Gift-giving, sharing and commodity exchange at Bookcrossing.com. New insights from a qualitative analysis

Purpose – Through an empirical analysis of a consumption community, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the theories of gift-giving, sharing and commodity exchange should not be kept separated but integrated into a unifying model. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides new evidence about Bookcrossing.com, whose members share and give books as gifts; that is, physical goods rather than digital ones as in most of the communities considered in the literature. This community is analysed with qualitative tools, such as netnography, personal interviews and participant observation. Findings – The main result of the analysis of Bookcrossing is that gift-giving is not the only process responsible for value creation and distribution in consumption communities: sharing and commodity exchange also play a role. Furthermore, the paper provides new evidence about aspects of gift-giving and sharing that have received limited attention in the literature: collective reciprocity and anonymous sharing. Research limitations/implications – The limitations are related to the intrinsic properties of the methods employed (netnography, personal interviews and participant observation) and to the paper, which analyses only one community and one product category. The implications refer to the role of gift-giving in consumption communities and its relationships with other processes: consumer gift systems are not only gifting platforms, but they and the elements of sharing and commodity exchange need to be integrated. Practical implications – The empirical evidence and implications matter for the organisation and management of collaborative consumption platforms and the way in which traditional business models could and should interact with these platforms in an increasing number of businesses. Originality/value – The paper adds new evidence of and original insights into gift-giving and collective forms of exchange. Moreover, it provides managerial implications of the analysed community for the book publishing industry

The effect of social identity threats on products evaluations. An exploration in the field of popular music

Through an experiment carried out in the field of music consumption, we show that, when fans are exposed to a threat that attacks their favourite artist, the way they value products associated with that artist is not affected. Considering different types of object (unique vs. consistent artists), however, we illustrate that diverse objects respond differently to the same threat. In fact, while an object is positively valued when it is criticized for the same reason why it is loved (i.e. uniqueness or consistency), it is negatively valued when it is attacked for a different reason why it is loved (e.g. an artist who is loved to be unique is criticized to be inconsistent). This interaction effect is statistically significant for the evaluation of objects related to a favourite artist and used in a private (rather than public) context, and for subjects with high (rather than low) need for uniqueness. Implications are provided

La ricerca di autenticità nel consumo e nel marketing del settore discografico italiano. Analisi teorica ed empirica nel campo della popular music

La tesi affronta il tema della ricerca di autenticità da parte del consumatore. In particolare, dopo un'ampia discussione del tema dal punto di vista teorico ed un'analisi del settore di riferimento, sono presentate tre ricerche empiriche che sono state svolte nello specifico contesto del consumo di popular music. A tale proposito sono state utlizzate le seguenti tecniche di ricerca: interviste in profondità, netnografia e questionari. Il lavoro svolto sul campo presenta numerose implicazioni sia sul piano della ricerca sul consumatore sia su quello del marketing management, che vengono discusse diffusamente nella parte finale del lavoro

Fare e ricevere regali nella sharing economy. Teorie, comunità e pratiche di consumo

Indagare la validità delle teorie riguardanti lo smaltimento degli oggetti “speciali” e il consumo degli oggetti “contaminati” nel contesto della “sharing economy”. Metodologia: Mix di metodi qualitativi, comprendente una netnografia svolta dal 2005 al momento in cui si scrive, un’osservazione partecipante svolta per tre anni (2006-2008) e 14 interviste in profondità, al fine di analizzare la donazione e la ricezione di libri nella community del Bookcrossing. Risultati: Nella comunità analizzata, i membri dimostrano di avere un particolare interesse per la condivisione dei propri libri con altri soggetti, addirittura superiore, da un lato, alla perdita dei propri libri, che vengono donati ad altri membri del gruppo, e, dall’altro, all’uso di libri usati, precedentemente posseduti da altri soggetti, per di più sconosciuti ai riceventi. Limiti della ricerca: Viene analizzata solo una comunità, facendo particolare attenzione ai membri più coinvolti, tralasciando coloro che partecipano in maniera più disinteressata. Implicazioni pratiche: Si evidenzia come, ai fini di una migliore comprensione delle trasformazioni insite nello sviluppo della “sharing economy”, sia necessario riprendere le teorie consolidate in letteratura e verificarne sul campo la validità, di modo da adattarle al contesto emergente. Si rimarca inoltre la crescente importanza per le imprese di posizionarsi come piattaforme in grado di favorire soprattutto la condivisione tra i propri clienti. Originalità del lavoro: Si tratta del primo lavoro che ridiscute teorie consolidate come quelle riguardanti lo smaltimento di oggetti speciali o il consumo di beni contaminati nel nuovo contesto della “sharing economy”

Consumption acquisition practices

This conceptual paper aims to advance a theory of acquisition practices by integrating concepts and theories about resource circulation practices, such as buying, sharing, gifting, access based consumption, into a common framework. While acquisition, the process of obtaining consumption resources, is an essential aspect of consumer behavior, it has mainly been conceptualized in terms of buying. Recent research has begun to identify and conceptualize alternative acquisition practices and theoretical approaches. We build on these works and develop an organizing theoretical framework that integrates these concepts towards the advancement of a theory of acquisition process and aims to provide conceptual clarity in the current literature. We develop a typology of research acquisition practices on the basis of a) the level of market mediation, and b) ownership transfer based on a literature review and theories of exchange. The typology distinguishes six consumption acquisition practices: buying, bartering, gifting, renting, sharing, and borrowing. We conceptualize each practice, discuss associated consumption consequences, and discuss hybrid cases. Our model helps advance the theoretical account of consumer behavior and widen the scope of such theorization to enclose recent phenomena that arise from the sharing economy

Does involvement in corporate social irresponsibility affect the linguistic features of corporate social responsibility reports?

Companies publish corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports to inform their stakeholders of their CSR efforts. However, the literature has shown that these reports can be used as a way to offset companies' involvement in corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR). By relying on a cognitive-linguistic perspective, we investigate whether firms respond to their own irresponsible business conduct by changing their CSR reports' linguistic features and, if so, how. We use a sample of 135 large corporations headquartered in developed countries between 1995 and 2014. An analysis of their CSR reports reveals that the more a firm is involved in irresponsible business conduct, the more likely it is to use narrative (instead of analytical) and deceptive (instead of authentic) language. Moreover, we show that these two trends are particularly evident for highly internationalised firms

What happens to customers when a crisis hits the core dimension of corporate reputation? The role of the perception of congruence versus incongruence

Nowadays, initiatives of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are fundamental to build reputation and corporate reputation plays an important role in determining the impact of crises on firms. Reputation is a comprehensive construct, but customers may perceive a company as particularly strong on a specific CSR dimension. Through an experimental study, we show that the congruence between that salient dimension of corporate reputation and the dimension affected by a crisis influences customer behavior. Negativity effect, diagnosticity of information, and dissonance theory help in explain the different effects of a congruent vs. incongruent crisis scenario. We found that in case of congruence (i.e., the crisis hits a dimension that is not the core of the company reputation) the customers’ attitude toward the company, word-of-mouth, and purchase intention are better than in the case of incongruence (i.e., the crisis strikes the company’s main reputational asset)

L’effetto dell’autenticità sull’attaccamento alla marca. Prime evidenze empiriche e implicazioni di marketing

Nell’ambito della letteratura che studia il consumo di autenticità da parte degli individui, si è recentemente diffusa la tendenza a utilizzare metodi quantitativi al fine di analizzare potenziali relazioni tra l’autenticità stessa e altri importanti costrutti di marketing, come l’atteggiamento o la brand extension. Il presente lavoro fa parte di un progetto più ampio che mira ad analizzare la relazione tra l’autenticità della marca e l’attaccamento del consumatore ad essa (brand attachment). Nello studio descritto in questo articolo, vengono presentati i risultati di una ricerca esplorativa basata su 20 interviste in profondità a consumatori finali e finalizzata a investigare il concetto di autenticità nello specifico ambito dei consumi di musica leggera. Tali risultati offrono utili indicazioni per lo sviluppo di una scala di misurazione dell’autenticità da impiegare in studi successivi volti a valutarne l’effetto sull’attaccamento

Communicating CSR: A selective empirical review of theories and methods. Work in progress

In this paper we provide an empirical analysis of the literature about Corporate Social Responsibility Communication (CSRC). Given the increasing amount of research related to this topic, a diverse set of theories, methods, and empirical findings coexist in the literature. Therefore, we have collected and analyzed CSRC papers in order to highlight which theoretical and methodological approaches have been used by scholars in the field, when dealing with empirical research. We believe that it is necessary to sum up this amount of research with the purpose of deriving insights about the current status of research and its possible future developments

Crisis communication and consumer’s responses: the role of the need of cognitive closure

Recently, also because of the spread of Internet, reports of corporate crisis are increasingly frequent. Managers have to act quickly to not deplete the capital of trust and credibility painstakingly built over time. In parallel, scholars dedicate an increased emphasis to the phenomenon as evidenced by the many contributions that ultimately go to feed the literature on crisis management. This paper, through an experimental study, wants to analyze the different impact that the same response strategy (apology) to a real corporate crisis, can have on people with different levels of the need for cognitive closure. Results show that this psychological trait acts as moderator: if the need of cognitive closure is low, the apology strategy is more effective in terms of higher attitude towards the company and higher intention to buy compared to average levels of the same attribute. If the need for cognitive closure is high, the apology strategy seems to have no significant effect on these consumers. Such results suggest to companies to consider some respondents psychological traits in the development of efficient post crisis communication strategies