WORK IN THE AGE OF DATA BBVA OPENMIND DATA, IDEAS, AND PROPOSALS ON DIGITAL ECONOMY AND THE WORLD OF WORK BBVAOPENMIND.COM Work in the Age of Data 2 The Increasing Importance of Working Consumers: The Impact on Paid Workers by George Ritzer 3 The world of work and labor is being trans- formed in many different ways and by an array of well-known and well-document- ed forces (e.g., automation, globalization). One force that has been largely invisible and little discussed is the role played in that transformation by the increasingly omnipresent “working consumer” (Du- jarier, 2016; Rieder and Voss, 2010). While The Increasing consumers have always worked, a series of relatively recent changes (especially new self-service technologies; the explo- Importance of Working sion of consumption on the Internet) has served to increase the importance of the working consumer. This has even led to Consumers: The Impact concern about the “overworked consumer” (Andrews, 2019). In many cases, the con- sumer has little choice other than to work on Paid Workers in order to consume. As a result, workers (“consuming producers”) have become less significant in those contexts in which work- ing consumers have been of growing im- George Ritzer portance. In many cases workers have lost their jobs because of the increasing array of tasks undertaken by working consumers. The basic argument to be made here is that the increasing amount of work being done not by workers but rather by consumers is a largely invisible aspect of the “work revolution.” Such consumers offer many advantages over workers, not the least of which is that they often work for little or nothing. There are a series of senses in which consumers work. For example, they work psychologically and emotionally to pro- duce awareness of, and desire for, various products (for example, a meal at a cafeteria; a Big Mac at McDonald’s; one of Amazon. com’s innumerable products) long before they ever enter the physical or digital set- ting in which they are able to consume them. Once the desire is created, working consumers then need to produce the ac- tions required to get to the brick-and-mor- Prosumers, especially the sub-type of working tar locations (or the Web sites) where the consumers, are of increasing importance in products are available for sale. Once there, various ways, including in their impact on paid the initial desire needs to be reproduced (or employees. Working consumers are doing work possibly altered) and translated into the traditionally done by those employees. They steps needed to actually obtain and pur- offer many advantages over paid employees, chase goods and services. In many cases, such as requiring little or no pay and benefits. especially on the Internet, consumers do While the increasing role of working consumers not consider what they are doing as work (e.g., Googling a product or service of inter- leads to the creation of many new jobs (e.g., in est), or, even if they do, they do not consid- Amazon.com’s warehouses), they constitute a er it odious and may even regard it as fun. bigger but little recognized threat to many paid The immaterial psychological work employees. done by consumers is abundantly obvi- Work in the Age of Data 4 Working consumption is a ous in many contexts, especially in media sites mentioned above), but especially in sub-type of the more general events of all sorts. At one time there was online digital sites (most notably, Amazon. process of “prosumption,” or a tendency to see audiences as passive com, Facebook, and Google). The fusion of the fusion of production and consumers of the content being produced production and consumption as well as of consumption and promulgated by the media. However, the digital and the material is even more that view has long been rejected and re- the case in augmented settings involving Beyond the threat posed by placed by a view of the audience as, in the both the digital and material. One exam- human working consumers, terms of this analysis, actively working to ple is the way in which Amazon supple- produce (define, interpret, etc.) content ments its powerful presence online with there is also job loss due as they consume it. The same point can be its bricks-and-mortar settings, such as its to the proliferation of new made about brands. Brand meanings are chain of Whole Foods supermarkets and its technologies that produce as not simply produced by marketers and ad- convenience stores. they consume, and consume vertisers; they are actively produced by the While there has been some scholarly as they produce very people who consume them. use of the term working consumer, more However, from the point of view of this attention has been devoted to prosumption discussion, the most important kinds of and the prosumer. These terms are virtual- work undertaken by working consumers ly unknown in the popular literature, but is the increasing number of instances in many scholars have been using them, as which they must now do work that in the well many others that overlap with them, past was done for them by paid employees. for years. Further, many other scholars Working consumers “labor” in such bricks- have dealt with the process in the past and-mortar settings as supermarkets, de- without labeling it prosumption or using partment stores, IKEA, and in fast-food similar terms. In fact, the phenomenon it- restaurants. In the latter, for example, they self is not only not new, it is arguably pri- serve as waiters, buspersons, and, in the mordial; it is undoubtedly more primordial case of food obtained at the drive-through than either production or consumption. window, as garbagepersons taking their For example, hunter-gatherers were pro- debris with them and then disposing of it. sumers who often both produced their own They also do work online, such as searching food and then consumed it; they may even for information, products or services that, have consumed it as they were producing to the degree there were parallels to this it. People were prosumers before they were work in the pre-Internet world, was done thought of, and thought of themselves, as for them by paid employees. However, the either producers or consumers. That dis- vast majority of work done by consumers tinction probably gained traction with the online is increasingly unconscious and Industrial Revolution as large numbers done for them by systems of which they of people left home (or farm) to work in are largely unaware. For example, a click settings (workshops, factories) devoted to on something of interest online might au- production. The more recent Consumer tomatically prompt the appearance of a rel- Revolution (Cohen, 2003) brought with evant online site on one’s screen. Similarly, it a sense of people as consumers and the wearable technology (a major facilitator of development and proliferation of distinct working consumption, although the tech- sites where people went to consume. nology does much or all of the work) can As a result, scholars and laypeople have lead to an array of prompts, not the least long made, and continue to make, a histor- important of which are those from com- ical error—the tendency in analyzing the mercial interests. In addition, and more economy to focus on either production or problematic, is that it might lead to the use consumption, or worker or consumer—that of information about users’ actions that are is in desperate need of correction. Concern invisible to them and often designed to lead with prosumers in general and working them to consume. consumers in particular serves to correct Working consumption is a sub-type of that error. the more general process of prosumption, While we have always been prosumers or the fusion of production and consump- and, more specifically, working consumers, tion (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010; Ritzer, today’s increasing fusion of work (produc- 2014). Prosumption has always existed, but tion) and consumption is abundantly obvi- it is taking many new forms in the contem- ous to the casual observer and to scholars porary world. This is true in both bricks- in various fields who have created, and and-mortar settings (e.g., the consumption expanded upon, concepts that reflect this The Increasing Importance of Working Consumers: The Impact on Paid Workers by George Ritzer 5 reality. Beyond the concept of “prosumer,” (e.g., locate what they are seeking among a tected products they want to purchase, and others in an array of fields that deal with vast array of products, scan tags to check leave the store. (Uber has done much the the same, or closely related, phenomena prices or to find missing prices, in some same thing; since rides are prepaid through are “produser” (Bruns, 2008), “co-creation” cases scan purchases when they leave via an app, passengers can exit an Uber with- (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004), market- a self-service lane). Supermarkets still have out the need to pay or to tip.) Consumers ing’s “service-dominant logic” (Vargo and many employees, but they are often sup- must pick up desired items on their own Lusch, 2004), “wikinomics” (based at least plemented by self-service checkout lanes without the help of employees and they are in part on the idea that businesses put con- where customers are required to scan their able to leave the store without pausing at sumers to work on the Internet) (Tapscott own purchases, including, at times, even the checkout station or with the involve- and Williams, 2008), “craft consumption” weighing their own produce and bagging ment of those who traditionally work at (Campbell, 2005), DIY (Fox, 2014), and, their purchases.