Competing by participation – A winning marketing tool

Abstract

In the new media and communications context audiences are more empowered than ever to make their voices heard. Audiences, consumers are actively influencing the marketing activities of firms and brands. In the new dominant logic of marketing, firms are constrained to engage in complex processes of exchange with their consumers. To be able to keep up with the competition and media noise it is crucial for companies today to involve their audiences, potential consumers. Consumer participation in this context does not end with a special attention to the brand, company or organization turned on electronic word-of-mouth and other interactive messages concerning the company that can be found over the internet. Consumers, audiences themselves not only create advertisements and broadcast them in favor of or against organizations, they also create, develop new products via a number of co-creative procedures and they are pushing the organizations to launch new pricing models. Therefore the scope of user-generated content in a marketing sense is rather diverse. In an overview of the participation phenomenon in marketing and marketing communications literature this article endeavors to reconcile the related taxonomy used in the business and marketing literature by an extended summary and explanation of the key terms. By this we conclude that the most important central theme of the very diverse literature of audience participation lies in the fact that it is inspired, facilitated, established or maintained by the participating corporation as a core element. As such, participating corporations are those that manage to extract a source of additional satisfaction and thus an added value that on a long term can be transformed into a competitive advantage.