Prosumers knowledge sharing to develop and manage products

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to advance research on prosumers knowledge sharing with enterprises and public organizations by examining as well as improve the understanding of what knowledge about products, prosumers share and would like to share in order to improve products. This paper provides and verifies a new theoretical framework depicting prosumers knowledge about products, which they can share with business and public organizations. The reported outcomes are the result of a questionnaire survey that yielded responses from 783 Poland and 171 United Kingdom (UK) based prosumers. The research findings reveal that prosumers mainly share their knowledge about products functionality, ease and intuitiveness of use, as well as a products reliability and durability, whereas they rarely share knowledge related to products design or the packaging of products. It is also found that there are significant differences between knowledge about products that prosumers share and would like to share. In addition, Poland prosumers share and would like to share various kinds of knowledge about products more frequently than UK based prosumers.