ABSTRACT
Interactivity and the apparent empowerment that it affords consumers has become a powerful watchword in contemporary discussions around advertising as well as in marketing theory and practice. Since the advent of marketing’s engagement with the Internet, researchers, commentators, and practitioners have xated upon the way in which the interactive environment that is at the heart of the World Wide Web signals a shift in the balance of power between brands and consumers. As Hoffman & Novak (1996) put it, “it affords the foundation for consumer control that is impossible in traditional, passive media” (64), along with the need for signicantly different communication approaches. What is perhaps surprising is that some of the most forthright of these claims about rising consumer empowerment come not from consumer groups but from within the academic marketing discipline itself, which increasingly promotes the importance of the “co-creation of value,” whereby brands acknowledge that it is customers’ interactions with their products and services that produce value rather than value being something that the brand exclusively creates (Vargo and Lusch 2004). This perspective also stresses the importance of adopting marketing communication models based upon mutually benecial, power-symmetrical dialogue rather than the old-fashioned, hypodermic-inspired monologue patterns beloved of traditional advertising (Ballantyne 2004; Duncan and Moriarty 1998; Grönroos 2000, 2004).
