User-generated content about brands: Understanding its creators and consumers

This consumer research study investigates the motivations and meanings behind young adults creating and consuming user-generated content (UGC) about brands. Service-dominant logic suggests that resources are operant rather than operand and so used/re-used by consumers, eventually breaking down the provider/consumer dichotomy to see the entire logic as working in an actor-to-actor network. This study establishes these two theoretical advances empirically. For the participants, the key issue within the UGC interactions is that of who to trust i.e. source credibility as the resources were used as part of the ongoing identity project of the young adults participating. The findings support this search being within the frame of persons re-using operant resources as part of their wider lives as persons, rather than merely consumers. In this process, actions creating and consuming UGC also underpin potential for personal transformation as the movie Leaving Pleasantville proposes. Therefore, the study here contributes a person-centric metaphor of the journey that individuals can be understood as participating in as they interact with brands on the Internet for personal formation and even transformation. The study provides insight and a metaphor to explain a key driver of UGC creation in 21st century postmodern life.