Prosumers and Sustainable Market Governance: Development of the Community-Oriented Marketing Approach Scale

This research develops and empirically validates the Community-Oriented Marketing Approach (COMA), a 20-item multidimensional scale designed to measure prosumer perceptions within participatory market systems. COMA conceptualizes prosumers as active co-value creators and institutional agents, driving sustainable market governance. Grounded in institutional work theory and value-in-participation perspective, COMA is operationalized through four dimensions: (i) community ownership, (ii) participatory power, (iii) shared value creation and distribution, and (iv) social and environmental impact. A mixed-method, multi-study design was applied, incorporating data from 1285 UK-based prosumers participating in prosumption collectivities, alongside structured interviews with 10 prosumers and 15 experts. The analyses comprised thematic analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, partial least squares structural equation modelling, and artificial neural networks. The findings indicate that the COMA scale exhibits robust psychometric properties, demonstrating high reliability and construct validity with satisfactory model fit indices. The structural importance of the COMA's nomological network was tested, signifying that institutional trust and self-efficacy act as antecedents, while platform loyalty and sustainable consumption behaviors emerge as key consequences. Theoretically, COMA advances business strategy and environment research by showing the importance of prosumer involvement in fostering sustainable market governance. Practically, COMA provides practitioners and policymakers with a strategic measurement tool for assessing prosumer participation, advocating transition toward community-driven business models.