Satisfaction in win-win relations for value co-creation

Since a lot of time, here I am again... =) ...today I was thinking about innovation and costumers behavior... 

Did you ever put a lot of energies, passion and time in doing something, and when finished did you ever watched your creation with a lot of love and satisfaction, waiting for someone to give you a feedback and to acclaim you? ...and when you found this "someone", did he/she said you that your creation can be done a "bit better"?

Ok, now imagine all the people that is working all day long in order to realize your next acquisition, your next object desire... They are probably close all day in their workspace, interacting and sharing ideas sometime with their neighbouring worker... these people are a bit as us when working deep on our creation, they are concentrated in what they are doing, but loosing their real connection with the world.

How many times as consumer did you find something on a shelf and thought "How useless is that object"? ...or something like "yes is pretty cool, but I prefer something similar to it but with this function also"?

Increasingly innovating technologies are "progressively giving birth to new consumers, ones who are more intelligent and therefore better informed and more demanding, who are freer and show greater strenght in their dealings with distributor and brands. Consumers are becoming actors in their own consumption. This is a rapid mutation, the new world in which generations operate from day one" (source: "Le new consumer" on blogspot, no more online)... I don't now if technologies really "give birth to" or only if consumers finally found a tool to get informed easily and better, but for sure since mid-2000s are rising many collaborative marketing approaches (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004) carried by a new dominant logic of marketing (Lusch and Vargo, 2004 and 2006) based on the emergence of creative consumers (Cova B. and Cova V. 2009)... the new consumers that are also marketers. This brings to the co-creation of value, where strategic marketing's aim changed from "market to" consumers to "market with" consumers (Prahaland and Ramaswamy, 2004). 

These new approaches are a way to innovate companies and products, reducing the risk usually related to innovation, but also a way to engage company's costumers and helping grow their satisfaction, loyality and the buzz on the related product/company. Is important also to keep in mind, exemplified by the case of the pasta-cooking experience (Dalli and Romani, 2007), that consumption is secondary to preparation or production and immersion and transformation are privileged outcomes of a commercial experience (Arnold, 2007)... the more the customer is involved in the process of service production and delivery, the greater the perceived value and satisfaction (Cova and Dalli, 2009).

Yep, until here everything is known (more or less)... now, what is under study and construction (from what I know) are the phases in which this process develops itself...

About the phases and the steps I would like to go deeper in another post, now I want only to write about my thoughts regarding the last step: the "revenue" for the "worker customer".

A worker customer is not paid (because of this we can't call them producers), and is a person that developed some skills related to acquisitions, product analysis, shopping,... now, what happen when these customer gived their ideas and add a value to the product? And when the company accept and include the value produced by it customers? ...At first they/us feel proud and recognized about theirself/ourself, of their/our success in give a good idea, but next they/us feel exploited from the company (Cova et al, 2007)... I will say that we feel something like diddled and forgotten...

People, in my opinion, needs ever a return, a revenue on what is doing... if someone is doing philantropy, probably is because he/she feesl better, or he/she feels as doing right (so proud), in doing it... if someone is working as volunteer is because he/she is feeling well in doing what he/she thinks is right... and so on... at the same probably if someone is participating in a co-value creation is because he/she wants something in return, probably a recongition from the company, or from the tribe, or from the society, and when he/she have nothing in return, neither a discount, he will feel betrayed... what I see is missing, from my experience, in many of these innovation/co-creation initiatives is this last recognition to the consumer: as said by the Ninja's (LINK) during the course in Non-Conventional Marketing, analyzing the campaign ideated by them for Mulino Bianco ("Il Mulino Che Vorrei"), and giving themself a feed-back, a coupon, a discount, a supply of the product, maybe could be enough to satisfy the people involved in the process and could demonstrate them a bit of recognition.

What do you think about it? Which are your exceptions? Which is your experience?