The Prosumer as Customer
DIY-Stores as Providers of “Solutions to Problems”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25365/oezg-2019-30-1-4Keywords:
Do-it-yourself (DIY), home improvement, consumption, production, leisure, work, gender roles, retailAbstract
Since the late 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany experienced the formation of the so-called do-it-yourself (DIY) movement. One of the biggest problems of the early German DIYer was the question of where to get the needed materials and tools for the tasks at hand. Fortunately for the DIYer, starting in the 1960s, entrepreneurs from different fields of retail began to see a promising economic factor in DIY-activities. In the late 1960s, the first large-scale retail facilities were built to serve the needs of the Western German lay-handymen. This article discusses how these companies addressed DIY-afficiandos, what managerial techniques they invented, and how they were able to take into account the notion that DIYers wanted to be recognised as producers more so than as consumers.
