prosumer

Prosumer is a portmanteau of producer and consumer describing a person who both consumes and produces goods or services within a market or platform. The term was coined by Alvin Toffler in his 1980 book The Third Wave to describe a shift from passive consumption to active participation in production and design.

Modern usage encompasses activities such as content creation, customization, user involvement in product development, and co-design. Prosumers may generate value by remixing media, contributing software code, designing or modifying hardware, or generating energy with on-site generation technologies and selling surplus back to the grid.

In business and technology, the prosumer model underpins crowdsourcing, open-source movements, maker communities, and mass customization, allowing companies to leverage user creativity and reduce development costs while shifting some value creation to the user.

Implications include a reconfiguration of business models toward platforms that coordinate participation, new forms of ownership and compensation, and greater emphasis on governance and quality control. The concept also highlights the blurring of lines between producer and consumer as participants assume productive roles.

Today the term is widely used across marketing, economics, energy, and design to describe users who actively contribute to value creation rather than merely consuming it.