Co-creating Value:Understanding Chocolate Experience

Eminegül KarababaMiddle 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 co-production 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 co-produce 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.