Collective and Collaborative Consumption:

Implications for Financial Services Hope Jensen Schau Associate Professor of Marketing

Gary M. Munsinger Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Collective Consumption • Although most theories of

consumption are based on

psychology and economics

which overwhelmingly assume

individual actors, consumption

is often collective. Families Friends

Co-workers Neighbors

Communities Affinity Orgs

Value Collaboration • Business-to-Consumer

– Jones Soda

– Threadless

– Puma

– Netflix

• Consumer-to-Consumer – Jones Soda

– Threadless

– Puma

– Lego and Indiana Jones

– Bank Transfer Day

– Netflix

• Business-to-Business – Netflix

– Threadless

– Jones Soda (Seattle Seahawks distribution)

• Consumer-to-Business – Jones Soda

– Threadless

– Lego and Indiana Jones

– Netflix

– Bank Transfer Day

Jones Soda relies heavily upon its

community of loyal users: creation

of brand’s attributes and personality.

Product Innovations (flavors)

Packaging (labels, cap quotes)

Promotions (stickers, web content, price)

Jones Soda

Distribution Channels

Jones Soda promotional vehicle

in front of Mt. Rushmore

Threadless Community

• Threadless: no community no brand

• Threadless brand community is socially nested in a constellation of brands and social communities

• Threadless, once the most innovative small company in America, hangs by a Thread:

• Lots of growth issues

• Have had trouble replicating this model in other product categories

Naked and Angry

June 2008

• Community submits designs

• Community scores designs

• Threadless manufacturing the high

scoring designs on shirts

What is Threadless?

Harnessing the Crowd LEGO

Case Study: Puma

Get the customer involved

Puma: 113 Million Media Impressions

Savage Garden: Trending on iTunes

Puma launched a

video that soccer

fans could send to

their loved ones on

Valentine’s Day

General Implications

• Collective and collaborative consumption and

production are prevalent and qualitatively different

from individual consumption and firm-centered

production

• Collaborative consumption often leads to value

creation and ultimately collaborative production

• Firms can realize value by understanding collective

behaviors and harnessing collaboration

Access: Sharing and Collective Ownership • Co-Ops

• Food

• Babysitting

• Education

• Health

Access: Sharing and Collective Ownership • Timeshares

• Auto sharing

• Bicycle sharing

• Cloud Storage

Access: Sharing and Collective Ownership

• Sprint

• Multi-device plans

• Multi-user plans

Access: Sharing and Collective Ownership • Netflix

• Multi-device plans

• Multi-user plans

• Co-viewing

• Simultaneous Viewing

• Friend Algos

• Embedded Social

Commentary

Crowd Funding

Financial Services Implications • Feudal societies relied on collective

financing and asset holdings (family/kinship, ethnicity, religious, geographic)

• Both assets and debts were collective in nature

• Both assets and debts transcended a single life – descendants paid debt/enjoyed assets of ancestors

• Immigrant banking has historically been collective (family/kinship, ethnicity, religious, geographic)

Wealth Aggregation

• Historically weddings

were sources of

financial prosperity

perpetuation

• Homesteads were

often multi-

generational lands

• Wills are collective

asset flows

Credit Unions are Collective by Nature

• Credit Unions aggregate member assets and turn

them into enhanced wealth and access to financial

instruments.

Collective Finance Innovations • How might the sharing economy impact credit

unions? What collective financial products and services might credit unions offer?

• Real Estate Mortgages (multi-family, multi-member, multi-generation)

• Renovation Loans (multi-family, multi-member, multi-generation)

• College Funds & Loans (multi-member, multi-generation)

• Savings Accounts, e.g., Vacation Accounts (multi-user)

• Auto Loans (family auto fleets)

• Access Loans, e.g., Loans for Access/Membership Fees (multi-user)

• Business Ownership and Development