Marketing Theory

Consumer activists can change markets to better serve their higher-order values by creating new object pathways, for example, developing collaborative consumption schemes to promote sustainability. But how do activists make sure that new object pathways actually lead to the desired value outcomes? In this paper, we explore the framing strategies consumer activists employ to ensure that object pathways are understood and used in accordance with their intended value outcomes. We focus on the value system of fashion and the rise of an emergent, consumer-driven object pathway within this system, the swap party. Based on interviews, participant observation, and social media data, we argue that activists can shape the understandings of object pathways and steer them towards producing the intended value outcomes through four framing strategies: spatio-temporal framing, narrative framing, techno-material framing, and regulatory framing. In the discussion, we explain how these findings contribute to research on consumer movements, the role of framing in market dynamics, and collaborative consumption practices.

This study explores the concept of luxury through the lens of sustainability, questioning conventional interpretations and promoting a broader comprehension of luxury’s compatibility with sustainability. It also explores the potential positive effects of luxury consumption and production at various scales—individual (micro), industry (meso), and environment (macro). This research, adopting a positive theory approach and aligning with the transformative luxury research (TLR) stream, proposes a novel framework termed “positive luxury.” This framework, informed by consumer insights, introduces additional pillars of sustainable practices in the luxury sector that yield positive impacts. These pillars encompass ecological, social, and economic aspects, as well as ethical governance, supply chain integrity, philanthropy, well-being, and diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI). The findings underscore the significance of a consumer-centered perspective and reveal the nuanced positive impacts that consumers perceive from each of these pillars. Furthermore, the study advances existing works by classifying sustainable pillars into either “core” or “incipient” qualities, while responding to the TLR stream’s call for a focus on well-being outcomes. The findings have implications for policymakers and luxury businesses alike, offering potential directions for future research.

Our study examines affective atmospheres within a racialized digital enclave in Brazil. By tracing the flow of (dis)comfort within the collective’s affective atmosphere, we highlight how emotional misalignments permeate the discursive structure of this sociopolitical space, focusing on how the racialized self is formed through racialized acts. Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA), we reveal a discursive formation where value construction influences the understanding of the racialized self. Discursive rules emphasize identification and mutual support, demonstrating how moral bonds and ethical conduct anchor engagement and self-constitution within an established morality, where (dis)comfort drives the formation of the collective body. This study contributes to affective becomings literature by exploring how Black women’s positions are socially negotiated through interrelations of body, affect, space, and normativity. Additionally, we show how (dis)comfort, as it emanates from affective atmospheres, operates in the emotional transformations that drive Black women towards legitimacy.

In this paper, we explore digital overconsumption as a lived experience of modern consumers and a vicious circle in which consumption excesses are constantly produced and reproduced within the contemporary digital environment. Drawing on Franco Berardi’s critical writings on market-capitalist cyberspace and its intensive interactions with individuals, we theorise digital overconsumption as a cyberspace-prompted consumption practice. We reject the individualised conceptualisation of digital overconsumption and argue that this phenomenon is increasingly fostered and perpetuated by ubiquitous, desirous, and invasive cyberspace, from which many ordinary consumers find themselves unable to break free. Using 32 in-depth interviews with consumers who self-identified as engaging in excessive digital use, and netnographic data on digital overconsumption, we trace the three main contours through which consumers’ entanglement in cyberspace manifests itself: (1) cyberspace’s inescapability and networked attachment; (2) cyberspace’s modulation and automated attachment; and (3) cyberspace’s seduction and escapist attachment. In tracing these contours, we highlight the lived reality of digital (over)consumers as increasingly underpinned by perpetual tension, struggle, and entrapment. We call for further exploration of the widespread phenomenon of digital overconsumption, which deserves more attention from marketing theorists.

On first impressions, the interests of marketing scholars and practitioners seem at odds with Marxism’s political, economic, and philosophical commitments. Where marketing theory mentions the name of Karl Marx, then, it is with a palpable sense of hesitation or laboured opposition. He is a taboo theorist. But does this antithesis of marketing and Marx hold empirical scrutiny? This paper provides a hauntological reading of how the discipline has tried, and failed, to exorcise Marxism. Drawing on a systematic review of 40 marketing journals, we reveal four spectres of Marx in marketing theory. We label these Prescriptive, Critical, Literary and Paradigmatic Marx. They indicate Marx’s historic and continued relevance to marketing theory and offer paths to renew this engagement – which we articulate as Marxist marketing theory. Broadening the discussion beyond Marx, we ask what it is about some theorists that make them taboo in marketing theory.

Gendered marketing – the division of the marketplace into restrictive binary gender categories – is particularly pronounced in children’s markets. In recent years, this practice has attracted increasing public and policy attention due to concerns about its potential to entrench gendered inequities from a young age. Yet, scholarship has largely overlooked how gendered marketing socialises children into binary gendered categories. To address this, we present an integrative review of the gendered marketing of children’s toys. We synthesise the fragmented interdisciplinary literature on the topic to develop a framework that illustrates how gendered marketing to children operates, in turn conceiving how marketing acts as a key agent of gender socialisation. Specifically, we identify four gendered marketing tools and their underlying tactics that (re)produce limited and harmful gender categorisations in the marketplace. To redress this, we present an agenda for de-gendering marketing to children to take action against gender injustices in markets.

This interpretive, qualitative study explores ontological (in)security within the servicescape of Manchester’s Christmas Market. We scrutinise this temporary setting, revealing evidence of paradoxes which create uncertainty and ontological (in)security for consumers. Specifically, we identify a social paradox, encompassing crowds and the conduct of ‘others’ within the space; a safety paradox, including material paraphernalia of security and security actors present; and a sensorial paradox, involving stimuli such as light, scent, and sound. We provide a critical context for unpacking consumers’ cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to wider servicescape settings with implications which reach beyond our temporary context. In doing so, we contribute to the marketing theory of servicescapes, where the paradoxes of ontological (in)security are not yet well understood.

This reflective piece presents a critical examination of consumer research and proposes a shift beyond the conventional consumer paradigm. Drawing from a decolonial queer phenomenological approach – to embrace cuir possibilities – we emphasise its potential to challenge power hierarchies and foreground the experiences of peripheral lives. We do so by reflecting upon the life story of Carolina, a domestic worker in Brazil, whose experiences serve as a lens to interrogate traditional notions of consumer agency and sovereignty. Our take reveals the limitations of existing consumer orientations, particularly in addressing power dynamics and structural inequalities. By disorienting ourselves from normative frameworks and reorienting towards the lived experiences of peripheral lives, without reducing them to an othered consumer, we propose a shift in consumption research – one that embraces the multiplicity of identities and experiences beyond the conventional consumer paradigm. One that embraces cuir possibilities. Through this dis/reorientation, we aim to open new opportunities for critical inquiry within the field, inviting scholars to challenge the dominant narratives and explore other possibilities in the study of consumer culture and the politics of consumption.