Eric J. Arnould and Craig J. Thompson
This paper reflects on the development of Consumer Culture Theory, both as a field of research and as an institutional classification, since the publication of Arnould and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper reflects on the development of Consumer Culture Theory, both as a field of research and as an institutional classification, since the publication of Arnould and Thompson (2005).
Methodology/approach
This paper takes a conceptual/historical orientation that is based upon the authors’ experiences over the course of the 10-year CCT initiative (including numerous conversations with fellow CCT colleagues).
Findings
The authors first discuss key benchmarks in the development of the CCT community as an organization. Next, the authors highlight key intellectual trends in CCT research that have arisen since the publication of their 2005 review and discuss their implications for the future trajectories of CCT research.
Originality/value
The paper by Arnould and Thompson (2005) has proven to be influential in terms of systematizing and placing a widely accepted disciplinary brand upon an extensive body of culturally oriented consumer research. The CCT designation has also provided an important impetus for institution building. The 10-year anniversary of this article (and not incidentally the CCT conference from which the papers in this volume hail) provides a unique opportunity for the authors to comment upon the broader ramifications of their original proposals.
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Clemon George, Lydia Makoroka, Winston Husbands, Barry D. Adam, Robert Remis, Sean Rourke and Stanley Read
The purpose of this paper is to develop a profile of the sexual behavioural characteristics of black men who have sex with men (MSM) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada who…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a profile of the sexual behavioural characteristics of black men who have sex with men (MSM) in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada who constitute a unique mixture in terms of background, race, ethnicity, and culture. Having a profile of the sexual health and risk taking behaviours of these men is important since it provides information on these black Canadian men in comparison other black MSM.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected as part of a cross-sectional study of black MSM in GTA. Survey participants completed a questionnaire requesting information on socio-demographic characteristics, sexual behaviour, general and mental health, and awareness of social marketing strategies for gay men. The study was conducted in 2007-2008, through convenience sampling. Based on the data collected, the authors characterized the profile of black MSM with respect to sexual risk behaviours.
Findings
The authors collected data on 168 black MSM. These men perceived their general health to be good. However, a large proportion of them practiced inconsistent condom use but this varied according to the ethnicity of the partner. Inconsistent condom use also varied by place of birth with Canadian-born men and Caribbean-born men less likely to consistently use condoms than African-born men. In multiple regression analysis, being born in Africa favoured condom use. Men were also more likely to practice inconsistent condoms use when the sexual partner was non-black. Further, when sex with other black men was examined, those who were older (30 years) and had not disclosed their sexuality were more likely to stop using condoms. Other variables which were expected to have associations with inconsistent condom use, based on studies in other jurisdictions – such as previous sexually transmitted infections, sex with women, sex while travelling, and drug use were not related to inconsistent condom use.
Research limitations/implications
While the survey data were based on a relatively small sample size and may not be representative of the entire black MSM population in the GTA, it provides a basis for ongoing and targeted support for black MSM particularly those born in Canada. Older men who are not open with their sexuality may be at a risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV. Future research should focus on these men.
Originality/value
This report provides a perspective on the sexual health and risk taking behaviours of black MSM in Canada. This is particularly important since their social history and health determinants are different from those of US African Americans. The results will stimulate further research targeting this group, and support HIV programmes and services for these men.
Margaret Robinson and Lori E. Ross
The purpose of this paper is to outline the use of intersectionality theory in research with gender and sexual minorities – that is, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline the use of intersectionality theory in research with gender and sexual minorities – that is, with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people, and lesser-studied groups such as two-spirited people.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the paper note the limited way that LGBTQ research has taken up issues of intersecting oppression. The paper outlines why theoretical and methodological attention to overlapping oppressions is important, and why theorists of intersectionality have identified the additive model as inadequate. The paper presents a sketch of current best practices for intersectional research, notes special issues for intersectional research arising within qualitative and quantitative paradigms, and finishes with an overview of how these issues are taken up in this special issue of Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care.
Findings
Current best practices for intersectional research include. Bringing a critical political lens to data analyses; contextualizing findings in light of systemic oppressions; strategically using both additive and multivariate regression models; and bringing a conscious awareness of the limitations of current methods to our analyses.
Originality/value
This paper addresses the use of intersectionality theory in research with gender and sexual minorities, highlighting methodological issues associated with qualitative and quantitative paradigms in LGBTQ research.
