Angela Gracia B. Cruz, Elizabeth Snuggs and Yelena Tsarenko
While theories of complex service systems have advanced important insights about integrated care, less attention has been paid to social dynamics in systems with finite resources…
Abstract
Purpose
While theories of complex service systems have advanced important insights about integrated care, less attention has been paid to social dynamics in systems with finite resources. This paper aims to uncover a paradoxical social dynamic undermining the objective of integrated care within an HIV care service system.
Design/methodology/approach
Grounded in a hermeneutic analysis of depth interviews with 26 people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and drawing on Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of capital consumption to unpack dynamics of power, struggle and contestation, the authors introduce the concept of the service labyrinth.
Findings
To competently navigate the service labyrinth of HIV care, consumers adopt capital consumption practices. Paradoxically, these practices enhance empowerment at the individual level but contribute to the fragmentation of the HIV care labyrinth at the system level, ultimately undermining integrated care.
Research limitations/implications
This study enhances understanding of integrated care in three ways. First, the metaphor of the service labyrinth can be used to better understand complex care-related service systems. Second, as consumers of care enact capital consumption practices, the authors demonstrate how they do not merely experience but actively shape the care system. Third, fragmentation is expectedly part of the human dynamics in complex service systems. Thus, the authors discuss its implications. Further research should investigate whether a similar paradox undermines integrated care in better resourced systems, acute care systems and systems embedded in other cultural contexts.
Originality/value
Contrasted to provider-centric views of service systems, this study explicates a customer-centric view from the perspective of heterosexual PLWHA.
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Carlos Diaz Ruiz and Angela Gracia B. Cruz
This study conceptualizes a form of luxury consumption in which luxury brands collaborate with unconventional non-luxury partners. These unconventional luxury brand collaborations…
Abstract
Purpose
This study conceptualizes a form of luxury consumption in which luxury brands collaborate with unconventional non-luxury partners. These unconventional luxury brand collaborations are growing in popularity among Chinese luxury consumers of the post-1990s generation. Luxury brands are exploring new branding strategies due to the growing commercial importance of Chinese luxury consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
An in-depth qualitative study informs this paper. Interviews with young adult luxury consumers self-identifying as Chinese reveal a growing interest for luxury brands that collaborate with odd partners in social media and online culture.
Findings
Unconventional collaborations between luxury brands and non-luxury partners catalyze shifting meanings of luxury through the following juxtapositions: ephemeral instead of timeless, trendy rather than inaccessible, and playful in contrast with traditional. First, young Chinese consumers construct luxury meanings through ephemerality, like digital possessions, social media fame and fleeting experiences. Second, luxury meanings emerge in trendiness among social media influencers and online culture rather than in the seemingly inaccessible taste regimes of the upper class. Third, younger consumers appreciate fun, rebellious and over-the-top aesthetics in luxury brands.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the nascent field of unconventional luxury by conceptualizing how unusual, odd and unexpected collaborations constitute new forms of luxury consumption. The shifting meanings of luxury consumption that this study conceptualizes raise new opportunities and challenges for luxury brands. One of such is the release of limited collections with non-luxury partners seemingly at the opposite spectrum of design, image and values. Moreover, the study adds nuance to the understanding of luxury consumption among young Chinese consumers.
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Angela Gracia B. Cruz and Margo Buchanan-Oliver
This paper aims to explore how marketplace-enabled performances help reconstitute masculinity in the context of transnational mobility.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how marketplace-enabled performances help reconstitute masculinity in the context of transnational mobility.
Design/methodology/approach
Grounded in consumer acculturation theory, this paper draws on theories of gender performance to inform a hermeneutic analysis of depth interviews with skilled migrant men.
Findings
To navigate experiences of emasculation, participants performed three remasculation strategies: status-based hypermasculinity, localised masculinity and flexible masculinity.
Research limitations/implications
This study offers insights for the design of migrant settlement policy. Further research should investigate the remasculation strategies of low resource migrant men.
Originality/value
This paper makes two contributions to theories of gendered acculturation. First, while studies of acculturation as a gendered performance have shown how marketplace resources support the gendered identity projects of female migrants and the children of migrants, this paper provides the missing perspective of skilled migrant men. Beyond acting as “resistant” cultural gatekeepers of their family members’ gendered acculturation practices, first-generation migrant men emerge as creative, agentic and skilled negotiators of countervailing gender regimes. Second, transnationally dispersed families, migrant communities and country of origin networks emerge not only as acculturating agents which transmit gender regimes but also as audiences which enable the staging of remasculating performances.
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Angela Gracia B. Cruz and Margo Buchanan-Oliver
The purpose of this paper is to explore the capital-based benefits which arise when acculturating immigrants perform touristic practices, and how these shape their tourism and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the capital-based benefits which arise when acculturating immigrants perform touristic practices, and how these shape their tourism and migration experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
Grounded in consumer culture theory, this paper draws on theories of capital consumption to inform a hermeneutic analysis of multi-modal depth interviews with Southeast Asian skilled migrants in New Zealand.
