Book Review of Vincent C.H. Tong, Alex Standen and Mina Sotiriou (Eds.) (2018) Shaping Higher Education with Students: Ways to Connect Research and Teaching

Shaping Higher Education with Students is about linking research and teaching through collaborative relationships between students and staff. The central tenet of this expansive book is that student learning should be anchored in the kind of active, critical, and analytic inquiry traditionally undertaken by researchers. Unpacking the complexities of research-based education, this edited collection documents a University College London (UCL) project that challenges the conventional roles of students and teachers and proposes that research and teaching are not disparate undertakings, but that research equals teaching (‘R=T’). In a contemporary academic environment, that seems to prioritise skills for employability in order to improve student satisfaction and league tables standings, the notion of converting students into co-producers of knowledge is captivating. R=T, as interpreted at UCL, proposes developing students’ voices academically in a way that allows them to transform their ideas into actions, whether in the sphere of politics, society, business, or science. [Review continues

'Alexa, order me a pizza!' : The mediating role of psychological power in the consumer-voice assistant interaction

This article investigates the consumer–voice assistant (VA) interaction in the context of food and beverage purchase choices and the role that psychological power plays in the consumer decision-making process. A series of experimental studies demonstrate that both involvement and the psychological condition of power meditate consumers' willingness to purchase. As a result, we find that consumers are more likely to purchase low involvement than high-involvement products through VA technology, particularly when experiencing high-power states. This study broadens our understanding of the role of VAs and their ability to shape the consumer decision-making process. With an explicit focus on power, this study illustrates how the success of voice commerce may largely rest on the promotion of low-involvement products that enable high-power psychological conditions which drive willingness to purchase.© 2021 The Authors. Psychology & Marketing published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

aiWOM: Artificial Intelligence Word-of-Mouth. Conceptualizing Consumer-to-AI Communication

The advent of innovative technologies with installed artificial intelligence (AI) has raised the need to understand evolutive consumers’ behaviours. The dyadic communicative experience between consumers and technological artifacts with programmed social humanoid features shed the light on the emergence of an adaptative form of word-of-mouth (WOM) and that we label as “AI word- of-mouth” (aiWOM). We argue that there is a need for defining and investigating aiWOM as an emerging phenomenon which derive but diverge from WOM. Our conceptualization suggests that the communication interaction between consumers and AI technologies produce new consumers’ behaviors and psychological reactions.© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Food prosumption technologies : A symbiotic lens for a degrowth transition

Prosumption is gaining momentum among the critical accounts of sustainable consumption that have thus far enriched the marketing discourse. Attention to prosumption is increasing whilst the degrowth movement is emerging to tackle the contradictions inherent in growth-driven, technology-fueled, and capitalist modes of sustainable production and consumption. In response to dominant critical voices that portray technology as counter to degrowth living, we propose an alternative symbiotic lens with which to reconsider the relations between technology, prosumption, and degrowth living, and assess how a degrowth transition in the context of food can be carried out at the intersection of human–nature–technology. We contribute to the critical debates on prosumption in marketing by analyzing the potentials and limits of technology-enabled food prosumption for a degrowth transition through the degrowth principles of conviviality and appropriateness. Finally, we consider the sociopolitical challenges involved in mobilizing such technologies to achieve symbiosis and propose a future research agenda.©2023 Sage Publications. The article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Integrating health leadership and management perspectives: the MESH framework for culturally informed food design thinking and well-being promotion

Purpose This study examines the social and cultural life of food innovations to inform food design thinking. The authors explore this through wellness regulating functional foods, foods scientifically modified for health benefits based on medical and nutritional claims, as a materialisation of food innovation in the marketplace. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on affordance theory, where affordance relations enable potential for consumer food well-being regulation, the authors gathered in-depth interview data from diverse consumer groups across three illustrative exemplar functional foods. Findings The research reveals how consumers engage in meaningful actions with functional foods in the experiences of their everyday lives. Four analytical themes emerge for consumer wellness regulation through functional foods: morality judgements, emotional consequences, social embedding and historicality. Originality Analytical themes emerging from the findings are conceptualised as MESH, a useful acronym for the social and cultural life of food innovations within the design thinking arena. The MESH framework includes dichotomous cultural affordances that overlap and entangle different cultural themes weaving together consumers’ perceived possibilities for food well-being regulation. These cultural affordances reveal distinct paths that link consumer experiences and food design thinking

Characterization of radiolytically generated degradation products in the strip section of a TRUEX flowsheet

This report presents a summary of the work performed to meet the FCRD level 2 milestone M3FT-13IN0302053, “Identification of TRUEX Strip Degradation.” The INL radiolysis test loop has been used to identify radiolytically generated degradation products in the strip section of the TRUEX flowsheet. These data were used to evaluate impact of the formation of radiolytic degradation products in the strip section upon the efficacy of the TRUEX flowsheet for the recovery of trivalent actinides and lanthanides from acidic solution. The nominal composition of the TRUEX solvent used in this study is 0.2 M CMPO and 1.4 M TBP dissolved in n-dodecane and the nominal composition of the TRUEX strip solution is 1.5 M lactic acid and 0.050 M diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid. Gamma irradiation of a mixture of TRUEX process solvent and stripping solution in the test loop does not adversely impact flowsheet performance as measured by stripping americium ratios. The observed increase in americium stripping distribution ratios with increasing absorbed dose indicates the radiolytic production of organic soluble degradation compounds

