Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Digital Prosumption. The Android Case

2017; Linguagem: Inglês

10.15405/epsbs.2017.01.02.16

2357-1330

Șerban A. Zodian,

Digital Marketing and Social Media

We are investigating Toffler’s Ritzer’s “prosumption” phenomenon in a sociological, economical, psychological and cultural approach. Our scientific initiative is dedicated to the manifestation of prosumption in cyberspace, limited to the virtual Android community gathered at the “Xda-developers.com” (XDA). The main objective of this research is to establish the Android prosumer profile. The main research questions are: What does prosumption mean? What are the characteristics of digital prosumption? Who are the digital prosumers? What is the Android prosumer profile? How are they organized? What forces affect prosumption in the Android socio-economic environment? Data collection tools were used, such as the non-participative observation method, in the quantitative version to identify phenomena that occurred in the XDA Android community; we designed and applied a questionnaire in the community; we used the random sampling method to establish the sample; statistical observation was used, based on findings of the questionnaire; content analysis was used to describe and quantify the community production; documentary research was used to define the main concepts. Our findings show that the Android prosumers fit into the concepts of consumer and producer. The Android prosumers are organized in open-source virtual communities, where some function as both consumers and producers. Handset manufacturers, service providers or even Google should increase their involvement in these communities to benefit from prosumers’ capacity to innovate, rather than to settle for their ability to fix or adapt to devices shortcomings, but without disrupting the economic, technical or social evolution of the Android platform.