The impact of market use of consumer generated content on a brand community

Many studies have demonstrated that members of brand communities are capable of extensive, and increasingly professional, creation of brand content. However, little work has examined how the use of such community-created content impacts the community or its members. We conducted a netnographic study of the Jones Soda brand community. Jones Soda relies heavily upon its community of loyal users for the creation of branding content, including product innovations, packaging, promotions and advertising. We found a brand community that possesses all three of the markers of brand community and allows for personal transformation and consumer empowerment, yet is largely inorganic in nature. These findings have implications for our conceptualizations of brand communities. [to cite]

The Jazziness of Local Food Practice Work: Organization-Level Ingenuity and the Entrepreneurial Formation and Evolution of Local Food Systems

Local food systems (LFSs) are complex and diverse social structures. The processes that influence the formation and evolution of LFSs are obscure, relatively uncoordinated, and somewhat mysterious. This study develops a stronger understanding of such processes through a qualitative exploration of the influence of routine practice work at the organization level on the entrepreneurial development of two distinct LFSs in the Southwest region of the United States: southeastern Arizona and Albuquerque-Santa Fe. We gathered data between August 2014 and September 2017 through semistructured interviews with and direct observations of 53 local food practitioners operating in one of the two LFSs. Theoretical principles of institutional entrepreneurship, embedded agency, and practice work guided the study. The findings reveal three forms of ingenuity (technological, organizational, policy) that regularly emerge through the day-to-day organization-level work of local food practitioners. We argue that the system-level influence of these forms, whether intentional or not, are indicators of the embedded agency of the practitioners and their capacities to serve as institutional entrepreneurs. We discuss implications for both practice and future research.12 month embargo; published online: 23 September 2018This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Culture and co-creation: Exploring consumers’ inspirations and aspirations for writing and posting on-line fan fiction

This paper explores how consumers use the media products of mass culture to co-create the meanings of popular culture. Specifically, we examine both why and how Harry Potter fans utilize the primary texts written by J.K. Rowling to co-create their own fan fiction. Towards this end, we utilize Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic method to explore the pattern of literary elements in both the original texts and the fan fiction. We argue that the primary impetus for consumers to engage in the co-creation of these texts is found in their ability to emphasize different ratios of literary elements in order to express their individual and collective desires. Through this process, fans utilize and contribute to the meta-textual meaning surrounding these primary focal texts and propel the original products of mass culture to the cultural texts of popular culture

How to inspire value-laden collaborative consumer-generated content

Marketing is evolving into true participatory conversations. Once-tidy, controlled marketing communications with distinct, identifiable corporate spokespeople are giving way to a messy tangle of market-based communications consisting of multiple authors including customers, competitors, observers, employees, and interested collectives. Amidst this, we find consumer-generated content (CGC) that is predominantly antithetical to previous studies, which assumed CGC to be inspired by personal brand attachment and/or the desire to see discrete-authored CGC disseminated, or even motivated by monetary reward. Authorship of collaboratively-produced CGC is virtually untraceable, unknown, and monetarily uncompensated. The true reward is the process, and the outcome is not reliant on technical prowess but rather semiotic manipulation, narrative manipulation, and complex brand character development. Consumers--especially those who are members of active consumer collectives--are skillful, proficient, and prolific in the creation of CGC, with high resonance among very engaged consumers. We advocate harnessing collaborative CGC efforts toward long-term marketing objectives, and offer a brief tutorial.Consumer-generated content (CGC) Brand community Consumer collective Marketing communications Co-creation

Consumer Identity Renaissance: The Resurgence of Identity‐Inspired Consumption in Retirement

Using multimethod data, we investigate retirement as a life stage centered on consumption, where cultural scripts are particularly contested and in flux and where we witness an increase in breadth and depth of identity‐related consumption, which we term consumer identity renaissance. While prior research on older consumers focuses on corporeal and cognitive decline and its impact on individual decision‐making situations, our attention is drawn to the competency and growth potential of those who have exited their formal productive stage and privilege consumption as a means to create and enact identity. Contrary to the received view of older consumers simply reviewing and integrating their already developed identities, we find retirement can be a time of extensive identity work with multiple revived and emergent inspirations weaving across all time orientations (past, present, and future) and involving intricate consumption enactments.