The emergence of a public good through online social capital activation

This paper examines how consumers activate online social capital, characterizes the resources which they elicit, and considers of the resulting good’s properties. Content analysis of the initial posts of 975 publicly available threads of an online community reveals six forms of activation, based on whether the activator seeks convergent or divergent responses; and seeks factual information or subjective viewpoints, or mobilizes action. The findings suggest that the network is used in three ways: to (1) source a ‘rare’ resource possessed by at least one member, (2) generate a form of consensus among several members, or (3) combine the divergent resources possessed by different members into a ‘knowledge or action bank’. Hence, the network may be used in a search for ‘unity’ or ‘additively’. An emergent, public good develops in the process. Of particular value for a public good is the unfolding richness that comes from the diversity of resources

Utilising online shopping environment attributes holistically to create competitive advantage

As more consumers shop online, it becomes crucial for marketers to know how online shopping environments (OSEs) can be used to gain competitive advantage. This dissertation aims to explain theoretically how OSE attributes work together holistically to produce desirable consumer responses, applying and extending a theory from the environmental psychology literature to the online context. Firstly, the study conceptualises OSEs as virtual environments which may be perceived and experienced both cognitively and affectively through a technology-mediated interaction with a computer screen. A multi-disciplinary approach identifies key characteristics of OSEs: they involve consumers; they are more complex than their offline counterparts; they are likely first apprehended holistically; and they can elicit high levels of emotions and cognition. Secondly, the research uses a gestalt approach and extends Kaplan and Kalan’s (1982) Preference Framework, taking account of the specific characteristics of OSEs, which one visits specifically to obtain product information. The results support the proposition that OSEs are perceived in terms of their Sense-making and Exploratory attributes. Thirdly, the research explains how OSE attributes work together to produce desirable consumer responses. As hypothesised, Exploratory potential produces both Hedonic and Utilitarian value, and both kinds of value contribute to Site commitment. An unexpected result is that Sense-making potential does not produce Utilitarian value directly, but only through the mediation of Exploratory potential. The research contributes to marketing theory by: (1) identifying ways the internet has changed the nature of the shopping experience; (2) extending Kaplan and Kaplan’s Preference Framework to explain how consumers perceive OSEs holistically; (3) identifying the distinction between page-level and site-level perceptions, and (4) distinguishing between different sources of information (marketer vs. non-marketer). Managerially, the research provides a model for marketers to conceive and design retail websites whose attributes work together to create competitive advantage

On becoming a culturally plural consumer

We examined consumption behavior to understand how individuals become culturally plural consumers through exploratory research conducted in one of the world’s most urban multi-cultural environments, the UAE. As a starting point consumption was deemed as “consummatory” in accord with Holbrook (1987). The data were collected through twenty interviews with UAE residents. This included men and women, ages ranging from 20s to 50s, representing eleven countries from five continents. Broadly a hermeneutic approach was followed in eliciting how culturally plural consumption behaviors emerged and interpreting how the process unfolded. The study examined multicultural habits pertaining to products or services chosen by the respondents. These covered food, cuisine, books, beverages, music, dance, clothes, TV, health treatments among others. Patterns of consumption acts create a consumption behavior that may be described as extemporaneous, expedient and emergent. The nature of the consumption process depends on a host of triggers that includes culturally diverse predisposition of the consumer, multi-cultural identities, social cues, contextual factors and individuals’ proclivity towards experimentalism. Taken together we found that the praxis of becoming a culturally plural consumer is a learning process that has an emergent quality. In culturally plural markets consumers have to be approached with a fine brush. Many of the current taken-for-granted ideals of marketing will be questioned by the approach we are suggesting. As Stewart (2009) aptly said, understanding of praxis “would allow for practical action, based on edifying philosophy.” This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature with no firm conclusions. While Holbrook’s idea of consummation is a metaphor for consumption that is well-known, it is not adequately understood nor followed up with research. Our inquiry into consumption praxis is a contribution to that end with significant implications for 21st century marketing

Engaging customers during a website visit: a model of website customer engagement

