This paper aims to examine how and why finance is represented in cultural products. Focussing on an illustration by Norman Rockwell for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how and why finance is represented in cultural products. Focussing on an illustration by Norman Rockwell for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, this analysis suggests that financialization is represented through the technique of visually incongruent humour. Humour relays the cultural value of the separation of work and play, and financialization is a tool to make sense of play as work. Addressing why certain financial representations are produced highlights the influence of finance in determining how and what messages about financialization are made public. This analysis of a single illustration suggests a need for further research into comparative and contextual studies of culture and finance.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a qualitative analysis of The Expense Account (1957), a cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post.
Findings
In analysing the visually incongruent humour of the illustration, the cultural value of the separation of work and play is muddied by the lack of supervision and undefined organizational space. Freedom of travel and lack of managerial presence suggest that travelling salesmen face anxiety and uncertainty in having to account for their fun activities as work. Accounting is one tool of financialization used to interpret play as work by employees. This illustration was produced in a for-profit context and was therefore influenced by the financial decisions of magazine editors and customers.
Practical implications
Interdisciplinary qualitative analysis of finance and humorous popular cultural images suggests that accounting is a financial tool for making sense of play as work outside fixed organizational spaces. Additional support is given for studying popular culture and finance together, as popular culture is produced within a financial system in which financial decisions determine humorous representations of financialization.
Originality/value
This paper adopts a financial perspective in examining a Norman Rockwell illustration and makes the case for examining how representations of financialization are made by humour and financial influence.
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The current study examines the strategies that nonbinary people use to communicate their gender identities across contexts, including an exploration of how they modify their…
Abstract
The current study examines the strategies that nonbinary people use to communicate their gender identities across contexts, including an exploration of how they modify their gender presentations in response to situations perceived as risky or unsafe. Data were drawn from interviews with 19 nonbinary people, and a modified grounded theory approach was used to identify prevalent or recurring elements in the data. Nonbinary people struggled to communicate their genders to others and felt constrained by the knowledge that others would inevitably interpret their gender presentations within the context of a strict binary. Moreover, they often felt pressure to enact normative, binary presentations in order to feel safer or less visibly gender-nonconforming, particularly in contexts in which social norms were experienced as heightened, such as when engaging with institutions or navigating public spaces such as restrooms or transit systems. This study contributes to the limited literature on nonbinary identities and highlights how dominant transnormative narratives constrain presentation and communication.
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Gender, race, and class-based meanings inform longstanding divisions and status hierarchies within the culinary profession, such as those between public and private and amateur…
Abstract
Purpose
Gender, race, and class-based meanings inform longstanding divisions and status hierarchies within the culinary profession, such as those between public and private and amateur and professional cooking. Private and personal chefs’ work in homes disrupts these divisions and hierarchies. Given their precarious position, how do these chefs negotiate their standing within the profession?
Methodology/approach
This chapter draws on interviews with 41 private/personal chefs. Eight were primarily private household employees, while all others were primarily self-employed.
Findings
The chefs negotiated their status by making distinctions between themselves and commercial chefs, along with other private/personal chefs. The chefs both challenge and reinforce the dichotomies and criteria shaping status evaluations within the culinary profession. Similarly, they both contest and reinforce gender, race, and class hierarchies.
Social implications
The chefs’ conceptual distinctions can potentially (re)produce or challenge material inequalities. Moreover, while the fields of private/personal cheffing create opportunities for more adults to cook for a living, the traditional status hierarchies remain largely the same. It is likely that as long as those hierarchies persist, the chefs’ conceptual distinctions will continue to challenge and reinforce them.
Originality/value
Research on private/personal chefs has been minimal, so this chapter fills this gap. It also adds to scholarship connecting workers’ status struggles and gender, race, and class inequalities. The case of private and personal chefs sheds new light on how gender, race, and class intersect to inform status evaluations within the culinary profession.
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Darrell Goudge, Megan C. Good, Michael R. Hyman and Grant Aguirre
The purpose of this paper is to develop, test, and validate a model in a specialty retail environment to assess the influence of a salesperson’s sales- or customer-orientation and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop, test, and validate a model in a specialty retail environment to assess the influence of a salesperson’s sales- or customer-orientation and customer characteristics related to buy/no-buy decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
Backward stepwise discriminant analysis was used to identify variables that most differentiated buyers from non-buyers. The discriminant model was estimated with survey data provided by a judgment sample of consumers asked to recall details about a recent in-store purchase experience (n=240). One significant discriminant function emerged. The model correctly classified 87.5 percent of buy/no-buy decisions by consumers in a separate validation sample (n=40).
Findings
Customers who believe a salesperson is sales oriented (i.e. only interested in closing) are more likely to make a no-buy decision even when retailer-related attributes – such as positive prior experience with the retailer, susceptibility to normative interpersonal influence, and positive attitude toward retailing – suggest otherwise. Surprisingly, neither customer orientation nor susceptibility to interpersonal informational influence relates significantly to making a buy/no-buy decision.
Practical implications
Specialty retailers should avoid a sales-outcome-based orientation. To add value in a competitive marketplace where buyers can avoid salespeople, the focus of a sales interaction should be on identifying customer needs and characteristics.
Originality/value
Adaptations of sales people’s personas and selling efforts – fostered by new managerial training practices – and the need for specialty retailers to adopt behavior-based control systems are suggested. In addition, sales or customer orientation typically is reported by the salesperson. Here, customers’ belief – which is more germane to modeling buy/no-buy decisions – designates the salesperson’s orientation.
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James W Peltier, Andrew J Dahl, Lauren Drury and Tracy Khan
Conceptual and empirical research over the past 20 years has moved the social media (SM) literature beyond the embryotic stage to a well-developed academic discipline. As the lead…
Abstract
Purpose
Conceptual and empirical research over the past 20 years has moved the social media (SM) literature beyond the embryotic stage to a well-developed academic discipline. As the lead article in the special issue in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing on Cutting-Edge Research in Social Media and Interactive Marketing, this review and agenda article has two key goals: (1) to review key SM and interactive marketing research over the past three years and (2) to identify the next wave of high priority challenges and research opportunities.
Design/methodology/approach
Given the “cutting-edge” research focus of the special issue, this review and research agenda paper focused on articles published in 25 key marketing journals between January 2021 and March 2024. Initially, the search request was for articles with “social media, social selling, social commerce” located in the article title, author-selected key words and journal-selected keywords. Later, we conducted searches based on terminology from articles presented in the final review. In total, over 1,000 articles were reviewed across the 25 journals, plus additional ones that were cited in those journals that were not on the initial list.
Findings
Our review uncovered eight key content areas: (1) data sources, methodology and scale development; (2) emergent SM technologies; (3) artificial intelligence; (4) virtual reality; (5) sales and sales management; (6) consumer welfare; (7) influencer marketing; and (8) social commerce. Table I provides a summer of key articles and research findings for each of the content areas.
Originality/value
As a literature review and research agenda article, this paper is one of the most extensive to date on SM marketing, and particularly with regard to emergent research over the past three years. Recommendations for future research are integrated through the paper and summarized in Figure 2.
Social implications
Consumer welfare is one of the eight emergent content areas uncovered in the literature review. Specific focus is on SM privacy, misinformation, mental health and misbehavior.