Sanctioning Value: The Legal System, Hyper-Power and the legitimation of MP3

This article offers an historical account of the contestation surrounding MP3 and its legitimation as a consumer choice option. We juxtapose our narrative against the service-dominant logic (SDL) literature, which positions the consumer as the co-creator of value. In these debates issues of power and politics are downplayed. By contrast, we foreground the politicized processes that frame consumer choice options. Through a study of the legal disputes around MP3 and digital delivery services, we make a case that law courts provide the scaffolding for judgements of value in the market system. Contrary to proponents of SDL, value is not only a function of co-production between company and customer. Nor do all consumption practices acquire sufficient legitimacy to enter into legally sanctioned value co-creation interactions. This is a function of the ‘hyper-power’ practiced by the legal community and related actors, which constitute or deny value to product offerings. Value is not, therefore, necessarily phenomenologically determined by the ultimate consumer. Neither are they the sovereign individual of marketing lore. Their subjectivity is patterned by macro and meso actors and service provision is permitted when it is capable of enrolment within the circuits of capital accumulation

Rescuing and preserving values in vintage clothing.

Where previous research into second-hand commodities has focused on dispossession, commodity spheres, and negative contamination, we consider the post-purchase resingularisation and rituals that consumers undertake to preserve invested meaning. Drawing on data gathered from phenomenological interviews with vintage clothing enthusiasts in England and Wales we provide an account of different types of contamination and resingularisation processes. These include new forms of positive and negative contamination where the self becomes a potential pollutant detracting from a good’s ability to actualise displaced meanings

Can filesharers be triggered by economic incentives? Results of an experiment

Illegal filesharing on the internet leads to considerable financial losses for artists and copyright owners as well as producers and sellers of music. Thus far, measures to contain this phenomenon have been rather restrictive. However, there are still a considerable number of illegal systems, and users are able to decide quite freely between legal and illegal downloads because the latter are still difficult to sanction. Recent economic approaches account for the improved bargaining position of users. They are based on the idea of revenue-splitting between professional sellers and peers. In order to test such an innovative business model, the study reported in this article carried out an experiment with 100 undergraduate students, forming five small peer-to-peer networks.The networks were confronted with different economic conditions.The results indicate that even experienced filesharers hold favourable attitudes towards revenue-splitting.They seem to be willing to adjust their behaviour to different economic conditions

Digital play and the actualisation of the consumer imagination

In this article, the authors consider emerging consumer practices in digital virtual spaces. Building on constructions of consumer behavior as both a sense-making activity and a resource for the construction of daydreams, as well as anthropological readings of performance, the authors speculate that many performances during digital play are products of consumer fantasy. The authors develop an interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual that is better equipped to understand the movement between consumer daydreams and those practices actualized in the material and now also in digital virtual reality. The authors argue that digital virtual performances present opportunities for liminoid transformations through inversions, speculations, and playfulness acted out in aesthetic dramas. To illustrate, the authors consider specific examples of the theatrical productions available to consumers in digital spaces, highlighting the consumer imagination that feeds them, the performances they produce, and the potential for transformation in consumer-players

The relationship between ownership and possession: observations from the context of digital virtual goods

This theoretical article highlights limitations in the current trend towards dichotomizing full ownership and access-based consumption by recognizing a broader, more complex array of ‘fragmented’ ownership configurations in the context of digital virtual goods 10 (DVGs). In challenging this dichotomy, we recognise that the relationship between ownership and possession becomes particularly significant. We therefore consider how prominent DVG ownership configurations may shape the way in which possession is assembled, potentially reducing consumers’ scope of action rela- 15 tive to DVGs and leaving possession susceptible to disruption. Conversely, we acknowledge ways in which consumers’ continued attempts at possession may impinge upon the agency of ownership mechanisms within the market. Our analysis ultimately builds upon existing understandings of both ownership and possession, 20 theorizing their often overlooked relation in consumptio

Materializing digital collecting: an extended view of digital materiality

If digital objects are abundant and ubiquitous, why should consumers pay for, much less collect them? The qualities of digital code present numerous challenges for collecting, yet digital collecting can and does occur. We explore the role of companies in constructing digital consumption objects that encourage and support collecting behaviours, identifying material configuration techniques that materialise these objects as elusive and authentic. Such techniques, we argue, may facilitate those pleasures of collecting otherwise absent in the digital realm. We extend theories of collecting by highlighting the role of objects and the companies that construct them in materialising digital collecting. More broadly, we extend theories of digital materiality by highlighting processes of digital material configuration that occur in the pre-objectification phase of materialisation, acknowledging the role of marketing and design in shaping the qualities exhibited by digital consumption objects and consequently related consumption behaviours and experiences

Determinants of Unlawful File Sharing: A Scoping Review

We employ a scoping review methodology to consider and assess the existing evidence on the determinants of unlawful file sharing (UFS) transparently and systematically. Based on the evidence, we build a simple conceptual framework to model the psychological decision to engage in UFS, purchase legally or do nothing. We identify social, moral, experiential, technical, legal and financial utility sources of the decision to purchase or to file share. They interact in complex ways. We consider the strength of evidence within these areas and note patterns of results. There is good evidence for influences on UFS within each of the identified determinants, particularly for self-reported measures, with more behavioral research needed. There are also indications that the reasons for UFS differ across media; more studies exploring media other than music are required

'Love it. Buy it. Sell it': consumer desire and the social drama of eBay

Our work adds to existing research on eBay by presenting it as a space where consumers’ imaginations are stimulated and where their psychological work to manufacture ever new wants and desires allows for a reflection of consumer tastes and practices. To do so, we conceptualize eBay as a digital virtual space that allows consumers to browse at length through a plethora of goods, test preferences and potentially reflect on the significance of objects and daydreams pursued.Conceptually, we draw a synthesis between desire and imagination-laden narratives within consumer research with Rob Shield’s analytic of the digital virtual and its relationship to the real and ideal. From that reading we attribute eBay with a liminoid texture that helps us account for the social dramas that some of its users, such as famed science fiction writer William Gibson, may experience. We argue that whilst eBay does not provoke the initial breach, its enormous, global, ever changing catalogue of goods, produces a crisis that invites the user to engage in redressive action. That analysis has two moments, one focusing on the eBay experience as a form of flânerie, and then, how visual and written information gathered from searching eBay can be used to craft daydreams relative to a desired good. Specifically, we consider concrete consumer practices through which consumers feed and actualize more substantive daydreams of an improved life, including bookmarking, bidding and winning (owning) desired items. We conclude that eBay’s significance as a seductive site to consume (in) lies in its ability to allow for the continuous construction of latent wants while providing consumers with the tools to react to these wants in various ways

Ethics of marketing persuasive technology: a research agenda

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