Millennial cultural consumers : Co-creating value through brand communities

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise millennial cultural consumers (MCCs) to bring together strands of consumer theory with branding theory to consider how to attract and retain younger audiences in arts organisations. With that the authors single out for attention how 'brand community' theory might apply.This paper contributes to the knowledge development of such concepts as value and brand communities. It also provides an explanation of these concepts connecting academic thought on value with pressing management challenges for arts organisations, suggesting ways to apply brand community thinking to innovatively conceptualised MCCs.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Branding sustainability : opportunity and risk behind a brand-based approach to sustainable markets

ephemera works with a Creative Commons Licence, which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work, so long as the work is attributed to the author(s). It allows non-commercial use of the work, but it does not allow others to alter, transform or build upon the work. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/In this article we discuss the role of brands in the creation of sustainable markets. We focus on the the increasing importance of ethical branding and how it might help to overcome some institutional shortcomings inherent in current marketing settings. We also discuss the increasing influence of brand communities and the seeming potential for a 'democratisation' of brand value and values. Brands are in this article described as one practical and effective way forward to develop the market for sustainable products further. We illustrate this from examples in food retailing, showing how companies have already started to follow this logic.At the same time this article raises doubts over the long-term effectiveness of a (purely) brand-focused approach to sustainable market exchange. On the one hand we claim that brands have proven receptive to public top-down (ie policy makers) and bottom-up (ie social movements)pressure. For intensive public scrutiny has resulted in markets developing in line with public interests. Yet, on the other hand, we raise concerns over brands' increasing dominance. Dominance, that is, over the exchange process of sustainable products and services; also over the societal discourse in which sustainability is continuously made sense of. We conclude with an attempt to provide a more nuanced view on brands. We acknowledge their effectiveness in 'bringing sustainable products to life', but also stress the risk of brands achieving discursive dominance over the (democratically legitimized) public debate. For this undermines societal efforts to 'green' marketsPeer reviewedFinal Published versio

User-generated content about brands : understanding its creators and consumers

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Sue Vaux Halliday, ‘User-generated content about brands: Understanding its creators and consumers’, Journal of business Research, Vol. 69 (1): 137-144, January 2016, made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ) The final, definitive Version of Record is available online via DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.07.027This consumer research study investigates the meanings behind creating and consuming user-generated content (UGC) about brands. It touches on the broader issues of the lives of persons, rather than consumers. We discuss relevant theoretical underpinnings to our empirical two-stage study that we then describe in detail. From our findings we contribute a person-centric trope of the journey that individuals can be understood as participating in as they interact with brands on the Internet for personal formation and even transformation. We conclude that for the young adult population this activity is the interactive ongoing construction of identities, as persons rather than narrowly as consumers. These actions creating and consuming UGC also underpin potential for personal transformation, as proposed in the movie “Leaving Pleasantville”. Our contribution is both insight and a metaphor to explain a key driver of UGC creation in 21st century postmodern life.Peer reviewe

Temporal Dynamism in Country-of-Origin Effect: The Malleability of Italians’ Perceptions Regarding the British Sixties

© Emerald Publishing Limited 2019. This accepted manuscript is deposited under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial International Licence 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). Any reuse is allowed in accordance with the terms outlined by the licence, here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. To reuse the AAM for commercial purposes, permission should be sought by contacting [email protected]: The purpose of this paper is to enrich country of origin (COO) effect in international marketing theory by adding the understanding of temporal dynamism into COO research. Design/methodology/approach: Utilizing a qualitative and interdisciplinary phenomenological approach, this paper analyses historical and contemporary sources triangulated with contemporary primary interview data. The example of how perceptions of Italians about the values typical of the British Sixties varied over time periods is presented. Findings: COO perceptions are both malleable and in evolution. Results show that values from earlier peak periods of appeal can be combined and recombined differently over time due to the varying historical and contemporary resonances of COO values. Research limitations/implications: This study focuses on COO applied to two product areas, fashion and music, over a limited time period, in a two-country study and so the findings are not fully generalizable, but rather are transferable to similar contexts. Practical implications: The fact that COO is neither static nor atemporal facilitates a segmented approach for international marketing managers to review and renew international brands. This enriched COO theory provides a rich and variable resource for developing and revitalizing brands. Originality/value: The major contribution of this paper is that temporal dynamism, never before discussed in international marketing theory, renders COO theory more timeless; this addresses some critiques recently made about its relevance and practicality. The second contribution is the original research design that models interdisciplinary scholarship, enabling a thorough historical look at international marketing.Peer reviewe