Findings
Domestic touristic practices offer three types of capital-based benefits, enabling consumers to index economic capital, accrue social capital and index cultural capital. Additionally, the quest for capital emphasises iconic forms of tourism and supersedes concerns about commodification.
Research limitations/implications
This paper demonstrates the important role of touristic practices not only in short-term mobility, but also for long-term migrants. Further research should investigate how capital shapes the touristic practices of other types of mobile consumers.
Practical implications
Understanding the capital-based benefits of touristic practices in acculturation informs the design of migrant settlement policy and the managerial staging of touristic experiences.
Originality/value
While theorists of liquid modernity have largely treated tourism as a discrete type of mobility, this paper reframes tourism as a key acculturation practice. In contrast to dominant conceptualisations of tourism as a quest for cultural authenticity, this paper reconceptualises tourism as a quest for capital. Finally, while previous studies have focused on how capital constrains acculturation outcomes, this paper explores how a consumption practice enables the expression and accumulation of capital.
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Angela Gracia B. Cruz and Margo Buchanan-Oliver
The consumer acculturation literature argues that reconstituting familiar embodied practices from the culture of origin leads to a comforting sense of home for consumers who move…
Abstract
Purpose
The consumer acculturation literature argues that reconstituting familiar embodied practices from the culture of origin leads to a comforting sense of home for consumers who move from one cultural context to another. This paper aims to extend this thesis by examining further dimensions in migrant consumers’ experiences of home culture consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyses data gathered through multi-modal depth interviews with Southeast Asian skilled migrants in New Zealand through the conceptual lens of embodiment.
Findings
Building on Dion et al.’s (2011) framework of ethnic embodiment, the analysis uncovers home culture consumption as multi-layered experiences of anchoring, de-stabilisation and estrangement, characterised by convergence and divergence between the embodied dimensions of being-in-the-world, being-in-the-world with others and remembering being-in-the-world.
Research limitations/implications
This paper underscores home culture consumption in migration as an ambivalent embodied experience. Further research should investigate how other types of acculturating consumers experience and negotiate the changing meanings of home.
Practical implications
Marketers in migrant-receiving and migrant-sending cultural contexts should be sensitised to disjunctures in migrants’ embodied experience of consuming home and their role in heightening or mitigating these disjunctures.
Originality/value
This paper helps contribute to consumer acculturation theory in two ways. First, the authors show how migrants experience not only comfort and connection but also displacement, in practices of home culture consumption. Second, the authors show how migrant communities do not only encourage cultural maintenance and gatekeeping but also contribute to cultural identity de-stabilisation.
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Davide C. Orazi and Angela Gracia B. Cruz
This paper aims to propose LARPnography as a more holistic method to probe the emergence of plausible futures, drawing on embodied embedded cognition literature and the emerging…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose LARPnography as a more holistic method to probe the emergence of plausible futures, drawing on embodied embedded cognition literature and the emerging consumer practice of live-action role-playing (LARP). Current research methods for probing the future of markets and society rely mainly on expert judgment (i.e. Delphi), imagery or simulation of possible futures (i.e. scenario and simulation) and perspective taking (i.e. role-playing). The predominant focus on cognitive abstraction limits the insights researchers can extract from more embodied, sensorial and experiential approaches.
Design/methodology/approach
LARPnography is a qualitative method seeking to immerse participants within a plausible future to better understand the social and market dynamics that may unfold therein. Through careful planning, design, casting and fieldwork, researchers create the preconditions to let participants experience what the future may be and gather critical insights from naturalistic observations and post-event interviews.
Practical implications
Owing to its interactive nature and processual focus, LARPnography is best suited to investigate the adoption and diffusion of innovation, market emergence phenomena and radical societal changes, including the rise of alternative societies.
Originality/value
Different from previous foresight methods, LARPnography creates immersive and perceptually stimulating replicas of plausible futures that research participants can inhabit. The creation of a fictional yet socio-material world ensures that socially constructed meaning is enriched by phenomenological and visceral insights.
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Maria Angela Cruz Macedo dos Santos, Lucas Melo Vellame, Alisson Jadavi Pereira Silva, José Carlos de Araújo and Alisson Macendo Amaral
This paper aims to determine and evaluate the calibration curve for low-cost electronic sensors in soils from a reclaimed and degraded area in the Brazilian semiarid region.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to determine and evaluate the calibration curve for low-cost electronic sensors in soils from a reclaimed and degraded area in the Brazilian semiarid region.
Design/methodology/approach
The probes were made, programmed and inserted in soil previously conditioned in polyethylene cylinders. The sets “cylinder + probe + soil” were subjected to saturation for a period of 24 h and, subsequently, gravitational drainage at room temperature and daily weighings were performed. When the set reached constant weight, the samples were taken to dry in an oven at 105°C to determine the dry mass and later, determine the gravimetric moisture and convert it into volumetric. The volumetric moistures obtained were related to measured frequency variations and the adjustments were analyzed by regression, which was subjected to analysis of variance (p = 0.05), and related by a third-degree polynomial equation whose quality of the fit was verified with coefficient of determination (R2).
