Companies can’t turn blind eye to consumers who hack, manipulate products: SFU Business study

December 23, 2010

Companies need to face up to a new wave of empowered consumers who are tinkering and altering their products, according to a new, award-winning study from the Faculty of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University.

The assertion comes in the wake of some high-profile hacking of proprietary technology offerings – including the unlocking of Apple’s iPhone 4, and the hacking of Microsoft’s Kinect gaming device.

Entitled “Creative Consumers: Awareness, Attitude & Action – Instrument & Preliminary Results”, the article was authored by Colin Campbell, a doctoral student in marketing at Simon Fraser University, Pierre R. Berthon, professor of marketing at Bentley University in Massachusetts and professors Leyland F. Pitt and Ian McCarthy of Simon Fraser University.

The article received the best paper award on the Strategic Marketing track at the Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference held in Christchurch, New Zealand earlier this month.

Their study examines the phenomenon of “creative consumers”: those customers who hack, tinker, and mess with the proprietary offerings of firms.

“Creative consumers are becoming a major force in the business world,” they note. “They are adapting, modifying and creating.”

The authors note that it was Apple’s customers, not the company itself, that adapted the iPod portable music device for podcasting, which has evolved into a new form of media broadcasting. On the other hand, when customers tinker with certain pharmaceutical products, or with safety features on automobiles, the potential for danger is great.

To that end, the authors give attention to the development of a scale, or checklist, that firms can use to examine and explore their own attitudes toward the creative consumer phenomenon.

According to the researchers, “a firm should be able to assess the extent to which is it is aware of creative consumers, then be able to examine their attitude towards creative consumers, and finally to be able to decide on the action that they will take toward creative consumers.”

In most instances, the creative consumer phenomenon is to be embraced, they argue — but there remain instances in which product hacking can be risky or dangerous.

“By being aware of the phenomenon, knowing what their attitude towards it is, and being able to determine the actions they will take toward it, firms will be better able to deal with creative consumers.”

For more information:
Derek Moscato
778-782-5038 – derek_moscato@sfu.ca