Performing Markets: Marketer Practices and Performativity through a Longitudinal Case Study of a Professional Football Club

This research contributes to the emerging practice-based marketing studies literature by critically examining the practices of marketers in the performing of markets. Studying the practices of marketers draws attention to the different market devices, knowledge forms, competencies, meanings. materials and technologies brought together by marketers to influence the broader market system. The genesis of this study can be found in Callon’s (1998a, 1998b) influential work on performativity which has gained considerable interest in multiple business and management disciplines over the past two decades. Additionally, the foundational studies of the markets-as-practice literature (Araujo et al., 2008), conceptual work of Kjellberg and Helgesson (2006, 2007), and social practice theory (cf. Giddens, 1984; Reckwitz, 2002; Shove et al., 2012) have shaped the rationale and design of this study. To address the research aim and objectives, this thesis utilizes a longitudinal case-study of an English professional football club. A qualitative framework is deployed and data is collected through a combination of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of publicly available information. The empirical context of professional football is selected due to sports’ socially and culturally embedded nature, and relatively recent economic transformation. Subsequently, professional football offers a dynamic, fast-paced a relatively young industry that involves multiple market actors to study how marketers work to affect the broader market system, and to what extent. The findings of this study identify three broad categories of marketer practices which collectively house seven separate practices: (1) Generative Learning (exploring and experimenting practices); (2) stakeholder mobilization (exploiting and engaging practices); and (3) attachment practices (relating, modifying, and integrating practices). These findings also highlight a relationship between categories, with generative learning and stakeholder mobilization found to be enablers of the more functional attachment practices. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of how marketers work to create and influence market form and conceptualize new forms of market value. The findings of this thesis also show how digital technology is transforming marketer practices, produces digital-data, and discusses implications for the future of marketing work and education.</p

Managing sport and leisure in the era of Covid-19

Managing sport and leisure in the era of Covid-1