Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen, Elina Närvänen and Hannu Makkonen
The purpose of this study is to define and analyse the emergence of collaborative engagement platforms (CEPs) as part of a rising platformisation phenomenon. Contrary to previous…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to define and analyse the emergence of collaborative engagement platforms (CEPs) as part of a rising platformisation phenomenon. Contrary to previous literature on engagement platforms (EPs), this study distinguishes between formalised and self-organised EPs and sheds light on collaborative EPs on which heterogeneous actors operate without central control by legislated firm actors.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on institutional work theory, this paper explores the institutional rules, norms and practices involved in the emergence of a new platform. This paper implements a longitudinal case study of a local food network called REKO and explores how engagement practices and institutional work patterns catalysed its emergence during 2013–2020.
Findings
The findings of this study show that actors engaged within the REKO platform participated in institutional work patterns of disruption, creation and maintenance, which drove the development of the platform and ensured its viability.
Research limitations/implications
This paper encourages future research to further explore how different types of EPs emerge and function.
Practical implications
The rise of CEPs pushes the dominant managerial orientation to progress from the management “of” a platform to managing “within” a platform. For managers, this means developing novel practices for engaging and committing a versatile set of actors to nurture open-ended, multi-sided collaboration.
Originality/value
This study contributes by conceptualising different types of platforms with a particular focus on CEPs and explicating the engagement practices and institutional work patterns that catalyse their emergence.
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This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social elements catalyse the resistance practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a post-humanist practice approach and focusses on exploring the agentic capacity of socio-material elements to generate resistance practices. The data were generated through a multi-method approach of interviews, field observations and Facebook discussions collected between 2014 and 2017.
Findings
The empirical context is the rejäl konsumtion local food network in Finland. The analysis presents two types of resisting practices – resisting facelessness and resisting carelessness – which are connected to spatial, material and social elements.
Research limitations/implications
The study focusses on one local food system, highlighting the socio-material structuring of resistance in this specific cultural setting.
Practical implications
The practical implications highlight that recognising the socio-material elements provides tools for better engagement of consumer actors with local food systems.
Originality/value
The study adds to the extant research by interweaving the consumer resistance literature and local food systems discussions with the neo-material approach. The findings present a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which consumer resistance is actualised in a non-recreational, mundane context of consumption. Consequently, the study offers new insights into the agentic socio-material actors structuring the local food system.
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Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen, Henna Syrjälä and Minna-Maarit Jaskari
Drawing on food consumption research and human-animal studies, this paper aims to explore how the meanings related to a living horse may be transferred to those of horsemeat. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on food consumption research and human-animal studies, this paper aims to explore how the meanings related to a living horse may be transferred to those of horsemeat. This is accomplished by constructing a nuanced understanding of how different semantic meaning categories of accepting/avoiding consuming horsemeat relate to each other.
Design/methodology/approach
The current data are collected from various sources of media discussions, including online news, online discussion forums, blog postings and printed articles, generated in Finland after the year 2013. The data are analysed applying Greimas’ (1987) semiotic square to open up the semantic meaning categories appearing in the media discussions.
Findings
The semiotic square shows that the meanings of horsemeat arise between the binary oppositions of human-like and animal-like. In this structure, the category of human-like makes eating horsemeat impossible, whereas the category of animal-like makes horsemeat good to eat. The main categories are completed and contrasted by the categories of not human-like and not animal-like. They represent horsemeat as an acceptable food, but only after certain justifications.
Research limitations/implications
The data are based on Finnish media texts, and therefore, the identified categories are interpreted in this specific cultural context.
Originality/value
The current semiotic analysis adds to the existing food consumption research by shedding light on the cultural barriers that make something edible or inedible. By so doing, the findings present a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of the horse as a special kind of meat animal and the justifications for eating horsemeat. Consequently, the findings offer new insights concerning changing food consumption behaviours into a more sustainable direction, pointing out the hidden meanings that influence this process.
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Henna Syrjälä, Minna-Maarit Jaskari and Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen
The current study sheds light on non-human object agency by drawing illustrative examples from a case of horse/horsemeat, and thereby captures the ways in which living and…
Abstract
Purpose
The current study sheds light on non-human object agency by drawing illustrative examples from a case of horse/horsemeat, and thereby captures the ways in which living and non-living animal entities have shifting effects and/or intentions in relation to human entities within heterogeneous networks of cultural resources and practices.
Methodology/approach
Leaning on the post-human approach, the case of horse/horsemeat provides an illustrative empirical entry point into exploring how by looking through the lenses of object agency one can deconstruct the prevailing anthropomorphism-based dualistic views of living and non-living domestic animals as subjects or objects.
Findings
The paper argues that by contemplating both the living horse and non-living horsemeat as ontologically shifting and co-constructive entities in relation to human subjects, we are able to elaborate the contradictions and convergences of object agency that appear in living and/or non-living co-consuming units.
Social implications
The study showcases important aspects of animal welfare, addressing the effects of shifting from a human-centred perspective to a post-human view on equality between various kinds of entities.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the discussions of non-human object agency, addressing the issue from the perspective of an animal entity, which enables participating in deconstructing dualisms such as subject and object as well as living and non-living. In particular, it highlights how in the case of an animal entity, agency may emerge in terms of effects and (some capacity of) intentions both within living and non-living entities.
