"I was always looking at like Vogue..[I'd} be really good in the ad. world" Student Choice And Vocational Degrees

In the context of an increasing marketisation of Higher Education, where students may come to see themselves as consumers, this paper examines the process that undergraduates go through in selecting universities and courses and examines an apparent focus on peripheral rather than core aspects of the Higher Education service offering and of students making ‘safe’ choices. The experience students go through is examined with reference to the literature on decision-making for services and using a qualitative phenomenological approach with students encouraged to focus on their actual experiences. Other key findings are: evidence of satisficing and of avoiding risks and choosing options which ‘feel right’ rather than following a more systematic decision-making process which might be expected for such an important decision. We also note a tendency to defer the decision to others. We then briefly consider the implications of these findings for universities and their marketing, as they may assume that a more considered process has taken place

The Lack of Systematic Decision-Making by Chinese Students Applying to UK MA Programmes

This study explores how Chinese students chose a university to study a taught Masters programme. It includes an examination of the criteria they use and the process they go through, focusing on the ‘information search’, and ‘evaluation of alternatives’ stages of decision-making. Qualitative individual interviews were undertaken with 10 Chinese students. Findings suggest that decision-making was not as rigorous as might be expected for such an apparently complex, high involvement ‘service’. Reasons for this include: a lack of perceived risk; the amount and complexity of information to be processed, (particularly in a foreign language), and the use of agents and league tables as reassurance for the decision. There is also evidence of satisficing and evidence to support image-based processing. Tentative recommendations are made which focus on the need to achieve the right match between potential students and the chosen programme and institution by trying to increase student engagement with the decision-making process

The Uncomfortable mix of seduction and inexperience in Vocational Students' decision making

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the process that undergraduates go through in selecting universities and courses in the context of an increasingly marketisated higher education (HE) where students may see themselves as consumers. Design/methodology/approach – The process students go through is examined with reference to the services marketing literature and using a qualitative, phenomenological approach with students encouraged to focus on their lived experiences. Findings – Notable was the reported inexperience of students who suggest an apparent focus on peripheral rather than core aspects of the HE service offering and therefore aim to quickly make “safe” choices. Also there is evidence of “satisficing” and of avoiding risks and choosing options which “feel right” rather than following a more systematic decision-making process which might be expected for such an important decision. Also noted was a tendency to defer the decision to others, including the institutions themselves, and their increasingly seductive marketing approaches. Research limitations/implications – The study is based on a vocational university with a focus on subjects for the new professions (marketing, journalism and media production). Further studies might consider how far the findings hold true for other types of subjects and institutions. Practical implications – The paper considers the implications of these findings for universities and their marketing activities, and invites them to both re-evaluate assumptions that an informed and considered process has taken place, and to further consider the ethics of current practices. Originality/value – The paper's focus on the stories provided by students provides new insights into the complexities and contradictions of decision making for HE and for services in general

Managing to play: the everday lives of adult videogame consumers.

Against a backdrop of videogame producers keen to promote themselves as a 'serious' adult entertainment industry, and persistent media reports on the 'dangers' of videogame play, this research examines the lived experiences of adult videogame players. I start with aconsideration of the nature of play and of consumption in order to assess the ways in whichour consumer society may be seen as becoming more playful, or experiential. I also consider the development of key discourses on videogame use and in particular the problematic waysin which we understand real, virtual and digital spaces. These theoretical contexts provide a background against which I consider a phenomenology of adult videogame consumption. Drawing from extended discussions with 24 adult videogame players I review: the biographical and domestic contexts in which adults play videogames; the various practices that they develop relating to buying, owning and using videogames, and; the nature of experiences produced through play. Adults may have started playing videogames as a result of an educational agenda, or peer pressure whilst as school, but may have continued playing intermittently into adulthood and now find that friends, and especially family influence how and what they play. As a result they have developed a variety of practices that I describe in detail including managing the amount of time and money spent on games and negotiating spaces to play. Within these contexts players aim for 'ideal' experiences of skill and achievement, of escape though the management of their imagination, and of social interaction with family and friends. However these largely positive experiences need to be carefully managed against a risk that their behaviour may be seen as childish, and against the potential for play to cause disruption to work or domestic life. Following these detailed first-person descriptions I consider the 'discourses in practice' during the use of videogames. I note the persistent framing of videogame play as frivolous, but also the way in which games are used to manage everyday life by providing a space that is an escape from routines of work and family life and in particular a space in which the imagination may be actualised. In doing so I also consider the transformatory potential of videogames, concluding that although they may be seen to serve a conservative role, and may be critiqued as part of an over-experienced, yet'futile' life, their ability to aid the management of everyday life is significant

