Abstract
Customer-to-Customer (C2C) platforms have the potential to foster "sharing cultures" — diverse social practices emphasizing cooperation and relational values —, yet their capacity to harness users' creativity in value co-creation remains largely under explored. This paper introduces "Playful Active Mastery Research (PAMR)," a novel design research methodology specifically developed to investigate how C2C platforms can effectively support value co-creation rooted in users' everyday sharing practices. PAMR distinctively positions users as active, agentic "players" who playfully "master" existing platforms to devise novel, culturally resonant applications. Through a case study involving the C2C marketplace "Mercari," workshops were conducted where participants actively engaged in this PAMR process. The application of PAMR yielded critical insights into: (1) the cultural interactivity of C2C marketplaces, such as the roles of storytelling and local trust, (2) the dynamics of user-led co-creation, including emergent collective governance and cross-platform bricolage, and (3) the empowering nature of the PAMR methodology itself, notably its ability to foster user agency by shifting participants from passive "subjects" to active "players." The findings demonstrate PAMR's efficacy in revealing pathways for users to transform platforms and suggest that C2C marketplace services should evolve into enablers of such user-driven cultural practices, rather than imposing overly prescriptive designs.
Keywords
Sharing Culture; Playful Active Mastery Research; C2C; Exploratory Design Research
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.487
Citation
Kusano, K., Sakakura, K.,and Kurokawa, N.(2025) From Research Subjects to Active Players: Playful Active Mastery Research for Value Co-creation on C2C Platforms, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.487
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 6 - Co-creation
From Research Subjects to Active Players: Playful Active Mastery Research for Value Co-creation on C2C Platforms
Customer-to-Customer (C2C) platforms have the potential to foster "sharing cultures" — diverse social practices emphasizing cooperation and relational values —, yet their capacity to harness users' creativity in value co-creation remains largely under explored. This paper introduces "Playful Active Mastery Research (PAMR)," a novel design research methodology specifically developed to investigate how C2C platforms can effectively support value co-creation rooted in users' everyday sharing practices. PAMR distinctively positions users as active, agentic "players" who playfully "master" existing platforms to devise novel, culturally resonant applications. Through a case study involving the C2C marketplace "Mercari," workshops were conducted where participants actively engaged in this PAMR process. The application of PAMR yielded critical insights into: (1) the cultural interactivity of C2C marketplaces, such as the roles of storytelling and local trust, (2) the dynamics of user-led co-creation, including emergent collective governance and cross-platform bricolage, and (3) the empowering nature of the PAMR methodology itself, notably its ability to foster user agency by shifting participants from passive "subjects" to active "players." The findings demonstrate PAMR's efficacy in revealing pathways for users to transform platforms and suggest that C2C marketplace services should evolve into enablers of such user-driven cultural practices, rather than imposing overly prescriptive designs.