Co-creating Value:
Understanding Chocolate Experience
Eminegül Karababa
Middle East Technical University
Late Modern Consumer Culture
• Consumer as producer
• Recent developments in technology allowed consumers
to co-produce.
• Recent developments in marketing shifted attention
from mass marketing to an active participation of
consumer in the creation of different types of values.
Aim of the project
• Is to develop an integrated user-based design for coproduction tool (3D ChocALM) and web-service
system that will support a value creation business
solution to facilitate the interactions between users
and producers for the co-production of chocolate
products and bring enriched personalised experience
and value to users/consumers.
First Stage of the Research
Process
• How to design a chocolate design web interface so
that consumers can be able to co-create and coproduce value?
• Although the 3D chocolate production technology is
novel, chocolate has long been part of mundane
everyday life. Consumers has associations of
chocolate, specific practices and rituals were built
around chocolate consumption, and people
experience chocolate at physiological levels.
Value
• Anthropological Theory defines three types of value:
• Economic value (price)
• Social Values (norms and rules)
• Getting overweight makes people’s bodies less appealing
• Greeting friends and relatives by gifts is expected at certain
situations.
• Symbolic Value (meanings)
• Dark chocolate represents a sophisticated taste.
• Chocolate means happiness.
Research
• Identify – social and linguistic values by qualitative
research.
• Develop web interface that contain features
providing customers to co-create these values
developed around chocolate.
• Transform co-created social and linguistic values to
economic value by conjoint analysis.
Qualitative Research
• 11 in-depth interviews were conducted with British
chocolate consumers from diverse age, gender,
ethnic, class backgrounds.
• Interviews lasted around 45 mins – 1 hr.
• Practices of consumers generating different types of
value in various chocolate consumption contexts are
identified.
Findings: Values - Practices
• Physiological values – feeling full, getting energy
• Eating practice
• After work out, in working hours
• Social bonding as a value
• Sharing the chocolate as a practice (with family, friends,
colleagues)
• At home, special occasions, leisure…
• Social bonding as a value
• Sharing making of chocolate or chocolate related products
(within family, friends…)
• At home, at a workshop
Findings: Values - Practices
•
Pleasure through aesthetic creation as a value
• Making and designing chocolate individually or within a group, learning specific skills
and applying them as practices
• At home, at a workshop
•
Pleasure through play as a value
• Making and designing chocolate (or chocolate related products) together, Joking,
Competing
• At home, at a workshop
•
Self-actualization as a value
• Learning how to make a chocolate is the practice
• At home, at a workshop
•
Pleasure through achievment
• Making and designing chocolate successfully
• At home, at a workshop
Findings: Values - Practices
• Constructing individual identity as a value
• Making chocolate individually, gift giving, self-gifting
practices, sharing
• Gift-giving contexts, purchasing situations
• Experiencing nostalgia as a value
• Consuming retro chocolate brands or types, old tastes
relates to individual histories or periods
• At home, with others, occasions…
Findings: Values - Practices
• Sensorial gratification as a value
• Tasting, smelling, sensing the texture
• In any situation when consuming choclate
• Negative social values: Guilt
• Eating practice, high calories
• Negative social values: Chocoholism as an addiction
• Eating, consuming in large amounts
Transferring values to web
interface design
• Defining new practices which enables consumer to
co-create values to web interface.
• 3D design practice
• Aesthetic pleasures
• Achievement
• Uploading your design
• Identity construction and communication
Transferring Values
• Voting
• Pleasure through play
• Competing
• Tutorials
• Self-actualization
Survey
• Consumer feedback on the web interface:
• Does cocoworks web interface contain practices that
can enable consumers to co-create values around
chocolate?
• Which values can be co-created online?
• Which values cannot be created online?
• Does different groups of customers prefer different
values and practices?
• Can we group customers according to their priorities of
values?
What to do next?
• Revisiting the web interface when we get the findings
of survey
• Completing a conjoint analysis to transform social
and symbolic values to economic value, to identify
consumer segments and their preferences.
• Defining which segment(s) to target.