Service-dominant logic has certainly made a striking impression on marketing academia. It focuses on viewing a customer as an operant resource, or a collaborative partner who co-creates value with the firm (Vargo and Lusch 2004). In short, it is a market with orientation, as opposed to a market to orientation, in which a market and customer were analyzed and products were produced to meet customer needs (Vargo and Lusch 2007). When we studied this concept that is now very popular in the marketing literature, I was surprised to learn that the term service-dominant logic was not coined until 2004. Upon reading Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson (2012), however, I learned that researchers such as Toffler and Kotler have been studying the idea of presumption for over thirty years, which set the stage for related ideas such as service-dominant logic. One of the most unique examples of prosumption offered by Ritzer, Dean, and Jurgenson is the Twitter backchannel at conferences. I have tweeted about various sessions at academic conferences and have found the process to be engaging because it allows me to participate in the session even if I did not give a formal presentation. Furthermore, by offering my opinions on the presentation, I am able to connect with other conference attendees who are also tweeting.

Willemsen et al.’s (2011) finding that the negativity effect occurs for experience products whereas the positivity effect occurs for search products is quite useful for marketers who maintain companies’ online presence. For instance, if a restaurant was concerned about the effect of online reviews on the patronage of the restaurant, it would be extra careful to monitor negative reviews, whereas a computer manufacturer should pay attention to whether consumers are bothering to write positive reviews about their products. However, I felt that the study should have included the number of reviews as a control variable. If there is only one positive review of a product, I tend to feel more skeptical about it than if there are many positive reviews. Additionally, if there is one scathing review among multiple positive reviews, I tend to consider the angry reviewer to be a “nitpicker”, or someone who is generally difficult to please. This would be an interesting future consideration for online review studies.

Chia (2010) mentions that some scholars believe that people who create UGC are being exploited because they are not compensated for their work. Peterson even goes so far as to say that UGC should be termed “loser-generated content” instead of “user-generated content”. While I agree that companies and marketers can make money off of user-generated data, I do not think that the people who create this content are being exploited. They are creating this content willingly, and no one (besides the authors of books that teach people how to capitalize on their blogs) is promising that they will earn any monetary compensation from it. I found it interesting that so many bloggers consider reader comments to be a form of compensation. However, as mentioned by Chia, social compensation does not translate into actual compensation. But perhaps bloggers who do not get many hits on their blogs realize that blogging is not a realistic means of substantial income. In other words, they see it as more of a hobby, in which case, social compensation may suffice.