Findings
The obtained moistures were related to the estimated moistures and evaluated by the root-mean-square error and straight 1:1. The results demonstrate that the sensors are not accurate for moistures in saturation, but representative and statistically acceptable results for moistures up to field capacity.
Originality/value
This paper has not been published before in its current, or similar form.
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Yuri Seo, Angela Gracia B. Cruz and Kim-Shyan Fam
– The purpose of this paper is to identify a need to incorporate Asian perspectives in theories of food consumption and marketing.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify a need to incorporate Asian perspectives in theories of food consumption and marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
This editorial discusses the mutually recursive relationship between food and culture in Asian markets, offers an integrative summary of the special issue and develops several key themes for future research.
Findings
Food consumption plays a central role within Asian cultures and markets. Thus, understanding Asian perspectives and contexts provides an important complement and contrast to current theories of food consumption and marketing that have been primarily sited in North American and European contexts. In particular, the complex multiplicity of Asian consumer cultures creates dynamic heterogeneity within Asian food markets.
Research limitations/implications
Although food consumption plays a central role in Asian consumer cultures, extant theory regarding Asian food consumption and marketing is still in its infancy. We highlight important developments in this area that suggest a path for future work.
Originality/value
The authors make three contributions to the literature on food consumption and marketing. First, while engaging with these questions, this issue points to the importance of Asian cultural perspectives into the marketing literature on food consumption. Second, through the articles of this special issue, we trace the relationships between food consumption practices, marketing practices and cultural multiplicity in Asian contexts. Finally, we draw the threads together to provide directions for future research in this area.
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Angela Gracia B. Cruz and Margo Buchanan-Oliver
This paper aims to understand the elements of bridging practices enacted by Asian immigrant consumers and exploring how these practices constitute reverse acculturation within…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand the elements of bridging practices enacted by Asian immigrant consumers and exploring how these practices constitute reverse acculturation within immigrant-receiving Western cultures.
Design/methodology/approach
A practice theoretical perspective was deployed in concert with a hermeneutic analysis of two-part depth interviews with 26 Southeast Asian immigrants in New Zealand. Multi-modal methods and open narrative reflexivity were deployed to improve depth and trustworthiness.
Findings
Participant narratives revealed three intertwined elements of bridging practices: articulations (involving sayings and meanings), performances (involving embodied social activities and material artefacts) and contestations (involving tensions and anxieties). Bridging practices create shared social spaces and facilitate the intensification of intercultural translation.
Research limitations/implications
Bridging practices provide a partial view of wider “circuits of practice” (Magaudda, 2011) which cumulatively constitute reverse acculturation. Future research is needed to show how bridging practices serve as resources for transforming the consumption practices of local consumers in Western cultures.
Originality/value
This study advances consumer acculturation theory in three ways. First, this study identifies a key practice of intercultural translation between Asian and Western consumer cultures. In particular, this study shows that intercultural translation occurs not only through ethnic economies but also in a diverse range of private and public sites. Second, in addition to local consumers’ practices (Sobh et al., 2012), this study highlights the role of immigrant consumers’ practices in reverse acculturation, thereby providing empirical evidence for Luedicke’s (2011) conceptual model of intercultural adaptation. Third, in addition to the influence of acculturating agents on immigrant consumers (Askegaard et al., 2005; Peñaloza, 1994), this study demonstrates how immigrant consumers themselves can act as acculturating agents.
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Margo Buchanan‐Oliver, Angela Cruz and Jonathan E. Schroeder
This paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of contemporary brand communication for technology products, focused on how the human body functions as a metaphorical and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of contemporary brand communication for technology products, focused on how the human body functions as a metaphorical and communicative device, to shed insight into how technological brands make their products understandable, tangible, and attractive in interesting ways.
Design/methodology/approach
An interdisciplinary conceptual review and analysis focuses on issues of metaphor and the body in marketing research and social theory. This analysis is discussed and applied to the communication of technological brands.
Findings
The paper argues that to successfully communicate technological brands requires interdisciplinary insights in order to understand consumption contexts. It proposes an analytic framework for practice and research focused on visual communication for technology brands and products, and demonstrates how advertising both creates and contributes to culture.
Research limitations/implications
Researchers need to understand that a sole focus on the advertising system needs to be supplemented by an understanding of how the symbol of the body in technology advertisements is reflective and productive of meaning in socio‐cultural discourse.
Originality/value
Brand researchers need to add to the prevailing advertising as persuasion model to encompass representation and culture in brand communications. The paper contributes to understanding how basic visual forms, such as the human body, are employed in technology product marketing. It challenges marketers and researchers to broaden their conception of branding and marketing communications to one more consistent with an image economy.