Working Consumers: The Next Step in Marketing Theory?

In marketing and consumer research, consumers have been increasingly theorised as producers. However, these theorisations do not take all facets of consumers’ productive role into account. This paper mobilises both post-Marxist economics and post-Maussian socio-economics to develop the concept of working consumer. This concept depicts consumers who, through their immaterial labour, add cultural and affective value to market offerings. In so doing consumers increase the value of market offerings, although they usually work at the primary level of sociality (interpersonal relationships) and are therefore beyond producers’ control. However, given certain conditions, companies capture such a value when it enters the second level of sociality (the market). The concept of the working consumer summarises and enriches extant approaches to consumer (co)production, while challenging right-minded developments, such as the service-dominant (S-D) logic in marketing, which try to create/construct an ethereal marketscape in which consumers and producers live in harmony.Double Exploitation, Gift giving, Immaterial Labour, Primary Sociality, Secondary Sociality, Co- production, Co-creation

Gift-giving, sharing and commodity exchange at Bookcrossing.com. New insights from a qualitative analysis

Purpose – Through an empirical analysis of a consumption community, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the theories of gift-giving, sharing and commodity exchange should not be kept separated but integrated into a unifying model. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides new evidence about Bookcrossing.com, whose members share and give books as gifts; that is, physical goods rather than digital ones as in most of the communities considered in the literature. This community is analysed with qualitative tools, such as netnography, personal interviews and participant observation. Findings – The main result of the analysis of Bookcrossing is that gift-giving is not the only process responsible for value creation and distribution in consumption communities: sharing and commodity exchange also play a role. Furthermore, the paper provides new evidence about aspects of gift-giving and sharing that have received limited attention in the literature: collective reciprocity and anonymous sharing. Research limitations/implications – The limitations are related to the intrinsic properties of the methods employed (netnography, personal interviews and participant observation) and to the paper, which analyses only one community and one product category. The implications refer to the role of gift-giving in consumption communities and its relationships with other processes: consumer gift systems are not only gifting platforms, but they and the elements of sharing and commodity exchange need to be integrated. Practical implications – The empirical evidence and implications matter for the organisation and management of collaborative consumption platforms and the way in which traditional business models could and should interact with these platforms in an increasing number of businesses. Originality/value – The paper adds new evidence of and original insights into gift-giving and collective forms of exchange. Moreover, it provides managerial implications of the analysed community for the book publishing industry

Consumption acquisition practices

This conceptual paper aims to advance a theory of acquisition practices by integrating concepts and theories about resource circulation practices, such as buying, sharing, gifting, access based consumption, into a common framework. While acquisition, the process of obtaining consumption resources, is an essential aspect of consumer behavior, it has mainly been conceptualized in terms of buying. Recent research has begun to identify and conceptualize alternative acquisition practices and theoretical approaches. We build on these works and develop an organizing theoretical framework that integrates these concepts towards the advancement of a theory of acquisition process and aims to provide conceptual clarity in the current literature. We develop a typology of research acquisition practices on the basis of a) the level of market mediation, and b) ownership transfer based on a literature review and theories of exchange. The typology distinguishes six consumption acquisition practices: buying, bartering, gifting, renting, sharing, and borrowing. We conceptualize each practice, discuss associated consumption consequences, and discuss hybrid cases. Our model helps advance the theoretical account of consumer behavior and widen the scope of such theorization to enclose recent phenomena that arise from the sharing economy

Communicating CSR: A selective empirical review of theories and methods. Work in progress

In this paper we provide an empirical analysis of the literature about Corporate Social Responsibility Communication (CSRC). Given the increasing amount of research related to this topic, a diverse set of theories, methods, and empirical findings coexist in the literature. Therefore, we have collected and analyzed CSRC papers in order to highlight which theoretical and methodological approaches have been used by scholars in the field, when dealing with empirical research. We believe that it is necessary to sum up this amount of research with the purpose of deriving insights about the current status of research and its possible future developments

Do consumers care about CSR in their online reviews? An empirical analysis

This research investigates how consumers assess hotels’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices when writing online reviews. The study explores the CSR discourse in online reviews over a 10-year period, high- lighting how CSR’s social and environmental dimensions relate to the main hospitality topics (experience, amenities, location, transactions, value). Based on a longitudinal automated text analysis covering 480,000 reviews across six European cities, the findings reveal that hotel customers have gradually begun paying more attention to CSR factors, particularly to social and environmental ones. However, the aggregate results suggest that the overall CSR consumer discourse is still very limited, although it does have important implications in terms of consumer emotions and hospitality dimensions

Covert brand recognition engages emotion-specific brain networks

Consumer goods' brands have become a major driver of consumers' choice: they have got symbolic, relational and even social properties that add substantial cultural and affective value to goods and services. Therefore, measuring the role of brands in consumers' cognitive and affective processes would be very helpful to better understand economic decision making. This work aimed at finding the neural correlates of automatic, spontaneous emotional response to brands, showing how deeply integrated are consumption symbols within the cognitive and affective processes of individuals. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was measured during a visual oddball paradigm consisting in the presentation of scrambled pictures as frequent stimuli, colored squares as targets, and brands and emotional pictures (selected from the International Affective Picture System [IAPS]) as emotionally-salient distractors. Affective rating of brands was assessed individually after scanning by a validated questionnaire. Results showed that, similarly to IAPS pictures, brands activated a well-defined emotional network, including amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, highly specific of affective valence. In conclusion, this work identified the neural correlates of brands within cognitive and affective processes of consumers

New Product Development: a review of the main contributions in the last ten years of research

Research on new product development have increased enormously over the last 10 years. As markets are becoming increasingly fluid and unstable, companies had to become more flexible and de-structured, thereby trying to overcome traditional approaches which used to interpret new product development as a process formed by a linear sequence of successive stages, traditionally undertaken within corporate boundaries. Based on these considerations, this study offers an overview of the evolution of the management literature regarding new product development, published over the last 10 years (2008-2018) in peer-reviewed journals. When applying a bibliometric analysis, we have discovered the existence of five clearly defined research clusters which we have investigated by reviewing the most relevant contributions. Also, the analysis has helped us to uncover the existence of promising research areas that have been little explored. As a result, we formulated some suggestions for further research to fill the existing gaps

Le basi neurologiche del rapporto tra il consumatore e la marca. Il contributo del neuro-imaging alle ricerche di marketing

Consumer develop very tight relationships with brands. In many cases, consumers develop positive relationships with their preferred brands and goods. In some of these cases true “love” relationship may occur. Sometimes, also negative relationships arise, often as a reaction toward unsatisfactory experiences, bad practices, etc. Companies aim at developing strong and positive emotional relationships between their brands and their customers. When they succeed, the brand is immediately recognized, it elicits positive affective responses, it is more difficult to be substituted for by competitors. The aim of the present study is to measure behavioral and emotional brain responses to covert visual recognition of brands. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity in 15 healthy subjects (7 females, 23-33 years) that were exposed to four stimulus types: coloured scrambled pictures, coloured squares, brand logos, and IAPS pictures with positive and negative valence scores. Sixty-three popular brands were selected among 8 different product categories. Two specific patterns of activation emerged for like (amygdale) and dislike brands (anterior medial cingulate, left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus, medial cuneus). Implications for interpreting the role of brands in consumer mental processes are given, with special reference to the asymmetry between positive and negative evaluations

New Product Development During the Last Ten Years: The Ongoing Debate and Future Avenues

Research on new product development (NPD) has grown considerably over the last 30 years interweaving with serval fields of study such as strategy, marketing, supply chain management, and project management. This study offers an overview of the development of the NPD management literature published over the last ten years (2008 to 2018) in 1,226 peer-reviewed articles. By applying bibliometric analysis, we have discovered the existence of five research clusters focused on the following main thematic areas: the NPD process, the integration of diverse knowledge sources for NPD optimization, the relationship between NPD and corporate strategy, the role of users and consumers in the NPD process, the supplier involvement in the NPD activities. In respect of each area, we selected and reviewed the most relevant contributions and presented the emerging theoretical approaches and best practices. Also, the analysis has helped us to uncover the existence of promising research areas that have been scarcely explored. As a result, we formulated some suggestions for further research to fill in the existing gaps

Non-western contexts: the invisible half

Like many other disciplines within the broad area of social sciences (e.g., anthropology, gender studies, psychology, sociology, etc.), consumer research is also highly navigated by scholars from Western countries. This, however, does not mean, by any means, that consumer research is devoted to studying Western contexts only. As evident from the ever-increasing number of regional conferences (e.g., Asia-Pacific and Latin American conferences of the Association for Consumer Research) and non-Western students' enrolment in doctoral programs at Western universities, there are many more researchers (from non-Western countries) who are entering the field and enriching it by their colourful contributions. Yet, given the low number of publications on consumer research in non-Western contexts, it seems that our current knowledge in these societies has a long way to go to flourish. More specifically, and in the domain of consumption culture research, this gap is even further widened by the fact that the culture of consumption in such contexts is largely interpreted with reference to the 'grand narratives' of Western scholars (e.g., Foucault, Mafessoli, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Derrida, etc.). Therefore, from an ontological perspective, it seems that our existing knowledge about non-Western societies lies heavily on the 'theoretical structures' that are 'constructed' by Western philosophy as a set of ideas, beliefs, and practices (Said, 1978). As Belk (1995) reminds us, consumption culture always existed in all human societies. What makes contemporary societies different from that of our predecessors' is not the fact that consumption culture did not exist in those societies, but that consumption culture has become a prevailing feature in modern society (Slater, 1997; Lury, 1996; Fırat and Venkatesh, 1995; McCracken, 1988). Therefore, the nature and dynamics of consumption culture in each society should be studied not only against the sociocultural, historical, and economic background of a given context (Western or non-Western) but also with reference to the philosophical and epistemological viewpoints that analyse and interpret cultural practices of that society from within that culture. Addressing such issues, this paper discusses some of the key reasons for lack of theory development in the field from non-western contexts. The paper invites scholars in non-Western contexts to introduce the less articulated, and sometime hidden, body of knowledge from their own contexts into the field of marketing in general and consumer research in particular