy

• overcoming information asymmetry• Increasing transparency

• Potential for organising interests, at low costs.

• Provided consumers with sanction opportunities: exit and voice

• Exit; leaving a commercial relation when dissatisfied, due to low exchange costs + easy access to alternative suppliers

• Voice; express discontent or complaints, through various digital forums and channels

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• Consumer competence – @ home

• Consumer role in digital era; connected with home• Searching at home, shopping at home, consuming at

home• Greater contextual control at home:

» Responsible for physical and technical environment.

» Left by oneself: own systems – little support» Responsible for acquiring, managing and

transferring data (often valuable or sensitive)

Risks:» Danger of compromising personal data,

due to failing security routines (few updates of anti-virus, pin-codes, encryption, relaxed about personal information…)

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• Self-service

• Expectations that consumer will ”do more”

• Both private and public actors may ”punish” consumers for not doing self-service

Challenges:

• Ruins the traditional principle of division of labour –and comparative advantages?

• Self-service not suited for everyone?

• Consumers becoming mediocre sales assistants?

• Traditional sales personnel migrating to support functions?

• ”Professionalizing” the consumer role?

• Will efficiency-gains be shared with consumers?

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• New role aspect: active consumers – deeper involvement in the value chain

• Consumer moves from passive buyer to active negotiator, in terms of:– Price – Product specifications– Eco awareness and ethics

• Consuming with the aid of digital support systems (often based on co-produced knowledge by “peer-consumers”)

• May participate in production, through– Feed-back processes (interaction) – as individuals (experts) or as aggregates (sum of consumers

experiences)– Beta-testing– Wiki-related work

Challenges:• When cumulating ”subjective evaluations”

– Consumers seen as neutral marketers– But services can be manipulated through crowd-hacking (business promoting their own products,

or talking negatively about competitors)– May undermine trust and credibility in consumer evaluations

• Commercial actors may transfer responsibility to consumers due to deeper involvement.

However…• Most everyday consumption standardised products with few demands for tailoring

ordinary consumption• Hence, involvement low and less active than may be predicted with “digital products”• High involvement with all products would be exhausting to the consumer• (although more and more “ordinary” products are being discussed online)

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• Changing premises for consumers in the information society

• Unlimited, free information…• Consumers supposed to act on that information, in more and more consumption

decisions.• Expansion of the consumer role (blurring / merging with citizen role)• Expected to voice frustrations, complaints and more general concerns.

• Can we demand this of consumers?– (sharing responsibility with public and commercial actors)

• Are all consumer groups capable?– (potential digital divide among consumer)– Absolute competence increases, but relatively more among resourceful consumers

relative gap increases.• How to equip consumers with the necessary means to deal with these

challenges?– Digital competence, analytical skills, critical and logical reasoning, ethical and moral

reflection of global character

• Demands a highly reflective, informed, competent, involved, motivated, environmental and ethical consumer…

• A super-consumer?• …with meta-competence, strongly anchored in the digital challenges that

the information society creates

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• Finally – returning to the title and the “post-digital in parenthesis”:

How ”digital” are these challenges that digitalisation produces?

Are we soon beyond the digital, and how will we then understand and deal with such challenges?

• Digital competence/literacy» Transgresses roles and sectors» Transgresses technologies and services» Transgresses the digital and the analogue domain

• Digital competence/literacy a precondition, but not necessary condition, for practicing the consumer role in the information society

• Next phase: when all citizens / consumer are born “into the digital” today’s separations will disappear, e.g.:

– e-commerce commerce– digital literacy literacy– etc

• Hence; in the post-digital era the digital has become the ordinary –and fully integrated with the analogue domain.

• New revolutions on the way: The internet of things – were all physical objects / people / environments will get unique and virtual identities and be connected in a seamless web of information.