COLLECTIVE CREATION ON THE WEB 2.0: A CROWDSOURCING CASE STUDY INVOLVING A BRAZILIAN COMPANY

Abstract

This paper discusses how the participation of consumers in business has evolved in recent years from being merely a way of optimizing costs to becoming a strategic marketing tool and a source of new business models. The more advanced engagement of so-called ‘prosumers’ with firms has been made possible by several factors, but especially by technological evolution. The emergence of web 2.0 has changed the behavior of consumers who now take part in online communities and find new tools for engaging in creation and production processes. Some firms have realized that they can reduce costs and risks and also increase their creative potential, involving customers that are interested in more personalized products and exchanging information and are attracted by the possibility of creating new products in a community environment. This study sought to describe the customer participation process by analyzing company reports and secondary media sources. Peer production, open innovation, crowdsourcing, mass collaboration and collective intelligence constitute some of the concepts developed in the literature to designate this interaction. These definitions were organized chronologically, in an attempt to make their applications in business explicit. A case-study methodology is applied to investigate the use of crowdsourcing by a Brazilian t-shirt firm. An analysis that drew on nethnography was performed in order to gain a deeper understanding of the process. The study concludes with an overview of the opportunities and challenges of crowdsourcing in order to better assess the process in the Brazilian context.