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Hanna Leipämaa‐Leskinen, Henna Jyrinki and Pirjo Laaksonen
The purpose of this paper is to identify which consumption practices young adults regard as necessary. Recently, necessity consumption has not attracted the interest of consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify which consumption practices young adults regard as necessary. Recently, necessity consumption has not attracted the interest of consumer researchers, even though it serves as an important concept for studying the fundamentals of consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
The data are based on consumption diaries in which young adults reported their consumption practices during one week and then rated the degree to which they experienced each of these practices as a necessity or luxury on a seven‐point scale. The data collection was conducted in January 2011. The sample consisted of 55 Finnish university students and the total number of practices they reported in the diaries was 3,847. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Findings
The results show that young adults experienced almost 60 per cent of their consumption practices as necessary. However, the boundaries between necessary consumption and luxury consumption appeared to be fluid. Accordingly, five groups of consumption practices were identified on the basis of their necessity/luxury ratings, and three of these groups included necessity practices of different levels.
Originality/value
The results show that young adults define necessity consumption differently in different situations. Also, the importance of social activities was evident in all three groups of necessity practices. To conclude, the authors suggest that the developed empirical model should be tested further in different contexts, especially regarding the situational factors, as it provides a fruitful starting point for studying necessity consumption.
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Henna Syrjälä, Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen and Pirjo Laaksonen
– This paper aims to show how social needs – the need for integration and need for distinctiveness – guide Finnish young adults’ mundane consumption behaviors.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to show how social needs – the need for integration and need for distinctiveness – guide Finnish young adults’ mundane consumption behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
The study draws on literature on the fundamental importance of social needs for people’s social well-being and the healthy development of the young. The research uses qualitative methods, leaning on an interpretive approach that regards social needs as subjectively experienced and socially constructed phenomena. The empirical data were sourced from 56 Finnish university students’ narratives on their daily consumption behaviors.
Findings
The findings present five categories: “Socializing through consumption”, “Consuming to affiliate”, “Uniqueness through consumption”, “Consuming to show off” and “Obedient consumption”, which are further linked to social needs.
Social implications
The study opens up the ways social needs are connected to consumption behaviors, for example showing how quotidian consumption objects, such as branded clothes, may be used to satisfy social needs in a way that enables young adults to make independent and distinctive consumption choices. On the other hand, in regard to young consumers’ psychological and social well-being, the study finds that striving to satisfy social needs could also lead to destructive behaviors, such as alcohol consumption.
Originality/value
The current research highlights the unavoidable importance of social needs in young adults’ mundane consumption and how they strive to satisfy them. Thereby, it yields implications for social well-being by shedding light on the pressures and possibilities faced by young adults in their everyday life.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze how meanings of body and identity are constructed when dieting. The paper utilizes cultural approach and focuses on the ways meanings of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how meanings of body and identity are constructed when dieting. The paper utilizes cultural approach and focuses on the ways meanings of body and identity are constructed in social interaction.
Design/methodology/approach
A netnographic research design connected to qualitative diary research was applied in the study. Three web diaries including notes from a period longer than one year were analysed inductively. That is, the research questions were approached data driven.
Findings
Three themes showing the cultural meanings of dieting body were identified: “towards a better body”, “the ashamed body” and “back into control”. Moreover, two themes address the negotiating with the contradictory meanings of identity. They were labeled as “from invisible to visible” and “the humanlike scales”. The identified themes were further analysed in relation to previous findings presented by Thompson and Hirschman in their analysis of consumers' experiences of their embodied selves.
Originality/value
Little attention has been paid to dieting in previous cultural consumption studies even though meanings body and identity and their intertwining have been addressed. As the present findings are based on the naturally occurring data, they offer new ways to understand the meanings related to dieting. Maintaining the body project seems to be the project of becoming something (better) and therefore it asks the consumer to negotiate continuously with her body and identity. Consequently, the paper brings forth social and marketing implications that are developed on the grounds of findings.
Henna Syrjälä, Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen and Pirjo Laaksonen
This paper examines in what ways cultural representations of money reveal deprivation and empowerment in poverty.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines in what ways cultural representations of money reveal deprivation and empowerment in poverty.
Methodology/approach
The study draws on Finnish poor consumers’ narratives of their daily lives to identify the discursive practices involved in money talk. Poverty is seen as a frame in which the tacit cultural knowledge of money and the ways of enacting discursive practices are sustained and produced.
Findings
The research constructs a theoretical illustration of consumer empowerment and deprivation in poverty, which is based on four discursive practices: Moneyless is powerless, Capricious money, Wrestling with money, and Happiness cannot be bought with money. The illustration shows the dynamic evolution of empowerment and deprivation as they grow from and vary within the discursive practices.
Social implications and value
The study highlights the practical carrying out of life in poverty, which does not emerge only as deprived or as empowered, but instead involves a tension between them.
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Linda Lisa Maria Turunen and Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen
The purpose of this study is to shed light on the consumption of second-hand luxury brands, identifying the meanings attached to second-hand luxury possessions in the context of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to shed light on the consumption of second-hand luxury brands, identifying the meanings attached to second-hand luxury possessions in the context of fashion and, specifically, in the case of luxury accessories. Prior discussions of luxury consumption and marketing have focused on brand-new luxury goods, thus largely neglecting the emergence of markets for used luxury products.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical data for this study were generated through interviews with ten Finnish women and through fashion blogs concerning luxury goods that are bought second-hand.
Findings
The findings show that second-hand luxury possessions are characterized by five different meaning themes: Sustainable Choice, Real Deal, Pre-loved Treasure, Risk Investment and Unique Find. The study highlights how consumers are able to achieve luxury experiences even without exclusive service, as the informants attached meanings of luxury to second-hand luxury possessions, especially with regard to the symbolic value and authenticity of the product. However, the meaning of authenticity appears to be a double-edged sword in this context, as consumers may also consider that they are taking a financial as well as reputational risk when acquiring a previously owned luxury item.
Originality/value
This study brings forward novel viewpoints to discussions on luxury brand marketing by connecting the issue with the topical phenomenon of second-hand and luxury consumption. The study suggests important managerial implications for luxury brand marketers.