Consumer Creativity as a Prerequisite for the Adoption of New Technological Products: Looking for Insights from Actor-Network Theory

Creativity is often conceptualized as actions and outcomes related to the creation of novel and useful ideas within the context of the development of new products. It is usually positioned in the activities of designers who play the role of “the creator”. In this paper we suggest “changing the subject” to consumers by claiming that creativity plays a key role in the adoption phase when they attempt to address their needs and preferences by appropriating the use value of everyday technological products. We emphasize that the product value perception which makes a potential consumer buy is the result of this consumer’s own activities and efforts. Thus, the intensity of consumers’ creative activities becomes a critical adoption factor. We suggest that activity-based approaches such as actor-network theory and activity theory could be quite appropriate in studying the dynamics and the design of new product adoption, and offer a comparative analysis indicating that actor-network theory has a greater potential to contribute to the interplay between consumer creativity and technology adoption research.