COS Seminar by Amy Goode and Stephanie Anderson (University of Glasgow)

Community-led co-creation: Balancing empowerment and precarity in tourism 

Abstract

Co-creation in tourism involves a complex arrangement of actors, yet extant research has prioritized the consumer and service-provider interaction. This focus has overshadowed the role communities play in co-creation. Through an ethnographic examination of an established community festival, we introduce the concept community-led co-creation to reveal the complex character of co-creative work when it is driven by non-institutional actors. We define community-led co-creation as an organic and self-organizing assemblage of actors who adopt various roles and responsibilities in co-creating value under circumstances in which institutional actors adopt a diminishing role. Findings reveal that community members adopt multiple roles that span across physical and digital domains including community fundraising, voluntary work, and digital promotion. Whilst community-led co-creation enables empowerment, it is also characterized by precarity and uncertainty. Under conditions in which institutional actors adopt a diminishing role, the community feels both unsupported and empowered simultaneously that shapes their co-creative efforts. 

About the speakers

Amy Goode

Amy joined the University of Glasgow in January 2022, as Lecturer in Marketing. Prior to joining the Adam Smith Business School, she was a Lecturer in Digital Marketing at the University of Stirling. She completed her PhD in Marketing at the University of Strathclyde along with an MSc in Marketing and BSc (hons) in Psychology and Marketing from the University of Stirling. Her research and teaching interests are in digital marketing, services marketing, consumer behaviour and consumer culture theory.

She is currently working on a number of projects relating to these areas specifically exploring influencer marketing, communities of consumers, socialbots and consumer vulnerability.

Amy has published her work in the European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Services Marketing and Advances in Consumer Research. She recently secured funding from the Academy of Marketing Research Council, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Stephanie Anderson

Dr Stephanie Anderson is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Adam Smith Business School. Stephanie holds a PhD in Marketing along with an MRes in Marketing and BA (Hons) in Marketing & Management from the University of Strathclyde.

Stephanie researches consumption, markets, and culture. Her research focuses on how communities consume, often through ethics of care, rituals, and resistance. Stephanie’s work on memorialisation has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Previous research includes labours of digital work, anti-consumption, and waste consumption. Stephanie’s current work explores therapeutic consumption markets. 

Stephanie has published in Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Theory, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Consumption Markets & Culture, and Advances in Consumer Research.