Purpose: A customer’s visit to a retail website is a critical “moment of truth” during which contemporary retailers attempt to simultaneously, during a single web navigation, capture customers’ attention, build rapport, and prompt them to act. By showing how to capture customer commitment over the course of a single website visit, the concept of customer website engagement, defined as “the process of developing cognitive, affective and behavioural commitment to an active relationship with the website”, addresses strategic concerns. Drawing from literature on engagement, the purpose of this paper is to consider how retail websites can engage customers during the course of a website navigation. A conceptual model of website customer engagement underpinned by relationship marketing and communication knowledge, shows how perceptions of the website’s exploration and sense-making potential can activate consumer engagement, and is then empirically tested. Design/methodology/approach: Using survey data, measures of the four dimensions of engagement (interaction engagement, activity engagement, behavioural engagement, and communication engagement) and of three drivers are developed and validated. The model is tested empirically (n=301) using structural equation modelling. Findings: The results support the process conceptualisation of engagement, which identifies organismic as well as conative stages, and show the distinct roles played by perceptions of informational exploration, experiential exploration and sense-making in activating engagement. Practical implications The study provides online retailing practice with an organising framework enabling online retailing managers to consider how, depending on their product category and their size, they might (re)design their website to optimally produce customer engagement. Originality/value The study contributes to online marketing and retailing knowledge by showing the relevance of the concept of engagement as it pertains to customers’ single navigations on retail websites, and by empirically showing, through a parsimonious model, how engagement can be activated and unfold

Special Session: Multicultural marketplaces (Theoretical and empirical ground advances)

Several disciplines such as sociology and human geography have recognized that the new era of ‘superdiversity’, where social actors all evolve in ‘lived multiculture’ (e.g., Neal, Bennet, Cochrane, & Mohan 2013; Vertovec 2007; Wessendorf 2013), poses new questions and requires theoretical development. Similarly, in marketing and consumer research, several authors have pointed to the need to distinguish between international and multicultural marketing (e.g., Askegaard, Arnould, & Kjeldgaard 2005; Craig & Douglas, 2006; Jamal 2003; Laroche, Papadopoulos, Heslop, & Bergeron 2003; Yaprak 2008). Large proportions of contemporary marketplaces become increasingly culturally diverse – in terms of their populations’ composition, the cultural origin of the marketers and brands active in the marketplace, and their consumers’ exposure to brands, advertising, media and ideologies from multiple cultural origins. Such continuous multicultural interactions and experiences facilitate the integration, appropriation and, in some cases, transformation of cultural meanings from other marketplaces to consumers’ lived multiculture realities in a given marketplace (Cayla & Eckhardt 2008; Demangeot, Broderick & Craig 2015; Eckhardt & Mahi 2004; Kipnis, Broderick, & Demangeot 2014). While international marketing research has primarily focused on cultural differences between geographically distant markets and, more recently, on the globalization of markets (Akaka, Vargo, & Lusch, 2013; Cavusgil, Deligonul, & Yaprak, 2005), multicultural marketplaces pose new questions and require theoretical development to reflect and cater for the complexities brought about by the unprecedented magnitude of cultural heterogeneity and interconnectedness in the majority of contemporary national markets. The purpose of this special session is to spotlight some of the recent theoretical and empirical advances in the ‘multicultural marketplaces’ research stream. The session brings together studies that each deploys different research lenses addressing four areas (identity complexity, intergroup conviviality, differentiation of socio-political contexts and multicultural adaptiveness) recently posed as requiring development in the multicultural marketplaces paradigm (Demangeot et al. 2015). Specifically, the study by Cross, Harrison and Thomas distinguishes unique phenomenological complexities of multiracial consumer identity and discuss whether and how advertising representations of multiracial populations affect these consumers’ perceptions of acceptance by the marketplace. Regany and Emontspool consider how the ethnic-focused product representation practices by retail spaces elevate recognition of cultural difference by consumers within one multicultural marketplace, contributing to the rise of new intergroup barriers. Johnson, Cadairo and Grier, conversely, consider the role of country-level ideological stances on cultural diversity in driving differential consumer responses to ethnocultural-specific meanings represented in restaurant environments. Finally, Galalae, Kipnis and Demangeot propose the concept of consumer psychological mobility to capture and explain variations in consumers’ capacity to adapt and adopt multicultural living as a consistent, active practice extending beyond cultural consumption tourism. The session highlights that mundane intersection of multiple cultural meanings and varying contextualizations of lived multiculture within societal ideologies facilitate emergence of new individual and group discourses informing distinctly different consumption expectations and practices. This necessitates innovative approaches to recognize and account for these differences. By empirically identifying specific challenges faced by marketing researchers and practitioners and debating their theoretical implications the session contributes to advancement of consumer behaviour and marketing research in multicultural marketplaces’ contexts

Consumer Multicultural Identity Affiliation: Reassessing Identity Segmentation in Multicultural Markets

