Death of Consumers

Techno2 Assignment 5: Your understanding about "DEATH OF THE CONSUMERS" .

In the previous task, I had managed to discuss the convergence, its trend and the opportunity it brings. And as mentioned, this trend has a huge scope since there are lots of evolutions that had been gone through within the market, and in hand to this evolutions are the opportunity it had opened among the people. Making these people change their lives, the way they act and the way they think, thus later making a change to the world for people are the basis of its change. This task’s topic is a part of the previous task. Actually I had included a part of this to that text, introducing the part of consumers against prosumers, their death and most of all on how they had evolved and their main differences. I guess I’ll just have to elaborate it further more to make it through the word count.

As we all know, market is about the producers and consumers (aside from the products they were involved in), producers by its name are the one who produces products for the benefit of the consumers. And consumers are the core of the market. Basically without them, market would not live for they are the one who uses and bought the products. These consumers and producers together with the market are all altered by the convergence, wherein convergence is the part where the market had adopted technology to bring a great development and changes. The eagerness of the consumers to have the new trend of technology (which is offered by the market) is mainly the cause of the evolution, for these people crave for more. The contentment of these people is really hard to meet, forcing the development for knowledge and technology, which is also a good thing. The adoption of technology by the producers had been also a way to create a battle and to show their competitive skills against the growing market standards and their competitors, which also leads for a healthy competitors that makes the balance out of it. As a result to this, producers are pushed to engage in several ways to cater their products, thus making the costumers secured about the benefit they can assure for the cost they had paid (simply the cost benefit – lesser cost of a certain product of service at a higher value of performance given).

Again what is convergence? What is thing really about? How we had come up with this exotic idea and grabbed the opportunity of playing with the flow out of it… convergence as what we had discussed on the previous meeting is the union of the old fashioned market with the advance technology. Pulling the best of it, this convergence had mainly change the world through the use of market and technology, giving birth to a new trend of marketing. This had cleared several ways for entrepreneurs to involve technology on their businesses, having a different technology to offer and satisfy clients’ needs and wants. As the trend of conference expands lots of marketing ideas and techniques had been generated to deliver company products. . Internet technology is totally re-defining how businesses are being modeled and how business strategies are being implemented. As this convergence over the market had developed, the people’s quality of life style or their way of facing the market has changed. Having this evolution, it is a more convenience way of facing the market rather than going back to the old one which offers less service and just a bit of the cost – benefit factor.

Before going on the part of consumers and prosumers, let’s first discuss the evolution of the market. At the present time, market had been changed, basically in the means of trading, paying, and etc. at the late century, the market is all about trading with the use of barter to exchange for the good, and as the evolutions come, barter had been deleted and the start of paying by coins (silver or gold) had been a way (as far as I could remember in my elementary lessons ), and that practice had continued until now with the use of money to pay for the goods. Formal marketing as we all know it today had began in the mid of 1970's with the birth of the marketing orientation. By funding up capitals to start a business in the market (in early days), business at that point was merely concerned with their construction, manufacturing, production, and efficiency issues to satisfy their costumers. Years had past and several changes in the market had been granted. The improvement of such services had changed to fit the changing needs and lifestyles of the consumers. Because of this a new stage for the development of the market had arrived, where in the main input is that the business's prime concern was to sell what it produced. The main plan of this is to secure the production rate of the business. They must specialize on something to optimize the categorization and quality of the products they sell. And then later, a new trend in the business marketing had emerged as businesses came to recognize that consumer’s needs and wants drove the whole process. They should dwell or base more on the costumers’ concern and value it. And this is the start were marketing research became popular and important and also the time were marketing competitions had became large and tough. Businesses realized it was futile putting a lot of production and sales effort into products that people did not want. And this was the start were the convergence or the technology had taken place in the field of marketing. They believe that the technology is available today to market to people on an individual basis. They had felt that it is no longer essential to think in broad comprehensive terms like market segments or target markets. The behavior of the market now most rely on the consumers or rather the prosumers, they had stop the believe of giving the people the overall result, but instead they had started a new approach which dwells more on having the products being personalize to achieve a higher satisfactory. The behavior of the said costumers had changed for they themselves are willing to participate in that certain evolution for they had found it better. The coin has been tossed and is now flipped, having them as the ruler of the market and the producers as the servant of their own game. Interesting and effective, that’s all I could say, for they had attracted huge percentage of the costumers by making that big innovation. Could it be possible for a new trend to enter the market and dominate it as what the present market form does?

