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

Consumers’ Life Style, Social Identity and Consumption Practices in the Context of Communities of Practice

Social networks on Internet cannot be regarded as media environments simply; they are discursive environments, where individuals actively commune and construct their identities. The present study represents an attempt to analyze the role of virtual communities of practice play in members’ identity, lifestyle and consumption practices. It is also aimed to find out how member types differ from each other in terms of their commitment to the community, identity, lifestyle and consumption. A survey was conducted with members Bilincli Hippiler Toplulugu, a virtual “community of practice”. The findings reveal that life projects, meanings and practices that are produced and consumed in the context of the researched virtual community are sited in central consumption context of, specifically, core and active members, and have identity construction and authorization functions in members’ life trajectories. These findings poses that although virtual communities did not take attention in Turkey, they get importance in analyzing consumer behavior with its effects on consumption practices.Virtual community; Communities of practice; Identity; Lifestyle; Consumption

Transformation of do-it-yourself from altruistic to utilitarian tendency: DIY entrepreneurs and sustainable practices in shared economy market conditions

ERTEN, Elif USTUNAGLI/0000-0001-5111-927XWOS: 000562557100001Purpose: in this study, it is aimed to examine do-it-yourself (DIY) practices from sustainable and entrepreneurship perspectives and to understand how transformation mechanism works in between altruistic and utilitarian tendencies in shared economy market conditions. Meaning, material and competency of practice theory will be indicative in explaining transformation of existing practices, how practice is transformed and diffused in market ecosystem through the introduction of new objects and opportunities to better understand how values and meanings change. Design/methodology/approach: This study is a phenomenological research interested in explaining contingency of sustainability in between altruistic and market conditions in shared economy ecosystem through DIY practices. the sample of this study is made up of 15 participants actively carrying out DIY activities. Data is analysed with MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2018 program through grounded coding technique. Findings: DIYers' relationship with market results them to create roles subject to their dependence on altruistic values of sustainability and their stance to anti-consumption in between alternative and mainstream economy. When they converge to the market, DIY activities turn into medium of marketing activities. When they diverge from the market, they become "transformers" embracing principles of shared economy. Contingency appears depending on three conditions: one is related with active participation in DIY or market practices. Second is related with occupation status that DIYers have. Third is related with competence that active DIYers have. Research limitations/implications: This study is aimed only at active participants. Therefore, it is possible to see the effects of altruistic and market behaviour more clearly. However, this group represents a minor group that will make it possible to comment on a small group. This is one of the limitations of this study. Originality/value: in the study, proximity and distance to mainstream market condition are taken as the basis and market structure is taken as an agent. By this way, DIYers' activities evaluated not only from social and economical perspective but also their transformation compared to capitalist market conditions challenging altruistic values of DIY, sustainability and sharing economy. Thus, this study is evaluating sustainability, shared economy and DIY not as an entity but as a process.Ege University, Scientific Research ProjectsEge UniversityIn the application process we have written a note about that. the first version of this paper was funded by Ege University, Scientific Research Projects

Evaluating Marketing and Trendy Topics from Marketing Managers' Perspective: Do the Work of Marketing Academicians 'Make Sense' to Marketing Managers?

This study aims to reveal how the new concepts and marketing practices, which have recently been trendy topics in the marketing literature, are perceived by the marketing managers as the target audience practitioners. The research is exploratory and adopts a phenomenological method. With purposeful sampling, data were obtained from 14 marketing managers through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed with the grounded theory approach. Research findings show that marketing knowledge has two important effects on marketing managers: the interaction between academic knowledge and marketing practitioners and the interaction among marketing practitioners. Education - especially post-graduate education - is an important element that determines the direction of this interaction. While the practitioners with post-graduate degrees keep less distance with academic knowledge, the ones without post-graduate degrees use marketing with basic tools like price, promotion and underestimate knowledge. Having academic knowledge is seen as an important means of status and social discrimination in the relationship among marketing managers. As an original finding of the study, academic language is the tool that most clearly reveals this distinction. Although the distance between theory and practice is preserved despite the critical literature in this field, the individual requests of managers towards knowledge allow this gap to be diminished.