Redistributed consumer desire in digital virtual worlds of consumption.

The aim of this paper is to discuss and illustrate how the use of software available in digital virtual worlds of consumption, including wish lists, watch lists, and digital virtual goods (DVGs), interact with consumer desiring practices. We draw on a data set of three interpretative studies with technology users living in the South of England. Our study makes a unique contribution to our understanding of consumer desire and digital virtual consumption by bringing to the fore the often-neglected role of non-human agents in the practice of consumer desire. In particular, it shows (1) the assemblage of consumer desire in human–non-human hybrids (composed of consumers and online wish lists, online auction tools, and video-game resources; (2) the redistribution of competence and skills in human–software hybrids; (3) the r-distribution of affect and commitment in human–software hybrids; and (4) the refocusing of desire in human–software hybrids. Based on our findings, we conclude that, over time, the use of software in the construction and actualisation of desire reconfigures consumer desire practices into a goal-orientated task, where the focus is not daydreaming activity or material commodities per se but rather the software itself. Here, the software not only presents things to be desired, but also absorbs some of the skill and competence needed to conjure up desire. Ultimately, these configurations appear to create breaks in the experience of desire that weaken the hold previously binding consumers to objects of desire

The pleasures and practices of virtualised consumption in digital spaces

A desire amongst individuals to engage in playful, consumption-like activities can now readily be observed in many digital games, but also other virtual spaces. In this paper we explore the emergence of games of virtual consumption. We identify a range of playful, virtual consumption experiences that are now available to individuals and consider possible reasons why individuals might find these attractive by comparing contemporary theory on consumption with conceptualisations of play. Many digital games allow individuals to ‘buy’ imaginary things. For example, players of Everquest can visit a virtual marketplace and spend money acquired in the game on virtual commodities. However, players may also bid real money for skilled avatars and rare artefacts on eBay; purchase virtual chairs while visiting an online hotel (visit habbohotel.com), and pamper virtual pets with virtual products (visit neopet.com). Companies even gift consumers with virtual commodities – ‘experiential freeware’, to borrow from Falk & Campbell’s (1997) description of shop windows– to play with. Marketers allow consumers to display working virtual copies of luxury goods (see bulgari.com); customise virtual cars (see mini.com); and put aside virtual copies of desirable goods in a personalised virtual space (see amazon.com). Other consumers simply find imaginative ways to play with online representations of goods. They browse at length online catalogues, brand sites, travel sites, or the pages of eBay’s auctions, imagining what it would be like to purchase. All these virtual goods that are enjoyed, occasionally used, and sometimes even bought but not owned in a physical sense appear to have an evocative power, similar to that of tangible commodities. Online browsing also appears to possess an ability to provide pleasures similar to real window shopping – itself a largely playful activity. And even games without direct reference to shopping, may allow for pleasures similar to those experienced by the real-life tourist-shopper (for example the flâneur exploring the exotic city in Grand Theft Auto). Consumer desire for virtual things is such that Castranova (2001) calculates that the area of eBay where people buy and sell virtual items traded $6,400,668 worth of virtual items and avatars. The attractions of virtual goods, makes Everquest’s Norrath, equivalent to the 77th richest nation in the ‘real’ world (Castranova, 2001). In concretising a desire for sought after skills, rare artefacts, or mundane objects to embellish their avatars, consumers have been said to spend from$5.00 on virtual designer outfits (Yoon, 2002) to $2,000 on powerful characters (Morris, 2002). Castranova (2001) argues that virtual worlds may be seen as fully fledged market economies. In order for virtual worlds to produce real economies we must also accept that the basis for these economies is an as yet little understood concept of virtual consumption. And this concept may be observed more widely than the confines of commercial video games. In contrast to those who eagerly spend money on ‘virtual goods’, other consumers are blamed for not buying real goods. They browse aimlessly, dreaming about what is presented on the screen. They eagerly fill shopping baskets with desired goodies only to then abandon them. Since the opening of one of the web’s first virtual mall, Shopping 2000, idlers, voyeurs, window-shoppers galore have done more loitering than purchasing. In 1996, Cyr (1996:1), noticing that substantial numbers of onlookers ventured into Shopping 2000, wrote "but so far, all those numbers represent a lot of window shipping; actual sales have proven