Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-03-30
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Carole Charbonnel, associate professor in management sciences, specializing in marketing, Jean Moulin University Lyon 3
Co-creation operations between brands and their consumers have developed significantly. An unknown reason for this enthusiasm lies in the weakening of the marketing function within the company. By forming alliances with consumers, marketing managers highlight the key role they play in the relationship with the final customer.
On the brink of bankruptcy in the 2000s, Lego made co-creation a pillar of its revival thanks to the communityLego Ideaswhich allows fans to create new designs. Like the Danish brand, co-creation activities are deployed by diverse companies, from L’Oréal and its forum of 13,000 consumers, who propose ideas and test products, to the solidarity brand C’est qui le patron ?, whose customers determine the product specifications and participate in commercial actions.
Co-creation activities, through which brands interact and collaborate with their consumers, are now an alternative to traditional marketing methods that do not involve active public participation. However, co-creation practices have sparked numerous criticisms in the academic and media spheres.
Unpaid work by consumers?
Consumer collaboration indeed allows brands to benefit from aform of unpaid work,although voluntary.
Co-creation is also considered a lever through which themarket continues to extend its grip over individuals, under the guise of dialogue and openness. The multinational Mondelez thus suffered abad buzz,when she declared in 2020 to replace marketing with thehumaning, an approach intended to put the creation of connections with consumers at the forefront.
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Faced with these criticisms and the media risk, aacademic researchrecently published in theFrench Management Reviewhelps us better understand what motivates marketing practitioners to develop co-creation with consumers.
Surprisingly, the interviews I conducted with about fifteen marketing directors in charge of major brands reveal that co-creation activities are not necessarily implemented from a performance perspective. Indeed, the managers interviewed claim to be satisfied with deploying a co-creative approach, but they acknowledge not knowing whether it is truly more effective than traditional methods, as it requires more managerial time investment.
An admission of weakness by the marketing department?
Far from being based on objective motives, the enthusiasm for co-creation seems to originate from the perceived situation of managers within the organization and in relation to the market. Unlike the practitioners interviewed who favor traditional approaches, all those interviewed engaging in co-creation activities express a feeling of weakness of the marketing function compared to other departments in the company: “Everything is driven by the agro-industry” (Philippe), and sales often predominate, because “We think client (in this case, the distributor) more than consumer” (Nicolas).
In this context, marketing sees its role restricted to operational activities in support of other functions:
“You can imagine the total mess of people who don’t know what marketing’s role is; for them, marketing’s role is to make a promotional brochure […] Before going to see clients, the salespeople come to see us and say: ‘Hey, can you make me a little photo?’ […] My first client isn’t my clients, it’s my sales colleagues.”
(Christophe.)
Not only do these managers struggle to influence company policies, but they also feel a fragility in marketing expertise vis-à-vis consumers described as volatile and difficult to influence.
These relatively powerful consumers, they try to make allies of them through co-creation practices. By claiming to collaborate and dialogue with their clients, they feel themselves strengthened within the organization; they manage “not to be ridiculed before the big boss” (Christophe). For the voice of the market is irrefutable:
“It’s not me who says that it works, we have online 150 women who told us that it works.”
(Marie.)
Undermine the power of other functions
By forming an alliance with consumers, marketers might even be able to undermine the power of other functions:
“With the interactions, people from other functions are dispossessed of a certain power, they accept being challenged, they are afraid, now the community questions them […] I have lifted the veil on a monster, I don’t know if we are capable of grasping the extent of this evolution.”
(Florent.)
Endowed with an image of power and autonomy, consumers are then seen as the willing actors of a form of democratization of marketing activities. From this perspective, the ethical question related to the exploitation of consumers by brands logically has no place:
“People do incredible things […] They try to have fun while feeling as important as the person who represents the company […] There is also, probably unconsciously, a notion that they take control over the company, over the products or over the communication. It’s a way of taking back control and that is extremely rewarding, even for some extremely pleasurable!”
(Florent.)
While thedecline in the influence of the marketing functionwithin companies is largely supported by research, this study helps us better understand why co-creation has become a common approach despite repeated criticisms and the difficulty in evaluating its performance.
Today’s marketing managers try to exploit the figure of the consumer king, thus following in the footsteps of their predecessors from the 1960s, who hadimposed in companies thanks to the concept of consumer centrality.
It nevertheless seems necessary that today’s managers take into account the ethical issues raised by co-creation. This requires recognizing that customer collaboration is a form of work that requires remuneration, and abandoning any discourse associating co-creation with more democratic marketing. Marketing practitioners will benefit from finally acknowledging that their co-creation activities are directed by the company in order to serve a profitable purpose.
Carole Charbonnel does not work for, advise, own shares in, receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no other affiliation than her research institution.
–ref. How marketing managers use co-creation to regain power –https://theconversation.com/how-marketing-managers-use-co-creation-to-regain-power-276089