Death of consumers and the rise of prosumers…

In the later part of marketing, the costumers are rather termed as consumers. Relating it to science, consumers are the one who consumes (considered by its name) the producers, these consumers is a part of the food chain, wherein several cycles where form and being studied. An example of these consumer and producer is a grass and a goat, on how the goat seeks for a living grass to consume it for the mean of survival. Going back to the topic, these consumers in the food chain are also related or have the same meaning on the consumers of the market, for they are the one who consumes the products being produced by the producers and helps the market grows to offer much more several items and services. The only thing that separates this two scenarios are the part of having the consumers as the predators who hunts for prey to survive the nature and the part of having the consumers as the buyers who buys the product and uses the services of businesses to have convenience and some are for savings. Consumers by their nature and behavior, they bought things over the market by simply picking and choosing the items they want, which takes lesser interaction between the market itself and the consumers of the market who takes the products and services. With these, it has been coined that the market had been ruling against the people or (much appropriate) the consumers, for they are the one who dictates the products and the consumers are just the ones who consume them. Where is the sense of having consumers’ rights? As the population of the people around the world changes every day, until now where it comes to billions of them, the demand for the supplies and services in the market increases, the behavior of these consumers had also been changed because of their population and distinct personalities, behavior occurs either for the individual, or in the context of a group (e.g., friends influence what kinds of clothes a person wears) or an organization (people on the job make decisions as to which products the firm should use). Consumer behavior involves the use and disposal of products, the kind and quality of the product as well as the study of how they are purchased. Products use is often of great interest to the marketer, because this may influence how a product is best positioned or how we can encourage increased consumption. Since many environmental problems result from product disposal (for example: motor oil being sent into sewage systems to save the recycling fee, or garbage piling up at landfills and scraps on the junkyard) this is also an area of interest. Prosumers has their distinct behavior which demands more and more, and for this they were considered too annoying and crying for better services which could handle all of them and could give them a lot more satisfaction of the payment they had been giving. For these matters, the market where oblige to find a way to offer these crying costumers what they want, basing on what they yell, what they do, considering their personalities and needs. Thus the evolution of the market together with the technology and the consumers within its scope had changed to a better one, which considers the consumers designs, wants and desires. Internet technology is totally re-defining how businesses are being modeled and how business strategies are being implemented. The excesses left behind by this large rate of innovation however are small businesses and entrepreneurs who are not equipped and unwilling to grip on the new technologies, mainly attributed to the fear of the unknown. Technopreneurs has provided the latest information on new, emerging Internet technology trends, sifting the hype from business reality. You will get the inside track on all things Internet technology that will impact your business tremendously. Business and technology are almost always entwined. The evolution of technology had led to the evolution of business. The one who spots technological trends and learns to use it, gains an upper hand over their competition. Because Technopreneur makes it a point to stay ahead of the game, you will receive the freshest, most relevant hindsight ahead of time. This will save you time, which you would better spend at what you already do best at – making money, the people involved in the market nowadays had been using the internet as the medium for shopping. Despite from being demanding, this new form of market users are intellectual and are technologically knowledgeable. Then these consumers where termed as the prosumers, for in this evolution the costumers somehow they had started it. This is now where the death of consumers had begun, for they had been replaced along with their behaviors, style and trends with a new one which fits the form of the growing society and fast changing technology. A good thing about this market is it considers having a lot of interaction between the business and the costumer, to ensure what they really like, desire and want, for them to be satisfied in short. To have a clarity and purity on what these prosumers are really about and what are they, on how they had been evolved and been described, here is a meaning from the Wikipedia - Prosumer is a portmanteau formed by contracting either the word professional or producer with the word consumer. The term has taken on multiple conflicting meanings: (and several people among the internet had been discussing and debating about it, but for me it is about one thing, innovation and development to change our behavior, our lifestyle and probably the world), the business sector sees the prosumer (professional–consumer) as a market segment, whereas economists see the prosumer (producer–consumer) as having greater independence from the mainstream economy. It can also be thought of as converse to the consumer with a passive role, denoting an active role as the individual gets more involved in the process. More recently, in the mental health field, the word "'prosumer'" has come to mean "consumer/provider," also known as a "peer provider," such as a peer support specialist or other mental health consumer who also provides peer support mental health services (background on peer-run mental health services). The word "Prosumerise" has been coined by Widality to represent the merging of the IT and mobility requirements of the prosumer, consumer, and enterprise. Prosumer as professional consumers which is all about the marketing and marketing segments; prosumer as the producer consumers which are about the independence of the consumers from the economy. Combining this, we could have a result of having these prosumers as the one involved in the market which has the independence of having what they desire and love. They completely have the power over the market, for they are the one who dictates what to do and what they would like to have. As the trend of conference expands lots of marketing ideas and techniques had been generated to deliver company products where in it is one way of calling the attention of the costumers or consumers. They had been widely using the technology to commercialize their products through using the internet as the main medium or other broadcasting tools and strategies. As the said convergence had changed, the people’s quality of life style and behaviors or their way of facing the market had evolved. People nowadays are much more called prosumers than consumers. There is what they state as the death or consumers and the rising of prosumers. In most cases on the market, people or the clients are the one who dictates the result (outcome) of the product. They make changes on specific products to personalize it and make it their original stuffs. Now this is still a way of engaging through costumer’s right? Giving them what they exactly want and need. It is rather much more interesting than having those readymade products, which you cannot manipulate the designs and features of it. And all of these make up what they call as prosumers. The involvement of technology within the market had really been putted up something fascinating for the prosumers and the business. It had opened several ways to come through the clients and make a deal with them. However, to reach a high degree of customization, consumers would have to take part in the production process especially in specifying design requirements. In a sense, this is merely an extension or broadening of the kind of relationship that many affluent clients have had with professionals like architects for many decades. Prosumers are considered as elite type of customers who have their own mind to think for specific fashioned styles which fits there need, wants and personalities. Prosumers would have rather spend their time on stressing what they want, that’s why they were called as professional consumers. With customization focused on leisure pursuits, this has been largely supplanted by a second pair of blurring roles: that of the professional and consumer. In particular, hobbyists have become ever-more demanding in the pursuits of their hobbies, often rising above the level of dilettante to the point of commanding skills equal to that of professionals. Pursuing on what they really want and need, these professional consumers would request a thing to satisfy their needs and demands.

Prosumers versus Consumers…

Prosumers versus consumers. What are their differences? This section was covered at the paragraph of the death of consumers and the rise of consumers. I had stated there their descriptions and differences. But again, in the era that the market has the control over the people, they termed the costumers as consumers who consume their products. And at the time of the convergence, where in the technology have merged with the market processes, peoples’ demands had grown and in this specific period they had been taking the control over the market and hence they were called the prosumers. Prosumers take the part of being participative in the field of marketing as the user or consumer of the products and services. These prosumers are more interactive. They demand for what they want and need to the producers for the market to produce it. Prosumers are veteran form of consumers who deal and interact with the market for services, unlike the consumers who used to buy or consume the goods and services in the market without any demand or suggestions, prosumers are more skillful that’s why they were termed as professional consumers.

The evolution of the market from having its simple form to its complex and interesting form had been a great change that affected the quality of services and had largely contributed for the change of the world. The behavior and lifestyle of the people from being a consumer to a higher structure of being a prosumer had increased the quality of life. The start of having so called prosumers which emphasizes the meaning of giving the clients the trend to apply modifications, enhancements or requests on the purchasing product. Through the influence and behavior of the market prosumers, they had been changing the structure and scope of the market in a large percentage every now and then. Who knows, the evolution still continuous and there might be a more dominant form of market users (the producers and consumers to prosumers). Several concepts are still up to be discovered, but the thing is, is it as good as the other one? Be waiting for the next evolution of these market professionals.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosumer
http://techcrunch.com/2007/06/15/the-rise-of-the-prosumer/
http://www.consumerpsychologist.com/
http://technopreneur.wordpress.com/about/