A Mixed Blessing: Market-Mediated Religious Authority in Neopaganism

This research explores how marketplace dynamics affect religious authority in the context of Neopagan religion. Drawing on an interpretivist study of Wiccan practitioners in Italy, we reveal that engagement with the market may cause considerable, ongoing tensions, based on the inherent contradictions that are perceived to exist between spirituality and commercial gain. As a result, market success is a mixed blessing that can increase religious authority and influence, but is just as likely to decrease authority and credibility. Using an extended case study method, we propose a theoretical framework that depicts the links between our informants’ situated experiences and the macro-level factors affecting religious authority as it interacts with market-mediated dynamics at the global level. Overall, our study extends previous work in macromarketing that has looked at religious authority in the marketplace) and how the processes of globalization are affecting religion

Reframing gender and feminist knowledge construction in marketing and consumer research: missing feminisms and the case of men and masculinities

Gender has been theorised and studied in many ways and across different disciplines. Although a number of these theorisations have been recognised and adopted in marketing and consumer research, the significance of feminism in knowledge construction has largely remained what we would call ‘unfinished’. Based on a critical reframing of gender research in marketing and consumer research, in dialogue with feminist theory, this article offers theoretical and practical suggestions for how to reinvigorate these research efforts. The analysis highlights dominant theorisations of gender, relating to gender as variable, difference and role; as fundamental difference and structuring; and as cultural and identity constructions. This reframing emphasises various neglected or ‘missing feminisms’, including queer theory; critical race, intersectional and transnational feminisms; material-discursive feminism; and critical studies on men and masculinities. A more detailed discussion of the latter, as a relatively new, growing and politically contentious area, is further developed to highlight more specifically which feminist and gender theories are mainly in use in marketing and consumer research and which are little or not used. In the light of this, it is argued that marketing and related disciplines have thus far largely neglected several key contemporary gender and feminist theorisations, particularly those that centre on gender power relations. The potential impact of these theoretical frames on transdisciplinary studies in marketing and consumer research and research agenda(s) is discussed

The analysis of visual texts in structural and interpretive semiotics

The article proposes research methods to analyze visual texts produced by organizations with the help of conceptual instruments developed by interpretive and structuralist semiotics

The Analysis of Visual Texts in Structural and Interpretive Semiotics

Semiotic analyses of visual texts allow us to capture meanings that are not immediately evident in visual communication and which other methods, such as more 'rigorous' content analysis, would fail to identify. However, researchers sometimes find semiotics difficult to approach, because of both the difficult, specialized language of many important contributions and the criticism of 'subjectivity' that surrounds the interpretive methods. This essay seeks to facilitate the diffusion of semiotic methods by: i) crearly describing a step-by-step procedure that can be employed to decode visual texts; ii) discussing procedures to overcome criticism based on the reliability and validity of results

Etica della comunicazione di marketing

Il capitolo passa in rassegna le principali accuse mosse alla pubblicità (spinge all'eccesso di consumo, è menzognera e ingannevole, è manipolativa, contribuisce alla diffusione di stereotipi), illustra i tentativi di risposta a tali critiche (normativa e codici di condotta) e si conclude con un modello decisionale per la presa di decisioni etiche

#raclette: Le raclette du Valais sur Instagram: .

International audienc

#raclette: Le raclette du Valais sur Instagram: .

International audienc