Internet-Enabled Co-Production: Partnering or Competing with Customers?

The Internet is democratizing commerce by turning economic models that were based on a strict separation between providers and consumers into models where this distinction is increasingly blurred. This implies significant opportunities and challenges for organizations, particularly with respect to the role that their customers play in the generation of economic value. Are customers partners or competitors? While firms typically strive to implement business models that leverage the customers as a resource (i.e., customer co-production), models in which customers are competitors (i.e., peer production) are frequently met with attempts to co-opt these customers (i.e., hybrid co-production). The purpose of this article is to explore the range of Internet-enabled co-production models (i.e., customer and hybrid co-production) and the opportunities and challenges that they present for firms.