Chapter 14: Customer roles in digital business ecosystems: different forms of customer contribution in value creation
Restricted access

Customers shape digital business ecosystems with their resource contributions and interactions. This chapter expands the understanding of co-creation in digital business ecosystems. It develops a typology of different customer roles according to their interaction level and their integration of resources. Hence, the central research question is: Which customer roles emerge in digital business ecosystems? This chapter discusses customers as essential resource contributors from a theoretical point of view, illustrated by real-world cases. The level of interaction of the customers in the different roles is characterized as either active or passive. At the same time, integrated resources are differentiated in terms of time, skills, physical resources, and data. The combination of both dimensions allows eight distinct customer roles to be defined: self-service seekers, service graders, content creators, skill sources, product/service providers, co-producers/prosumers, data providers, and data generators. Co-creating customers further question the distinction between consumption and production in digital business ecosystems.

You are not authenticated to view the full text of this chapter or article.

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Other access options

Redeem Token

Institutional Login

Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials

Login via Institutional Access

Personal login

Log in with your Elgar Online account

Login with your Elgar account