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Asserts that since there are new competitors in almost every industry, businesses are needing to adapt their systems to more effectively meet the needs of customers. Argues that in this climate customer‐centric marketing is more effective than product‐oriented marketing. Decribes the features and benefits of convergent marketing, which is a fully customer‐centric approach to marketing. There are six guiding principles to convergent marketing: understanding who the customers are and what they value; selecting customers carefully; designing products and services that deliver the desired value; designing effective sales and service channels; recruiting and equipping employees to deliver and increase customer value; constant refinement of the value proposition to ensure customer loyalty and retention. Goes on to explain how to execute convergent marketing.

Companies inevitably interact and entrench in complex organic systems of business relationships with other. These business networks are not objectively defined, instead they are shaped by the subjective perception of actors. This inherent subjectivity is associated with the notion of network pictures, that is, a research tool that researchers or managers can use to grasp practitioner theories. In this chapter, we discuss how the importance of identifying these theories results mainly from underlying principles of sense-making theory, as well as from the idea around performativity. Drawing on these theoretical groundings, this chapter has two objectives: to explore how practitioners actually perceive their business surroundings and to assess the extent of overlapping between (IMP Group) academic theories and practitioner theories. To achieve these objectives, the researchers use a dimensional network pictures model previously developed in the literature to analyze the network pictures of 49 top-level managers across 17 companies from two very distinct contexts or networks: a product-based network and a project-based network. Among other practices, findings illustrate how practitioners tend to simplify what is going on in their complex surroundings, to personalize their relationships with those surroundings, and to think in a stereotyped way. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the captured practitioner theories and academic (IMP Group) theories show that these are not always overlapping, and are in some cases quite the opposite. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion of the importance of grasping actors’ views of the world, arguing that sense-making theory and the notion of performativity are the two main conceptual drivers justifying the urgency in making those views more visible. This research also adds to the research on the impact and suitability of IMP Group theories on managerial thinking and practice. Finally, this research reinforces the current call for further practice-based research in business network contexts.

This study aims to investigate consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in a regional context.

Following a socio-spatial lens and considering the “realm of meaning” of place, this research focusses on local consumers’ lived meanings of “local” food choice, and hence adopts a phenomenological approach to the data collection and analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with residents of the Italian region of Marche.

Drawing on Trudeau’s (2006) politics of belonging, this study reveals three interconnected themes which show how local consumers articulate a local food “orthodoxy” and how their discourses and practices draw and maintain a boundary between local and non-local food, whereby local food is considered “autochthonous” of rural space. Thus, this study’s participants construct a local food landscape, conveying rural (vs urban) meanings through which food acquires “localness” (vs non-“localness”) status.

There exists further theoretical opportunity to consider local consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in terms of non-representational theory (Thrift, 2008), to help reveal added nuances to the construction of food localness as well as to the complex process of formulating place meaning.

The findings provide considerable scope for food producers, manufacturers and/or marketers to differentiate local food products by enhancing consumers’ direct experience of it in relation to rural space. Thus, enabling local food producers to convey rural (vs urban) meanings to consumers, who would develop an orthodoxy guiding future choice.

The findings enable regional promoters and food policymakers to leverage the symbolic distinctiveness of food autochthony to promote place and encourage consumers to participate in their local food system.

By using the politics of belonging as an analytical framework, this study shows that the urban–rural dichotomy – rather than being an obsolete epistemological category – fuels politics of belonging dynamics, and that local food consumers socially construct food localness not merely as a romanticisation of rurality but as a territorial expression of the contemporary local/non-local cultural conflict implied in the politics of belonging. Thus, this study advances our theoretical understanding by demonstrating that food “becomes” local and therefore, builds on extant food localness conceptualisations.

Although the role of information has been previously studied in the ethical consumer literature, practices related to information searches and interpretation have not been fully examined in relation to ethical consumption. The purpose of this paper is to explore the search and use of information by ethically oriented consumers in order to understand the problems involved in this process, and how ethical consumers address them by adopting a number of practices.

Using a qualitative approach and diaries, the paper explores how consumers carry out their informational search and interpretation over an 11-week period.

First, insights are provided about the specifics of information search and the contexts, timing and use of information. Second, the information management practices used by participants to navigate the problems they encounter are identified. These practices are discussed in relation to the maximizing vs optimizing approach adopted by the participants.

New technologies, such as mobile applications and geo-localization, could overcome some of the problems inherent to information searches identified in this study. The use of social networks may also prove particularly interesting for companies and NGOs that target ethically oriented consumers.

Information search and the use and interpretation of information are part of the efforts undertaken by ethical consumers, but they have not been the focus of past research. This study provides empirical evidence on consumer practices employed to circumvent the problems found in a context of information asymmetries, and the gradual development of consumer skills in relation to ethical information searches and management. It shows how information search and management shapes the practice of ethical consumption.

This paper aims to develop a deeper understanding of what (un)sustainable food behaviours and values are transmitted across generations, to what extent this transference happens and the sustainability challenges resulting from this for individuals and households.

A total of 25 semi-structured in-depth interviews are analysed regarding the value of inherited food, family food rituals, habits and traditions, aspects of food production and understanding of sustainability.

Intergenerational transferences are significant in shaping (un)sustainable consumption throughout life, and those passed-on behaviours and values offer opportunities for lifelong sustainable change and food consumption reappraisal in daily life, beyond early years parenting and across diverse households.

Participants were limited to British families, although the sample drew on multiple ethnic heritages. Future research could study collectivist versus more individualistic cultural influence; explore intergenerational transference of other diverse households, such as multigeneration or in rural and urban locations, or whether sustainable crossover derived from familial socialisation continues into behaviours and values beyond food.

The findings show the importance of families and intergenerational transference to the embedding of sustainable consumption behaviours. Mundane family life is a critical source of sustainable learning, and marketers should prioritise understanding of the context and relationships that drive sustainable consumer choices. Opportunities for intentional and unintentional sustainable learning exist throughout life, and marketers and policymakers can both disrupt unsustainable and encourage sustainable behaviours with appropriate interventions, such as nostalgic or well-being communications. The paper sheds light on flexible sustainable identities and how ambivalence or accelerated lives can deflect how policy messages are received, preventing sustainable choices.

The findings provide greater understanding about the mechanisms responsible for the sustainable transformation of consumption habits, suggesting intergenerational transferences are significant in shaping (un)sustainable food consumption throughout life. The study shows secondary socialisation can play a critical role in the modification of early behaviour patterns of food socialisation. The authors found individuals replicate food behaviours and values from childhood, but through a process of lifelong learning, can break formative habits, particularly with reverse socialisation influences that prioritise sustainable behaviours.