Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the value created by Millennial interactions with other critical actors on digital multi-sided platforms (MSPs) and to create a measuring instrument for it. The study sought to determine who South African Millennials are on digital multi-sided platforms, how they interact on digital MSPs, the value they create on digital MSPs, and who benefits from that value. The study took a multi-paradigmatic, transdisciplinary approach to research the complexity of value creation in the emergent context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, using a consumer-dominant logic from value theory, symbolic interactionism, and generational cohort theory as the theoretical framework. Using purposive and snowball sampling techniques, an online survey achieved a realised sample of 365 respondents, including younger and older borderline Millennials known as Gen Z Cuspers and Gen X Cuspers to determine who South African Millennials are.
An intergenerational platform-agnostic instrument with a total variance of 62.47% was developed. Four dimensions of value creation on digital multi-sided platforms were identified via principal components analysis, namely entertainment value, networked professional value, information and advocacy value, and prosumer intelligence value. An analysis of variance indicated Millennial prosumers differ significantly from Gen Z Cuspers concerning all variables of socioeconomic status such as educational attainment, employment status and economic status. Furthermore, it was found that Gen Y Millennials and Gen Y Cuspers in the age range of 34 to 45 differ significantly in economic status from all the other groups. Key findings from the study indicate that Millennials on digital MSPs are prosumers who vary across education, employment, income, and digital consumption and that the highest usage patterns for digital MSPs were for online searches, social media and messaging platforms, banking apps and entertainment platforms.
Moving away from the practice of superimposing US generational boundaries onto South African Millennials, an important contribution of the study is to use a longitudinal dataset from the United Nations World Population Prospects to establish the contested generational boundaries of South African Millennials and to identify South African Millennial generational moments of interest to marketers, brand strategists and platform owners. Another contribution of the study is the development of a conceptual model for value creation, through which certain key implications from the findings can be derived; namely the shift from consumers to prosumers and the shift in the relationship between brands and prosumers, from which it is concluded that prosumers are no longer responsive to linear push-oriented approaches from service-dominant brands but rather seek out other prosumers to co-create value with them. Platform owners stand to gain the most from Millennial prosumer interaction on digital multi-sided platforms as spaces where Millennial prosumers converge, communicate and co-create value.
Keywords: Millennial, Millennial Interaction, Value, Value Creation, Symbolic Interactionism, Consumer-Dominant Logic, Product,-Dominant Logic, Service-Dominant Logic, Generational Cohort Theory, Cusper Generations, Value Creation Conceptual model, Prosumer.