The Power of The Fart: Medicalization, normativity, and consuming body-subjects

The purpose of this study is to understand the embodied experience of lactose intolerance. More specifically, how consumers cope with the abnormal functioning of the body, intermittent and involuntary episodes of bodily discharges (farts, belches, loose stools) and associated distress, along with the subsequent discourses of health it implies. Most extant research focusing on why health-conscious consumers turn to self-care is of limited value to understanding embodied experience because it isolates the body as the object from its subject, the mind, the 'conscious' consumer. Somewhat more relevant to my bodily-level focus are studies on consumer health that address the power dynamics of medical intervention. These accounts render consumer bodies as objects of discursive inscription, taking little account of the body as a physical subject, a medium that is oriented to the world outside itself in constant engagement so as to maintain order and normativity in life. I argue that impaired bodily experiences reach intelligibility through discursive activity that I refer to as normalization work, that is, self-disciplinary talk mediated by the body-subject. Normalization work offers an alternative approach and analysis of consumer talk that is oriented by embodied concerns and responsive to situated normativity. I understand talk as discursive activity that shows language in use, an embodied action, that is reflective of how the authoring body-subject finds herself in the world. My approach builds towards a theorization of embodied consumer talk conceptualized as an experience-near realm of possibilities and constraints on discursive action mediated by the orienting forces of bodily experience. The significance of such an approach sits in recognizing bodily subjectivity, the fundamental ground of human experience, from the outset and avoids distancing the body from abstract discursive (or cultural) systems. I find that coping with an illness does not unfold only at the bodily level (i.e., the object level). Though at first glance, it is the body that is disrupted by lactose intolerance, it gains its fullest meaning when related to broader contexts of significance whether that be social situations, healthcare settings, marketplace interactions, or even self-understandings. That is to say, it is not so much the bouts of bloating, diarrhea, flatulence, and discomfort that become the object which consumers cope with but rather the immediate practical and material situation to which the impaired body belongs

The Power of The Fart: Medicalization, normativity, and consuming body-subjects

The purpose of this study is to understand the embodied experience of lactose intolerance. More specifically, how consumers cope with the abnormal functioning of the body, intermittent and involuntary episodes of bodily discharges (farts, belches, loose stools) and associated distress, along with the subsequent discourses of health it implies. Most extant research focusing on why health-conscious consumers turn to self-care is of limited value to understanding embodied experience because it isolates the body as the object from its subject, the mind, the 'conscious' consumer. Somewhat more relevant to my bodily-level focus are studies on consumer health that address the power dynamics of medical intervention. These accounts render consumer bodies as objects of discursive inscription, taking little account of the body as a physical subject, a medium that is oriented to the world outside itself in constant engagement so as to maintain order and normativity in life. I argue that impaired bodily experiences reach intelligibility through discursive activity that I refer to as normalization work, that is, self-disciplinary talk mediated by the body-subject. Normalization work offers an alternative approach and analysis of consumer talk that is oriented by embodied concerns and responsive to situated normativity. I understand talk as discursive activity that shows language in use, an embodied action, that is reflective of how the authoring body-subject finds herself in the world. My approach builds towards a theorization of embodied consumer talk conceptualized as an experience-near realm of possibilities and constraints on discursive action mediated by the orienting forces of bodily experience. The significance of such an approach sits in recognizing bodily subjectivity, the fundamental ground of human experience, from the outset and avoids distancing the body from abstract discursive (or cultural) systems. I find that coping with an illness does not unfold only at the bodily level (i.e., the object level). Though at first glance, it is the body that is disrupted by lactose intolerance, it gains its fullest meaning when related to broader contexts of significance whether that be social situations, healthcare settings, marketplace interactions, or even self-understandings. That is to say, it is not so much the bouts of bloating, diarrhea, flatulence, and discomfort that become the object which consumers cope with but rather the immediate practical and material situation to which the impaired body belongs

Cultural camouflage : how consumers perform concealment practices and blending techniques to insulate cultural membership

The purpose of this paper is to explore how gay men manage their identities both within and outside the gay community by drawing on post-gay discourses, which surmise stigma against the gay community as a thing of the past. Implementing qualitative methods, the findings show that a post-gay subjectivity is produced via a series of camouflage strategies, which enable consumers to assimilate into mainstream society, whilst acquiring cultural membership and recognition. This research illustrates how these strategies function as cultural repertoires that improve consumers’ well-being while paradoxically reproducing heteronormative power relations that exacerbate stigma and diversification both within and outside the gay community.©2021 Taylor & Francis. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Marketing Management on 29 Sep 2021, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2021.1974077fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Participatory Food Provisioning via Emerging Technologies : Revisiting Prosumption and Value Creation Beyond the Anthropocene

This commentary offers a timely exploration of participatory food provisioning via emerging food technologies. Through an in-depth analysis of case studies of these technologies, we elucidate the changing nature of prosumption in orchestrating food market provisioning. Our investigation highlights a shift toward a non-anthropocentric vision of market provisioning, where value creation transcends human-centered paradigms to include alliances between humans, technology, and nature. By articulating the nuanced dynamics and outcomes of these alliances in the food market, we propose a reimagined perspective on value creation, urging macromarketing scholars to consider the broader implications of technology-driven, participatory food systems. Ultimately, we emphasize the necessity of integrating human and non-human stakeholders in the discourse on value creation, and challenge conventional notions of control, democratization, and sociality within prevailing food-provisioning systems.©2024 Sage. The article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed