Anti-consumption studies are gaining in popularity, but doubt remains as to whether they can add anything unique to consumer research and marketing that other similar topics cannot. This article ...attempts to explain the distinctive nature of anti-consumption and how it can contribute to the understanding of marketing beyond other related phenomena, such as ethical consumption, environmental consumption, consumer resistance, and symbolic consumption. Drawing upon reasons theory, the article contends that the “reasons against” consumption are not always the logical opposite of the “reasons for” consumption and there are important differences between phenomena of negation and affirmation. By focusing on the reasons against consumption, anti-consumption research acts as a lens that scholars and practitioners may use to view similar phenomena in a new light. The article illustrates this point by offering anti-consumption as an overarching perspective that spans a range of behavioral and thematic contexts, thereby revealing its unique contribution to marketing.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper explores the spatio-temporal dimensions of consumer activism during the Greek crisis. Existing work has provided valuable insights into the figure of the political consumer and the ...socio-spatial contexts in which consumer activism is enacted. The paper presents original six-year ethnographic work that extends current knowledge through exploring how the spatial and temporal dimensions of consumer activism are unsettled and reconfigured during an acute economic crisis. It builds on the concept of chronotopic dilemmas to illustrate the ideological tensions and contradictions between old and new spatio-temporal logics and practices. In doing so, the current study complements prior research focused on how distinct cultural and institutional settings mediate discourses and actions of consumer activism, by highlighting their inherently spatio-temporal (chronotopic) nature.
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While there is an extensive body of literature about the impact of sharing physical space on ethical consumption, and a growing body of literature that addresses the impact of digital technologies on ...ethical consumption, there is little research on the increasing intersections between the physical and digital realms. This study explores the distinct affordances of physical and digital spaces and how they may work in both complementary and synergistic fashions. Drawing on an ethnographic study of two ethical consumption communities in North London, UK, we explore how ethical consumers navigate and negotiate both physical and digital spaces, taking advantage of such affordances. We develop the notion of
chorophilia
, or love for physical space, explore digital commitments and synergistic affordances of scaling up, and advance
polytopes,
which focus on the relationality of digital-physical spaces. Implications and avenues for future research are also discussed.
Despite considerable debate as to what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is, consumer social responsibility (CnSR), as an important force for CSR (Vogel in Calif Manag Rev 47(4): 19-45, 2005), is ...a term that remains largely unexplored and under-theorized. To better conceive the role consumers play in activating CSR, this paper provides a multi-level, multi-agent conceptualization of CnSR. Integrating needs-based models of decision making with justice theory, the article interpretively develops the reasons (instrumental, relational, and moral) why variously positioned agents leverage consumers as a force for corporate social responsibility. The paper theoretically expands currently limited conceptions of CnSR by exploring the levels at which diverse agents engage with CnSR (Who and What?) and the needs driving these agents (Why?). The paper suggests that the so-called "consumer side of CSR" (Devinney et al. in Stanf Soc Innov Rev: 29-37, 2006) is contingent upon the presence, absence, and varying intensities of underlying agent needs. Academic and managerial implications are drawn in the paper's conclusion.
Using Exarcheia, a neighbourhood in Athens, as our research context, we identify an oppositional atmosphere that is encouraging a major growth in anarcho-tourism to the area. We illustrate how the ...production and consumption of this unique atmosphere depends on the many grassroots initiatives and anti-authoritarian mobilisations that are predominant in Exarcheia, and how the atmosphere is being threatened by the encroachment of tourism provision. Yet, drawing on Duncombe's (2007) concepts of the ethical spectacle and transmutation, we challenge the co-optation/resistance binary to contemplate whether elements of spectacular consumption can, under specific conditions, be used as tools for progressive social change.
•Oppositional atmospheres are the outcome of bottom-up resistive initiatives.•Anarcho-tourism is a form of tourism driven by oppositional atmospheres.•Oppositional atmospheres drive tourism yet tourism can kill these atmospheres.•We problematize the co-optation/resistance binary.•We develop the concept of atmospheric transmutations.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
6.
Feminising (digital) utopias Maclaran, Pauline; Chatzidakis, Andreas
Journal of business research,
07/2021, Volume:
131
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This article defines ‘carewashing’ as commercial branding strategies which commodify care and attempt to increase corporate profit, and provides the first theorisation and historicisation of the ...term. The first section of the article situates ‘carewashing’ in relation to longer-term strategies of corporate ‘social responsibility’ and cause-related marketing. The second shows how established corporate practices are being reinvented in an era of Covid-19 and amidst profound neoliberal instability. The third section focuses on specific examples of contemporary carewashing, showing their variation and pinpointing three tendencies: ‘opportunistic branding’; ‘community resourcing’; and ‘reputational steamrolling’. The concluding section argues that carewashing also needs to be understood as a political act which is involved in wider social struggles. It argues that, in the Gramscian sense, carewashing is part of a ‘passive revolution’ in that it is attempting to claim and demarcate the realm of care for corporate capitalism and against social democracy.
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Research into consumer ethics has grown substantially since the 1990s. However, it is predominantly influenced by socio-cognitive and attitudinal models that treat everyday consumer decisions as the ...outcome of carefully weighting abstract moral principles against utilitarian outcomes. This article counter-proposes a psychoanalytic approach to consumer guilt and moral choice that draws on Freudian and Kleinian contributions. In particular, conceptualisations of unconscious (rather than conscious) guilt, the notion of guilt being the cause rather than outcome of moral behaviour, and the distinction between persecutory and reparative anxieties. In doing so, it corroborates a view of everyday morality as less rational, less deliberate and firmly embedded in psychodynamic processes that largely escape individual awareness. Potential implications and avenues for more psychoanalytically inspired treatments of consumer ethics are discussed.
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This paper investigates how consumers interested in sustainability are affected by conflicts in caring and scale. Contrasting previous emphasis relating scale to production, the paper illustrates how ...scale influences consumption and social reproduction, including consumers’ more concrete preoccupations with caring about and for themselves, significant others and, not least, the planet. The paper makes three contributions to the nascent management literature in this field. First, it illustrates how scalar logics at urban through to global levels influence seemingly micro‐social routine consumption decisions. Second, it develops an approach that emphasizes the scale‐sensitivity of consumer decision‐making around sustainability and the conflicts inherent in caring. Third, it addresses critiques of current studies preoccupied with processes of production rather than social reproduction and illustrates the critical role that consumption plays in the social construction of scales. Based on these findings, we argue that policy promoting sustainability may be misplaced in that it does not sufficiently acknowledge how people's consumption and caring decisions are nested in relational and spatial contexts.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Consumer research has focused on the various resources and tactics that help movements achieve a range of institutional and marketplace changes. Yet, little attention has been paid to the persistence ...of movement solidarity, in particular its regeneration, despite a range of threats to it. Our research unpacks mechanisms that help consumer movement solidarity to overcome threats. Drawing on a 6-year ethnographic study of consumer movements in Exarcheia, a neighborhood in central Athens, Greece, we find that consumer movement solidarity persists despite a cataclysmic economic crisis that undermines their prevalent ideology and the emotional fatigue, that is, common in such movements. Three key mechanisms serve to overcome these threats: performative staging of collectivism, temporal tactics, and the emplacement of counter-sites. Overall, our study contributes to consumer research by illuminating how threats to solidarity are overcome by specific internal mechanisms that enable the regeneration of consumer movement solidarity.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
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