S-D logic research directions and opportunities: the perspective of systems, camplexity and engeneering

To date, several disciplines have broached the systems view of service and the engineering of service systems. Operations research applied to services began with a rather simplistic, macro view of resource integration in the form of data envelopment analysis (DEA), introduced by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 (Banker et al., 1984; Charnes et al., 1994). Micro models of service systems have tended to study the systems’ IT components (Hsu, 2009; Qiu 2009). Engineering, which has always been associated with ‘assembling pieces that work in specific ways’ (Ottino, 2004) and ‘a process of precise composition to achieve a predictable purpose and function’ (Fromm, 2010: 2), has contributed to greater scalability and purposeful control in service systems. However, the agents of the system are usually people whose activities may not easily be controlled by predictable processes and yet are critical aspects of the value-creating system (Ng et al., 2011b). There is need for a new combinative paradigm, such as third-generation activity theory, in which two or more activity systems come into contact, to explore dialogue, exchanging perspectives of multiple actors, resulting in networks or groups of activity systems that are constantly interacting (Marken, 2006; Nardi, 1996, Oliveros et al., 2010). While various systems approaches, such as general systems theory (von Bertalanffy, 1962); open systems theory (Boulding, 1956; Katz and Kahn, 1978); and viable systems approach (Barile, 2008; Beer, 1972; Golinelli, 2010), will not be reviewed here (see Ng et al., 2011a for a systems approach to service science), they share common tenets: boundaries, interfaces, hierarchy, feedback and adaptation to which most systems writers would add emergence, input, output and transformation (Kast and Rosenzweig, 1972). These terms may be used as a basis for a research agenda for the consideration of a service system

Putting context centre stage: evidence from a systems evaluation of an area based empowerment initiative in England

It is now widely accepted that context matters in evaluations of the health inequalities impact of community-based social initiatives. Systems thinking offers a lens for uncovering the dynamic relationship between such initiatives and their social contexts. However, there are very few examples that show how a systems approach can be applied in practice and what kinds of evidence are produced when this happens. In this paper, we use data from ethnographic fieldwork embedded within a multi-site mixed method evaluation to demonstrate how a systems approach can be applied in practice to evaluate the early stages of an area-based empowerment initiative – Big Local (funded by the Big Lottery Fund and delivered by Local Trust). Taking place in 150 different local areas in England and underpinned by an ethos of resident-led collective action, Big Local offers an illustration of the applicability of a systems approach to better understand the change processes that emerge as social initiatives embed and co-evolve within a series of local contexts. Findings reveal which parts of the social system are likely to be changed, by what mechanisms, and with what implications. They also raise some salient considerations for knowledge generation and methods development in public health evaluation, particularly for the evaluation of social initiatives where change does not necessarily happen in linear or predictable ways. We suggest future evaluations of such initiatives require the use of more flexible designs, encompassing qualitative approaches capable of capturing the complexity of relational systems processes, alongside more traditional quantitative methods

Food security and food practices in later life : a new model of vulnerability

© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.The older population is particularly susceptible to malnutrition, which currently affects 1.3 million people aged 65+ in the United Kingdom. Malnutrition is an outcome of food insecurity and despite demographic changes that have led to a rise in numbers of older people, we know very little about how older people become vulnerable to food insecurity. The aim of this study was therefore to explore older people's everyday food practices in order to expose the strengths and challenges within local and national food systems, and better understand how food insecurity might arise in later life. This empirical study operationalised practice theory using a multi-method ethnographic approach with 25 households aged 60–94 years, comprising interviews, observation, visual methods and food logs. A model of vulnerability developed by Schröder-Butterfill and Marianti framed data collection and analysis. Analysis revealed the assets and adaptations older households used to protect themselves from threats to food security. Factors ranging from changes to physical and mental health, and structural factors such as supermarket design, moved households towards food insecurity. Smaller everyday ‘trivia’, e.g. lack of seating and accessible toilets in supermarkets, accumulated to shift people towards vulnerability. Vulnerability is structured by the habitus but is a fluid, relational, temporal and socially constructed state, and people moved towards and away from vulnerability. We have developed a model that accommodates this fluidity, incorporates the concept of ‘cumulative trivia’ and suggests how the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’ could counter-balance and address trivial threats. This model demonstrates to policy makers and those working in public health how vulnerability to food insecurity operates and where interventions could be applied to support households to achieve food security and avoid becoming malnourishedPeer reviewe