elusive." Despite increased number of sales having been reported, the trend to window-shop remains. Over 60 percent of online shoppers abandon their shopping baskets before completing a transaction (Maravilla, 1999; Thumler, 2000; Bizrate, 1999), escalating to a 90 percent consumer etherisation after objects are viewed (Thumler, 2000). It has also been observed that rates of abandonment have increased with the value of the virtual booty; DoubleClick (2004) has reported that while the average shopping order is around$180, the abandoned cart was $352. As an antidote to consumers’ antipathy towards completing their orders, e-marketers have set out to continually improve design, security and customer service issues in an effort to address the ‘problem’. But this seems to be a contradiction. At the same time as there is increasing evidence for consumer demand for virtual consumption in digital games, online retailers convince themselves that behaviour that remains only focussed on the pleasures of virtual goods when visiting online stores is somehow a failure in the online experience. We therefore need to account for the various forms of virtualised consumption, highlighting the pleasures they may bring consumers and their separation from the world of material goods. We attempt this by considering historical developments in consumption practices, suggesting, like Kline, Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter (2003), that virtualised consumption may represent the latest stage in an ongoing, subtle transformation of consumption practices from a Fordist focus on utility to a post-Fordist focus on emotional value, sign value and playful, aesthetic experience. Here we consider the work of Baudrillard (1970), Campbell (1987), Featherstone, (1992) and Lee (1993), drawing parallels between conceptualisations of consumption as a symbolic, aesthetic, imaginary experience and play itself through the work of Caillios (1958), Turner (1982) and Sutton-Smith (1997). Viewed in this way, virtualised consumption no longer constitutes a failure on the part of consumers to continue to fill their lives with material possessions, but rather the ability of the market to stimulate consumers imaginations in new and exciting ways: to provide the individual with a range of compelling digital consumption games. We illustrate these games by considering further examples of playful, virtual consumption from online shopping behaviour to behaviour in commercial digital games. We conclude by speculating on the implications of these playful forms of consumption for individuals and for a consumer society, highlighting the potential for these various liminoid spaces to transform the meaning of consumption for these players and therefore for the broader acceptance of the importance of material versus virtual goods. We suggest that an understanding of virtual consumption is therefore of interest to both marketers in their search for effective communication through ‘adver-games’ and other interactive functions and also for game designs who incorporate elements of consumption in their games. References Baudrillard, J. ([1970] 1998) The Consumer Society, Myths & Structures, UK: London BizRate.com (2000) BizRate Press Release, 23 October 2000, [Path: http://bizrate.com/content/press/release.xpml?rel=88.] (accessed 1 May 2002) Caillois, R. (1958). Les jeux et les homes. Paris: Gallimard. Campbell, C. (1987) The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, UK: IDEAS Castravona, E. (2001). Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier, California State University at Fullerton - Department of Economics. 2002. Cyr, D. (1996) Marketing on the information superhighway: growing pains, American Demographics, Jan/Feb, 46 Falk, P. & Campbell, C. (1997) Introduction, In: The Shopping Experience, Falk.P. & Campbell, C. (editors), UK: London Featherstone, M. (1991) Consumer culture & postmodernism, UK: Sage Publications Kline, S. ,Dyer-Witheford, N. & de Peuter, G. (2003) Digital Play, The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing, Montreal: McGill-Queen\u27s University Press Lee. M.J. (1993) Consumer Culture Reborn, London: Routledge Maravilla, N. M. (1999) The case of the abandoned shopping carts, Powerhomebiz.com, [Path: http://www.powerhomebiz.com/vol13/shoppingcarts.htm] Morris, C. (2002) Imaginary worlds. Real Cash, publishers aren’t the only ones profiting from online games, CNNMONEY, January, 16 [Path: http://money.cnn.com/2002/01/16/technology/column_gaming/] Sutton-Smith (1997) The Ambiguity of Play, Cambridge: Harvard University Press Thumlert, K. (2000) Abandoned Shopping Carts: Enigma or Sloppy E-Commerce?, e-commerceguide.com, June 27, 2001, [Path: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/trends/article.php/792581] DoubleClick (2004) DoubleClick Q2 2004 E-Commerce Site Trend Report, [Path: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:mMxGlMDeVUkJ:emea.doubleclick.net/WEB_ADMIN/documents/dc_q204ecommercetrends_emea_0408.pdf+DoubleClick+rates+of+abandonment+increase+with+value&hl=en] Turner (1982) From Ritual to Theatre, New York: PAJ Publications Yoon, S. (2002) Does my avatar look fat in this? The Age, June 14th#, [Path: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/13/1023864322825.html?oneclick=true] (accessed June, 15 2003

Tracking changes in everyday experiences of disability and disability sport within the context of the 2012 London Paralympics

The 2012 Paralympics was the biggest ever, the most accessible and best attended in its 64-year history. The Paralympics and ideas of disability associated with the Games provide significant opportunity for reflection on how far societal opinions, attitudes and behaviour have changed regarding disability. In 2012 – the first ever “legacy games” – an explicit aim of the Paralympics was to “transform the perception of disabled people in society”, (Channel 4), and use sport to contribute to “a better world for all people with a disability” (IPC 2011). The 2012 Games therefore came with a social agenda: to challenge the current perceptions many people have about disability and disability sport. Within this report – commissioned by the UK’s Paralympic broadcaster, Channel 4 – we consider everyday experiences of disability and disability sport within the context of the London 2012 Paralympics and televised coverage of the Games. The analysis is based 140 in-depth interviews that took place in the UK over a period of eighteen months, during the lead up to, and immediately after, the Games: between January 2011 and September 2012. Embedded in the lifeworld of our participants, we ask whether the 2012 Paralympics was successful in changing perceptions of disability

Success in the Management of Crowdfunding Projects in the Creative Industries.

Purpose - Crowdfunding has become a significant way of funding independent film. However undertaking a campaign can be time consuming and risky. This paper aims to understand the predictors likely to produce a film campaign that meets its funding goal. Design/Methodology/Approach - This study analyses 100 creative crowdfunding campaigns within the film and video category on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. Campaigns were analysed in relation to a number of variables, followed by a discriminant analysis to highlight the main predictors of crowdfunding success. Findings - This study finds key predictors of crowdfunding success and investigates differences between successful and failed crowdunding campaigns. The attributes of these predictors lead us to question the long-term ability of crowdfunding to aid companies poorer in terms of time, financial and personnel resources, and therefore arguably in the greatest need of crowdfunding platforms. Practical Implications - The findings provide insight to practitioners considering the crowdfunding approach and offers knowledge and recommendations so as to avoid what can be naïve and costly mistakes. The findings highlight that crowdfunding should not be considered lightly and can be a considerable investment of resources to be successful. Originality/Value - The analysis of crowdfunding campaigns provides details on the significant predictors of crowdfunding success particularly relevant to creative campaigns. The findings provide a critique of previous claims about the benefit of crowdfunding for creative SMEs