On the road to prosumption: marketing discourse and the development of consumer competencies

Abstract

This paper reveals the three major faces of the “new consumer” that has emerged during the last 30 years throughout marketing discourses. The paper shows how these faces interact to format the structure of consumer competencies: individualistic competencies of dialogue are combined with hedonistic competencies of play together with creative competencies of resources integration. The paper concludes with a discussion about the existence within these marketing discourses of a governmental process that puts pressure on today's citizens to see and think of themselves as consumers in the first instance.

Keywords:

• co-creation
• competencies
• creative
• governmentality
• hedonistic
• individualistic
• prosumer