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This study aims to expand understanding of the diversity of virtual influencer forms by investigating their nonhuman-like, animal and graphic or cartoon variations.

A three-year multisite longitudinal netnography studied 174 virtual influencers and spanned ten social media platforms. Typological categories were constructed from the data set, focusing on 14 influencers located across quadrants. In-depth findings were then developed for eight illustrative cases.

Findings deepen the knowledge of the virtual influencer sphere by highlighting diversity in human-like, nonhuman-like, imaginative and realistic forms. The authors postulate four types of virtual influencers: hyper-human, antihuman, pan-human and alter-human. These forms are linked to specific personalities and communication styles, addressing various consumer needs. Imaginatively represented virtual influencers may prompt audiences to reevaluate beliefs, values and behaviors. These findings challenge prior work’s focus on attractive, hyperreal and human-like virtual influencers, encouraging consideration of divergent types engaged in novel meaning-shaping activities and targeting different segments.

This research paves the way for consumer and marketing researchers and practitioners to broaden their representations of virtual influencers beyond the human-like, beyond the commercial and into new worlds of fantasy, imagination and posthuman possibility.

Different types of virtual influencers speak to diverse audiences and convey marketing messages in subtly different ways. Some forms of virtual influencers fit into roles like defiant voices, oppositional characters, activists, educators, entertainers and change leaders. As the universe of virtual influencers diversifies, this research opens new avenues of marketing for brands.

This study pioneers comprehensive qualitative research across the universe of virtual influencers and their communities, exploring links to popular culture. It offers connections between virtual influencer forms and communication strategies for marketers.

There is a growing demand for healthy food across multicultural societies, and there are few exploratory studies that examined the motivations behind healthy eating. The purpose of this study is to explore the motives and understand the perceptions of healthy eating and how the online community conceptualizes their healthy eating.

Data were collected from the online community, such as posts and comments on YouTube channels, Facebook, Twitter and blogs using the hashtags (#healthyeating, #healthylifestyle, #foodforyourhealth, #culinarymedicine, #functionalfood and #nutrition). Content related to healthy eating was transcribed manually. Consumer motives regarding healthy food choices were explored using qualitative data analysis software using thematic analysis and applying Kozinet’s steps for data analysis. By examining communication on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blogs, this online study will help us to understand the motives behind healthy food choices.

Respondents appeared to rate food goods’ healthiness on a spectrum. Healthy eating can be conceptualized at both the concrete and abstract representation levels. The themes that emerged through thematic analysis were healthy lifestyles, culinary medicine and the perceived benefits of food.

This study will guide policymakers and marketers of food products on how to develop strategies while making food products for multicultural societies. Social networking platforms are used to disseminate information on healthy eating to the online community.

The results that were found express the need for healthy food as well as health-related problems and diseases, and they reflect subjects of interest. Social networking sites give healthcare professionals a forum to interact with and educate the online community about nutrition and health. A health care provider can actively participate in online discussion to establish rapport, respond to questions and serve as a reliable source of factual information.

The objective of this paper is to further the understanding of netnography as a research method for supply chain academics. Netnography is a method for gathering and gaining insight from industry-specific online communities. We prescribe that viewing netnography through the lens of the supply chain will permit researchers to explore, discover, understand, describe or report concepts or phenomena that have previously been studied via survey research or quantitative modeling.

To introduce netnography to supply chain research, we propose a framework to guide how netnography can be adopted and used. Definitions and directions are provided, highlighting some of the practices within netnographic research.

Netnography provides the researcher with another avenue to pursue answers to research questions, either alone or in conjunction with the dominant methods of survey research and quantitative modeling. It provides another tool in the researchers’ toolbox to engage practitioners in the field.

The development of netnography as a research method is associated with Robert Kozinets. He developed the method to study online communities in consumer behavior. We justify why this method can be applied to supply chain research, how to collect data and provide research examples of its use. This technique has room to grow as a supply chain research method.

Social media platforms have matured into significant arenas for moral conflict and often intense confrontation between brands and their consumers. This research aims to scrutinize the strategic development of a fresh brand entity deliberately detached from its morally compromised corporate parent, intended to reshape public perceptions and elude regulatory scrutiny.

Promoted as a center for transformative dialogue and innovation, Mission Winnow by Philip Morris is a novel example of a brand creating an entirely separate brand entity to provide sponsorship, and to associate itself with new brand values. This study employs a multisited netnography through which the posts and conversations on Mission Winnow’s platform and website hub are captured and interpreted, as well as the branded content and the free flows of consumers’ conversations generated around the brand on social media.

Findings reveal a broad interchange of moral controversy, acceptance and opposition discourses on social media. When consumers’ acceptance narratives gain traction, consumers extend their support toward the new brand entity, employing strategies that echo moral rationalization and decoupling. When resistance narratives dominate, consumers consciously draw connections between the decoupled brand and the parent brand’s immoral behavior.

This study expands upon prior research into brand activism and consumers’ moral reasoning toward controversial brands, linking the notion of brand decoupling to brand activism discourse and introducing key underexplored aspects like the power of imagery, linguistic creativity and nostalgia. Moreover, it presents significant implications for a more nuanced understanding of the important interrelationship of brand decoupling and recoupling on social media.

This paper aims to provide a conceptual understanding of the drivers and outcomes of actor opportunism in the context of the three key actors of the sharing economy – the service provider, the platform and the consumer.

The research uses a conceptual approach by drawing on literature from within and outside of marketing.

The current research introduces a conceptual framework of opportunism in the sharing economy with seven underlying propositions. The framework posits a U-shaped moderating effect of social capital for the relationship between opportunism and its drivers, actor vulnerability and asset specificity. Furthermore, a 2 × 2 matrix consisting of two types of opportunistic behaviors (active and passive) and two coping strategies by other actors (defensive and nondefensive) suggests that passive opportunism tends to lead to value codestruction independently of the coping strategies employed by other actors. Counterintuitively, the combination of active opportunism and defensive coping strategy presents an opportunity for value cocreation due to its potential to break up older structures and generate new ones.

While our research provides a higher-level understanding of opportunism pertaining to platform, consumers and service providers in the sharing economy, future research could situate our framework within specific regulatory environments, incorporate the role of competitors and examine individual interaction effects between type of opportunism and coping strategies.

The framework enables service providers, platforms and consumers to identify drivers of opportunistic behaviors of their partners and discern instances in which opportunistic behaviors lead to value codestruction for all actors.

This research transcends prior work on the bright and dark sides of the sharing economy by identifying its dynamic nature and examining the contributing role of opportunism.

This section begins with the story of Raul, a young homeless man who dwells in the streets of Buenos Aires city. Raul is 25 years old and has four children who live with his former wife. Divorced because of a problem with drinking, he sleeps here, there, and everywhere but prefers bus stations or tourist destinations. In this way, he not only feels safer but also lives on the charity of foreign tourists. Hotels or bus stations offer safe shelter in case of rain or the ruthless winter. Because of the currency exchange gap between pesos and dollars, tourist destinations are targeted by many homeless men in Buenos Aires City. Having said this, he works as “reciclador urbano – urban recycling” a new nomenclature associated with persons who sort trash to collect recyclables. Known as cartoneros (litter-pickers) as well, these persons started to become a part of Buenos Aires city. At first glimpse, many cartoneros never come back to their homes, located in Provincia de Buenos Aires they sleep and live roaming Buenos Aires traversing from one to another point of the city. The opposite is equally true, like Raul, Buenos Aires airport has turned into an unofficial homeless shelter receiving more than 50 persons each night.

Linking platform governance and value, the article explains how platforms manage openness, which gives users access and authority, to shape the user experience and orchestrate interactive value co-creation within their ecosystem.

We adopted an abductive approach, drawing on an embedded multiple case study of platform-based local alternative food networks. The strong symbolic dimension embedded into that context allowed for a full exploration of value in its interactive nature.

Platform openness influences value creation directly, but also through two mechanisms: one behavioural, involving interactions between users and sides, and the other cognitive, involving users’ abstraction level. Value co-creation goes beyond the online space and occurs in complex sets of interactions between users. Digital platforms can thus generate intrinsic value co-creation that enhances their utility.

We have adopted a marketing channel theory reading of openness and mobilised a broader conception of value as well as cognitive science to explain how this key element of platform governance affects value creation.

Gig microentrepreneurs are individuals who have embraced short-term gigs as an entrepreneurial agency for both financial and social livelihood. Based on surveys in 2020 and 2023, the research reported here presents a comprehensive, empirical portrait of two cohorts of gig microentrepreneurs. This portrait captures the similarities and differences of gig microentrepreneurs in terms of offline and online business models and the nature of gig work. Recognizing that there is not a “typical” gig microentrepreneur will help ensure that this gig business model continues to evolve without boundaries in terms of demographics, motivations and behavior and will enable marketing and entrepreneurship scholars to better assist in entrepreneurial growth and development. The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the gig microentrepreneur regardless of the nature of the gig work.

The research involved two separate surveys in the USA. The first survey took place in July 2020, and the second survey took place in April 2023 after major changes had taken place in the economy and in society (e.g. the COVID pandemic). Both surveys used samples generated by Dynata, an online consumer panel company with access to more than 70 million consumers worldwide who have agreed to participate as panel members.

The surveys provided answers to questions about the demographic and behavioral aspects of gig microentrepreneurs, including who they are, the number and type of gig activities in which they participate, the financial livelihood generated from gig income, the social livelihood inherent in gig work and dissatisfaction with being a microentrepreneur in the gig economy. These findings produced insights into why individuals engage in gig activities and the positive and negative impacts of that engagement. Based on the findings, nuances and trends within the gig economy and among gig microentrepreneurs are identified and discussed.

The research limitations include lack of generalizability outside of the USA, use of panel data and survivor bias.

Consumers, gig microentrepreneurs, companies and government agencies can benefit from the growth in the gig economy. The vast array of gig activities in which gig microentrepreneurs engage clearly shows the need for an on-demand workforce. There are both economic and societal benefits to having a labor-force that can meet a breadth of demands with varying timeframes.

Whether gig microentrepreneurs are engaging in gig work to augment their income because of economic insecurity or for intrinsic reasons, the motivations and behaviors of the gig microentrepreneurs are indicative of the talent and resources needed to keep the US economy moving forward positively.

As noted by several scholars conducting research on the gig economy, little is known about gig microentrepreneurs – who they are, what they do and why they do it. Current research on the gig economy tends to focus on online platform companies. This research offers an exploratory look at microentrepreneurs who engage in gig activities both online and offline without geographic or technological boundaries.

In this chapter, I unpack the sociotechnical frontier of Web3, anchoring its analysis in the historical intertwining of computational histories and cryptographic cultures. It explores the case study of cryptomarkets to illustrate the originating culture of a laissez-faire-valuing techno-elite. The chapter traces the computational and social origins of Web3, from Robert Axelrod’s work on cooperation to the cypherpunk movement and the development of digital currencies. The Silk Road cryptomarket serves as a microcosm of the larger Web3 ecosystem, offering insights into its potential to disrupt established systems and the complex policy considerations this disruption gives rise to. The chapter examines the community dynamics, social connection, and identity-building practices within cryptomarkets, revealing the tension between experimental energy and outsider perspectives. It situates the emergent form of the Web3 community within its history of technological development, moving beyond community dynamics to larger shifts in computational process and power. The chapter concludes by offering policy recommendations that address trust in decentralised systems, adapt to borderless digital communities, and empower innovative forms of activism through technology. The chapter maintains a critical stance throughout, acknowledging the diverse and sometimes contradictory nature of the Web3 community while exploring its potential to reshape digital interactions and challenge existing power structures.

This chapter introduces the book’s purpose: to explore the niche technology space of Web3 and use it as a lens to reflect on the internet’s future. I’ll discuss the internet’s current state and key issues and then move into a definitional tour of Web3 and its underlying technology. The book’s core argument is presented: Web3 provides tangible social proof of what people want for the internet’s future. I’ll examine current challenges such as privacy concerns, unclear data ownership, and lack of transparency in online systems, which create power imbalances between technology controllers and users. The book argues for striving towards a more equitable and transparent digital future. This chapter serves as a starting point, offering insight into my decade-long research. It aims to familiarise readers with the case study approach and Web3 terminology used throughout the book. A chapter-by-chapter roadmap is provided to guide readers through the exploration of Web3 and its implications. Additionally, this chapter introduces my writing style and voice, preparing readers for the deeper analysis to come. While grounded in sociological knowledge, the chapter aims to make Web3 accessible and spark readers’ curiosity, encouraging them to pursue their own inquiries into this emerging field.