Renata Blanc, Muhammad Azizul Islam, Dennis M. Patten and Manuel Castelo Branco
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether differences in media exposure regarding corporate corruption appear to influence companies’ anti-corruption disclosures. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether differences in media exposure regarding corporate corruption appear to influence companies’ anti-corruption disclosures. The authors also examine whether the level of press freedom in firms’ home countries affects disclosure and the impact of media exposure in different ways.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use Transparency International’s 2012 ratings of anti-corruption disclosure by the 105 largest multinational firms in the world, press freedom assessments from the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, and media exposure measures based on a search using the Dow Jones Factiva database. The authors assess relations using regression analysis controlling for other firm-specific factors potentially impacting disclosure choices. Finally, the authors consider the potential effect of other country-level factors.
Findings
The results indicate that media exposure, using either an existence or an extensiveness measure, is positively related to differences in sample companies’ anti-corruption disclosures. The authors also find that disclosure is more (less) extensive where home country press freedom is less (more) restricted and that reduced press freedom appears to reduce the impact of media exposure on the disclosure. The authors further document that press freedom levels explain more difference in anti-corruption disclosures than other country-level factors potentially influencing the practice.
Research limitations/implications
Because the investigation is limited to very large international firms for a single year, the degree to which the findings apply to other companies and time periods cannot be assessed. Further, the authors cannot determine how the findings would hold using an alternative disclosure rating scheme. Finally, the authors do not assess whether differences in the source of media exposure impact the findings.
Social implications
The findings suggest that, to the extent that improved anti-corruption disclosure reflects greater corporate attention to corruption issues, the media may be a powerful player in addressing this social ill. Unfortunately, the results also indicate that media efforts may not be sufficient to bring about change in locations where the freedom of the press is limited. Further, the results suggest that disclosure appears to be a function of exposure to social and political exposures, and the authors therefore question whether it will actually lead to improved corruption performance.
Originality/value
The study is the first to consider the impacts of media exposure and press freedom on corporate social disclosures.
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Valérie-Inés de La Ville and Anne Krupicka
From an interpretive semiology perspective this paper examines the meaning suggested by the absence of children in newspaper advertisements, commercial websites and catalogue…
Abstract
Purpose
From an interpretive semiology perspective this paper examines the meaning suggested by the absence of children in newspaper advertisements, commercial websites and catalogue images of children’s furniture manufacturers. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the multilayered process involved in conveying meaning to the “parent-child cluster” consumer through press and online advertisements designed by children’s furniture manufacturers.
Design/methodology/approach
A corpus of 200 press advertisements and catalogues produced by children's furniture manufacturers (particularly IKEA and Gautier) was analysed using a combination of Barthes’ (1964) visual analysis and Greimas’ (1987) narrative approach to visual discourses.
Findings
The scenes portrayed to shape the message addressed to the “parent-child cluster“ consumer, suggest that, in addition to fostering positive values such as self-fulfilment and stimulating background for an active child, they also promote discourses about contemporary childhood and parenthood.
Originality/value
This paper highlights how furniture retailers through the figurative choices they make to portray a child bedroom and to organize a series of child bedroom images within a catalogue, generate a brand discourse aiming to typify representations of childhood imbued with diverse cognitive, social and emotional dimensions within diverse cultural backgrounds.
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Gregorio Fuschillo, Julien Cayla and Bernard Cova
This paper aims to detail how consumers can harness the power of brands to reconstruct their lives.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to detail how consumers can harness the power of brands to reconstruct their lives.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors followed five brand devotees over several years, using various data collection methods (long interviews, observations, videos, photographs and secondary data) to study how they reconstructed their lives with a brand.
Findings
Consumers transform their existence through a distinctive form of brand appropriation that the authors call brand magnification, which unfolds: materially, narratively and socially. First, brand devotees scatter brand incarnations around themselves to remain in touch with the brand because the brand has become an especially positive dimension of their lives. Second, brand devotees mobilize the brand to craft a completely new life story. Finally, they build a branded clan of family and friends that socially validates their reconstructed identity.
Research limitations/implications
The research extends more muted depictions of brands as soothing balms calming consumer anxieties; the authors document the mechanism through which consumers remake their lives with a brand.
Practical implications
The research helps rehabilitate the role of brands in contemporary consumer culture. Organizations can use the findings to help stimulate and engage employees by unveiling the brand’s life-transforming potential for consumers.
Originality/value
The authors characterize a distinctive, extreme and unique form of brand appropriation that positively transforms consumer lives.
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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on innovation systems dynamics and the positioning of Europe in a longer term perspective, with special attention to the international…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to shed light on innovation systems dynamics and the positioning of Europe in a longer term perspective, with special attention to the international governance of the major challenges which humanity is facing.
Design/methodology/approach
The method used is based on a secondary analysis and interpretation of Foresight studies. The underlying assumption is that Foresight exercises can be considered as the scene where techno-economic systems and trajectories are proposed, discussed and shaped.
Findings
Foresights can be distinguished by the challenges and issues they focus on: – the innovation race: competitiveness and influence through innovation, – the thematic concerns: the stakes of global public goods, – the normative perspectives: a new style of development in the making. The question to know whether Europe can be a world driver in fostering responsible innovation models and cooperative modes of knowledge circulation and global challenges handling through relevant social and technological innovations.
Originality/value
This paper reviews and puts in perspective Foresight exercises in an original way, this on two grounds: first, it includes exercises fostered at national, regional (in particular the EU) and global (UN system) levels – this to account for the emerging multi-level governance and, second, it classifies them according to their major focus, namely the innovation race, the thematic concerns (global public goods) and the normative perspectives (new style of development). It provides to the actors of innovation in both the public and private sector an understanding of the current key-concerns and visions on innovation systems and the position of Europe.
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Since the 1990s, the German current of Value Criticism has been proposing to rework a critique of capitalism based on the mature works of Marx. Starting from the primary…
Abstract
Since the 1990s, the German current of Value Criticism has been proposing to rework a critique of capitalism based on the mature works of Marx. Starting from the primary categories of capital – value, abstract labor, commodity fetishism – they intend to overcome the traditional contradictions of Marxism, capital/labor, proletariat/bourgeoisie, etc. The Canadian thinker Moishe Postone has, independently of value criticism, developed a thought that is close to the German current while distinguishing itself on certain important points. However, it is appropriate to question these new readings of Marx which, if they can be fruitful, pose many problems, both philosophical and political.
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Robert J. Rogerson and Remy Tremblay
This paper aims to examine the context of the emergence of Places Rated Almanacs (PRA), their success as a source of place‐based knowledge, and their limitations as predictors of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the context of the emergence of Places Rated Almanacs (PRA), their success as a source of place‐based knowledge, and their limitations as predictors of patterns of migration. The paper addresses whether, as an entrepreneurial product created in the spaces arising from the roll back of the nation state and the foregrounding of the local, competitive marketplace, PRAs continue to have relevance. It examines the utility of this knowledge resource in a new era where specific talent attraction and retention is central to neoliberal strategies for economic development.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper offers an analysis of the correlations between PRA ratings and recent migration patterns is undertaken to explore their explanatory power. The contemporary significance of PRA is examined both in terms of the almanac's resonance with actual patterns of migration in the USA, and its resonance with contemporary debates over talent flows.
Findings
It is concluded that place ratings offer only a partial resonance with actual patterns of mobility. Despite the changing political economic context with new neoliberal agendas in place competition, there is potentially continuing utility of such PRAs. The paper argues that greater engagement with contemporary debates over talent attraction, place attachment and social learning would enhance the knowledge basis of such guides.
Originality/value
Within a knowledge economy, the attraction and retention of key talent has become vital. Place rating guides can be a useful resource as a tool within this neoliberal strategy for economic growth. This paper indicates how the established guides such as the PRA need to be updated to retain their utility.
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Rémi Bazillier and Julien Vauday
This paper aims to provide a theoretical approach of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in order to assess whether CSR will develop as a concept pushing efficiently for more de…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide a theoretical approach of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in order to assess whether CSR will develop as a concept pushing efficiently for more de facto social responsibility or will become a pure marketing artefact. The trade-off between the development of CSR behaviour and lobbying over regulations is a key element that will influence the evolution of CSR. The result is that if the world consolidates or if it tends towards multilateralism to a large extent, then CSR is less likely to have an efficient impact.
Design/methodology/approach
Theoretical approach based on three fields: credence goods, greenwashing and political economy.
Findings
The coordination is harder for lobbies in the more multilateral scenario. The more politically powerful group would lose its influence on the decision body in the multipolar scenario. If lobbies keep influencing their state governments, the efficiency would also be reduced in the regionalization or multipolar scenarios. The easiness of the greenwashing strategy is also crucial in order to determine the possible evolution of the CSR as a real commitment that benefits environment and society.
Research limitations/implications
Countries may take advantage of CSR by offering an advantage to firms willing to develop CSR thanks to public regulations if greenwashing is easy and if the evolution of the world that prevails is similar to the tripolar or regionalization scenarios. This may also occur under the multipolar scenario but it would necessitate an effective international coordination.
Originality/value
This is the first work that brings together the strategic behaviour of firms with respect to Corporate Social Responsibility and political economy determinants. The predicted evolutions of these two features according to the degree of multilateralism as well as how they are intertwined are also novelties of this paper.