Consumers as value creators: Exploring value self-creation in social marketing

Value creation is an important part of social marketing, which attempts to create value for target audiences to induce behaviour change (Kotler & Lee, 2011). Social marketing is often concerned with voluntary behaviour change, and as such, requires a level of active consumer participation within the value creation process. The voluntary nature of many social marketing activities suggests that the experiential value of these behaviours is proactive. Holbrook (1994) distinguishes between passive and active value in commercial marketing, whereby passive value is experienced by consumers reactively in response to the consumption of an object or service, and active value is participative, which requires collaboration between the consumer and organisation. This reflects a value co-creation context as presented by Vargo and Lusch (2004) and Grönroos (2011).