How Luxury Experiences Contribute to Consumer Selves

Hitherto literature in the area of luxury and luxury brands predominantly applies a management-oriented view of luxury. This project departs from traditional views on luxury by focusing on consumers’ experiences with what they perceive as luxury. More specifically, the objective is to enhance understanding regarding how luxury experiences contribute to consumers’ selves. The empirical study is exploratory in nature and relies on consumer diaries regarding consumer luxury experiences. This project contributes to existing literature by outlining four different forms of how luxury relates to consumers’ selves

There´s No Passion; I Need Passion: Why Some Brands Excite Consumers So Much

Not all brands have the potential to develop into meaningful objects for consumers. They need to serve certain psychological and symbolic functions in order to qualify as passion brands. They need to help consumers define and express their personality, combine potentially conflicting social roles or experiment with new roles. Brand passion is lived in very different ways. Some fans invest a lot of time and money in their beloved objects; others join brand communities to collectively enjoy the brand. Others yet act as missionaries on behalf of the brand or develop their own rituals in dealing with it. Companies can encourage customers' relationships with their brands by helping consumers care for the brand and enhance or maintain it. True passion, however, also needs a pinch of magic in extraordinary and unique experiences and transformations. Creating such magical moments is the true challenge for brand management

When David becomes Goliath: ideological discourse in new online consumer movements

Management and MarketingUniversity of InnsbruckThis article seeks to contribute to the issue of consumer sovereignty by introducing the concept of adversary innovation. The functionality of ideological discourse for the sustainability of new consumer movements is discussed and investigated. Empirical investigation is based on a discourse analysis of online conversation of the free and open-source software movement. The findings reveal that the movement is constantly fueled with revolutionary energy by applying two dialectical categories of cultural codes in discourse -exclusion and integration. Processes of exclusion that become apparent in discourse comprise demonization, purifying, and remembering. Educationalism, pluralism and tolerance are processes, which seek integration. This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. 494 Advances in Consumer Research Volume 33, © 2006 When David Becomes Goliath Ideological Discourse in New Online Consumer Movements Andrea Hemetsberger, University of Innsbruck 1 1 Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank the millions of volunteer programmers for their wonderful creations, and their stimulating public discourse. May their spirit continue to light up their lives and those of others. 2 A Linux distribution is a Unix-like operating system plus application software comprising the Linux kernel, the GNU operating system, and assorted free software. Companies such as Red Hat, SUSE and MandrakeSoft, as well as community projects such as Debian and Gentoo Linux, assemble and test the software and provide it as a complete system, more or less ready to install and use. ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to the issue of consumer sovereignty by introducing the concept of adversary innovation. The functionality of ideological discourse for the sustainability of new consumer movements is discussed and investigated. Empirical investigation is based on a discourse analysis of online conversation of the free and open-source software movement. The findings reveal that the movement is constantly fueled with revolutionary energy by applying two dialectical categories of cultural codes in discourse-exclusion and integration. Processes of exclusion that become apparent in discourse comprise demonization, purifying, and remembering. Educationalism, pluralism and tolerance are processes, which seek integration

‘Let the Source be with you!’ – Practices of Sharing in Free and Open-Source Communities

Free and Open-Source Software (F/OSS) Communities enjoy a long history of sharing. They share source code, knowledge, social approval, communal ties and a ‘hacker’ ethics of giving back and helping others. Empirical investigation into the F/OSS network exhibits five central practices of sharing: materializing intellectual capital (sharing code/economic capital), creating intellectual capital (knowledge sharing), seeding of culture (sharing social capital), relating and bonding (sharing symbolic capital), and signifying (sharing cultural capital). Through processes of sharing in, sharing out and sharing across core members, contributors, and the public, F/OSS communities circumvent the capitalist logic, and sustainably contribute to an open, global system of sharing common goods

Management Learning

Learning and Knowledge-building i

Women in Transition -Consumption Narratives of First-Time Motherhood

Adopting a life-course perspective, this study reveals four narratives of transition to motherhood and according changes of (non-) consumption patterns that liberate, constrain, support, legitimize, and perfectionize women's understandings of motherhood as 'a fairytale' coming true, as a 'dual-role narrative', as 'temporary motherhood', or as a 'turning point' in life. This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. 368 Advances in Consumer Research Volume 43, ©2015 Women in Transition -Consumption Narratives of First-time Motherhood Andrea Hemetsberger, University of Innsbruck, Austria Sylvia von Wallpach, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Martina Bauer, University of Innsbruck, Austria ABSTRACT Adopting a life-course perspective, this study reveals four narratives of transition to motherhood and according changes of (non-) consumption patterns that liberate, constrain, support, legitimize, and perfectionize women's understandings of motherhood as 'a fairytale' coming true, as a 'dual-role narrative', as 'temporary motherhood', or as a 'turning point' in life

Innovative Virtual Consumer Communities

Virtual communities of consumers increasingly engage in voluntary collaborative production of digital goods and services which became highly successful in recent years. This paper offers a theoretical conceptualization and empirical evidence of the key elements and processes of exchange in those communities. Within a culture of gift-giving and generalized social exchange, knowledge as the main resource of the community is multiplied by giving it away freely to others and thus, fosters contribution behavior. Friendship, peer reputation and external feed-back provided by a global user community represent highly motivating social rewards which, combined with individual gain of knowledge, constitute a self-sustaining system of exchange

The Two Sides of the Gold Medal: Paradoxes of the Olympic Experience

This empirical study on the Olympic spectator experience identifies four paradoxes-"union and disunion," "void and repletion," "the staged and the real," and "the spirit and the rational" in discourse. A paradox perspective reveals interdependencies and dynamics of temporary solidarization, vitalization of the extraordinary, conquest of truth, and authentication