The increasing intra-national diversity of many modern markets poses challenges to identity segmentation. As consumers require greater recognition of their diverse identities from brands, marketing science and practice are in search of theories and models that recognize and capture identity dynamics as impacted by cultural influences both from beyond and within national market borders. This paper extends consumer acculturation theory into multicultural market realities and offers a Consumer Multicultural Identity Affiliation (CMIA) Framework5 that distinguishes and integrates three key types of intra- and trans-national cultural influences informing identity dynamics. By examining consumer cultural identities within the CMIA framework in a mixed-method, two-country study, we show that gaining such an integrative view on cultural identity affiliations uncovers greater diversity and complexity (mono-, bi-, or multi-cultural) of consumer segments. We conclude with discussing future directions for CMIA applications to support marketing managers, scholars and educators dealing with culturally heterogeneous markets

The stigma turbine:A theoretical framework for conceptualizing and contextualizing marketplace stigma

Stigmas, or discredited personal attributes, emanate from social perceptions of physical characteristics, aspects of character, and “tribal” associations (e.g., race; Goffman 1963). Extant research emphasizes the perspective of the stigma target, with some scholars exploring how social institutions shape stigma. Yet the ways stakeholders within the socio-commercial sphere create, perpetuate, or resist stigma remain overlooked. We introduce and define marketplace stigma as the labeling, stereotyping, and devaluation by and of commercial stakeholders (consumers, companies and their employees, stockholders, institutions) and their offerings (products, services, experiences). We offer the Stigma Turbine (ST) as a unifying conceptual framework that locates marketplace stigma within the broader sociocultural context, and illuminates its relationship to forces that exacerbate or blunt stigma. In unpacking the ST, we reveal the critical role market stakeholders can play in (de)stigmatization, explore implications for marketing practice and public policy, and offer a research agenda to further our understanding of marketplace stigma and stakeholder welfare

Consumer ethnicity three decades after: a TCR agenda

Research into consumer ethnicity is a vital discipline that has substantially evolved in the past three decades. This conceptual article critically reviews its immense literature and examines the extent to which it has provided extensive contributions not only for the understanding of ethnicity in the marketplace but also for personal/collective well-being. We identify two gaps accounting for scant transformative contributions. First, today social transformations and conceptual sophistications require a revised vocabulary to provide adequate interpretive lenses. Second, extant work has mostly addressed the subjective level of ethnic identity projects but left untended the meso/macro forces affecting ethnicity (de)construction and personal/collective well-being. Our contribution stems from filling both gaps and providing a theory of ethnicity (de)construction that includes migrants as well as non-migrants

Online communities as sources of emergent knowledge for climate-smartness

This paper discusses online communities as sources of emergent knowledge for climate-smartness

Utilising online shopping environment attributes holistically to create competitive advantage

As more consumers shop online, it becomes crucial for marketers to know how online shopping environments (OSEs) can be used to gain competitive advantage. This dissertation aims to explain theoretically how OSE attributes work together holistically to produce desirable consumer responses, applying and extending a theory from the environmental psychology literature to the online context. Firstly, the study conceptualises OSEs as virtual environments which may be perceived and experienced both cognitively and affectively through a technology-mediated interaction with a computer screen. A multi-disciplinary approach identifies key characteristics of OSEs: they involve consumers; they are more complex than their offline counterparts; they are likely first apprehended holistically; and they can elicit high levels of emotions and cognition. Secondly, the research uses a gestalt approach and extends Kaplan and Kalan’s (1982) Preference Framework, taking account of the specific characteristics of OSEs, which one visits specifically to obtain product information. The results support the proposition that OSEs are perceived in terms of their Sense-making and Exploratory attributes. Thirdly, the research explains how OSE attributes work together to produce desirable consumer responses. As hypothesised, Exploratory potential produces both Hedonic and Utilitarian value, and both kinds of value contribute to Site commitment. An unexpected result is that Sense-making potential does not produce Utilitarian value directly, but only through the mediation of Exploratory potential. The research contributes to marketing theory by: (1) identifying ways the internet has changed the nature of the shopping experience; (2) extending Kaplan and Kaplan’s Preference Framework to explain how consumers perceive OSEs holistically; (3) identifying the distinction between page-level and site-level perceptions, and (4) distinguishing between different sources of information (marketer vs. non-marketer). Managerially, the research provides a model for marketers to conceive and design retail websites whose attributes work together to create competitive advantage.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo