’The Book of Stars’: Some Alternative Insights into Celebrity Fandom

While consumers have had a keen interest in the works and private lives of celebrities since the dawn of the Hollywood star system in the early 1920s, some consumers experience a significantly more intensive level of interest and admiration for a particular celebrity and, subsequently, become what are commonly known as fans. However, scant attention has been paid to how the relationship between fans and celebrities expresses itself in everyday consumer behaviour. This paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss fan behaviour as a holistic personal lived experience from a fan’s point of view. By using subjective personal introspection, the lead author provides hereby insights into his private lived consumption experiences as the fan of the young and talented actress Jena Malone, which were obtained and recorded as contemporaneous data over a period of 15 months. In doing so, the paper demonstrates how drawing on narrative transportation theory may provide a deeper understanding on the nature of celebrity fandom. The study found that a consumer’s fan experiences derive from one’s personal engagement with the celebrity’s artistic work and public persona, which is essentially the consumer’s personal intertextual reading of what s/he perceives to be relevant and reliable media texts

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into a Consumer’s Experiential Consumption of ‘Pride & Prejudice.'

As people enjoy movies for various reasons, this paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss the consumption of movies as a holistic personal lived experience. By using subjective personal introspection, the author provides hereby insights into his personal lived consumption experiences with the recently released movie Pride & Prejudice. Although the introspective data suggest that a complex tapestry of interconnected factors contributes to a consumer’s movie enjoyment, this study found a consumer’s personal engagement with the movie narrative and its characters to be of particular importance. This personal engagement not only allows for a momentary escape from reality into the imaginative movie world, but is even further enhanced through intertextuality, by which the consumer connects the movie to one’s personal life experiences

’The Book of Stars’: Understanding a Consumer’s Fan Relationship with a Film Actress Through a Narrative Transportation Approach

Although consumers have always been fascinated by the works and private lives of film stars, scant attention has been paid as to how the relationship between fans and film actors expresses itself in everyday consumer behaviour. This paper sets therefore out to explore celebrity fandom as a holistic lived experience from an individual fan’s insider point of view. Using subjective personal introspection, the lead author provides insights into his own private everyday lived fan relationship with the actress Jena Malone. The findings indicate that the fan engages with the film star’s public persona through a personal intertextual reading of “reliable” media texts, which can even result in a feeling of “knowing” the celebrity like a personal friend–and even “love.

Consumer Motivations to Participate in Marketing-Events: The Role of Predispositional Involvement

Confronted with the decreasing effectiveness of classic marketing communications, event-marketing has become an increasingly popular alternative for marketers in dealing with a changing marketing environment. Event-marketing is defined as the creation of 3-dimensional, interactive brand-related hyperrealities for consumers by staging marketing-events, which would result in an emotional attachment to the brand. However, as a pull strategy within marketing communications, successful event-marketing strategies require a thorough understanding of why consumers are motivated to voluntarily participate in those marketing-events. To narrow this information gap, this research, based on a thorough literature review, has developed a conceptual model suggesting that consumers’ motivations to participate in marketing-events are determined by their predispositional involvement either in the event-object, the event-content, event-marketing or the expected social interaction at the event. Thus, the main contribution is to the involvement and experiential consumption literature

Event-Marketing as Innovative Marketing Communications: Reviewing the German Experience

As a result of significant changes in their marketing environments and in consumer behaviour, marketers are confronted with the decreasing effectiveness of their classic marketing communications (Kroeber-Riel 1984) and, consequently, in need of new ways to position their brands in consumers’ minds. Because nothing is more convincing than personal experiences (Nickel 1998), event-marketing creates new brand-related realities by staging marketing-events with which consumers interact. This would result in an emotional attachment to the brand (Zanger and Sistenich 1996). However, while event-marketing as an experience-oriented marketing communication strategy has become very popular among German marketing professionals and academics, researchers and marketers in English-speaking countries have widely ignored this innovative communication strategy so far due to a different understanding of the term (Cornwell 1995). Nevertheless, some European companies have successfully launched in recent years their first event-marketing campaigns in Ireland, the UK and the US, suggesting a much broader appeal than previously recognised. Thus, this paper is introducing event-marketing to an international audience by outlining its constitutive features and discussing its role in marketing communications, based on the lessons learned from the German experience, that are presented using mini-case studies

ILLEGAL EMPLOYMENT OF NON-EU NATIONALS IN IRELAND. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 64 JULY 2017

Illegal employment of non-EU nationals can be defined in two ways, in reference to two different typologies: those who are legally resident working outside the conditions of their residence permit and/or without an Employment Permit, and those who are irregularly resident.1 Illegal employment is defined in this study to mean ‘economic activity carried out in violation of provisions set by legislation’ (European Migration Network, 2014). Illegal employment is hidden by nature, meaning estimating the scale both in Ireland and within the EU is challenging. According to research by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2015) high risk sectors tend to be characterised by low wages, long hours and a relatively high turnover in staff. Owing to its hidden nature, illegal employment often impacts upon workers’ fundamental rights. Combatting illegal employment is therefore both a social policy and fundamental rights objective, as employees’ rights are often violated (European Migration Network, 2017). This is the first comprehensive study on illegal employment concerning both regularly and irregularly staying non-EU nationals in Ireland, which outlines in detail policy and practice with input from a variety of stakeholders. Its purpose is to provide an evidence base for national and EU policymakers, researchers, practitioners working with non-EEA nationals as well as the general public. The study focusses on policy, law and practice in relation to: prevention measures and incentives for compliance, direct policy initiatives, inspections, sanctions and outcomes for people found to be working illegally

When employer brand image aids employee satisfaction and engagement

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether employee characteristics (age, gender, role and experience) influence the effects of employer brand image, for warmth and competence, on employee satisfaction and engagement. Design/methodology/approach – Members of the public were surveyed as to their satisfaction and engagement with their employer and their view of their employer brand image. Half were asked to evaluate their employer’s “warmth” and half its “competence”. The influence of employee characteristics was tested on a “base model” linking employer image to satisfaction and engagement using a mediated moderation model. Findings – The base model proved valid; satisfaction partially mediates the influence of employer brand image on engagement. Age, experience gender, and whether the role involved customer contact moderate both the influence of the employer brand image and of satisfaction on engagement. Practical implications – Engagement varies with employee characteristics, and both segmenting employees and promoting the employer brand image differentially to specific groups are ways to counter this effect. Originality/value – The contexts in which employer brand image can influence employees in general and specific groups of employees in particular are not well understood. This is the first empirical study of the influence of employer brand image on employee engagement and one of few that considers the application of employee segmentation

Fulfilling the Promise: the Role for Agricultural Research

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Consumer Motivations to Participate in Event-Marketing Strategies

As part of the Adidas goes street-campaign, the Adidas Predator Cup was a fun-soccer tournament designed to "reconnect the youth in Germany with Adidas and the soccer sport by enjoying the pure fun, freedom and personal happiness of playing an informal soccer match with friends". Despite knowing that the Adidas Predator Cup was designed to communicate the same commercial messages they would have actively avoided otherwise, the young target audience participated in large numbers in this event-marketing strategy. The current study investigates why young consumers are motivated in such large numbers to experience the hyperreality of the Adidas soccer brand by feeling for an afternoon like being Ronaldinho, Beckham, Ballack or Keane. Using Wohlfeil and Whelan's conceptual model, four predispositional involvement dimensions are identified as motivational drivers and tested, before interesting results are discussed

Communicating Brands Through Engagement with 'Real-Lived' Experiences

As the recent years saw the rapidly decreasing effectiveness of traditional brand communications, event-marketing has emerged as a new breed of communication strategy, which involves target audiences as active participants on a behavioural level. By using a participatory case study method, this paper demonstrates the nature, scope and benefits of event-marketing in differentiating and enhancing customer–brand relationships in relation to a German university. The study concludes that event-marketing facilitates customer engagement with the brand through informal dialogues and personal first-hand brand experiences. Implications for managers are discussed and avenues for further research offered