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Retailing thought and practice is premised on the assumption that consumers visit retailers to search for and acquire objects produced by manufacturers. In essence, we assume that the acts of consuming and producing are conducted by separate entities. This unspoken yet familiar premise shapes the questions retail scholars ask and the way retail practitioners think about their industry. Although this assumption accurately depicted retailing since the Industrial Revolution, its relevance is being challenged by a growing set of individuals who are equipped with new digital tools to engage in self-manufacturing. In this chapter, we examine self-manufacturing with a particular focus on the recent rise of desktop 3D printing. After discussing this new technology and reviewing the literature, we offer a conceptual classification of four distinct types of 3D printed objects and use this classification to inform a content analysis of over 400 of these objects. Based on this review and analysis, we discuss the implications of self-manufacturing for retailing thought and practice.

To identify, conceptualize, and analyze a newly emerging form of consumer-initiated, brand-altering activity that we term “brand remixing.”

A content analysis of 92 remixes of the Nokia Lumia 820 smartphone case.

We find that nearly 40% of the remixed versions of Nokia’s case retained at least one element of its standard template. The remixed cases contained considerable congruency with the design elements in the standard template, a high degree of personalization, and no negative brand imagery.

Our research is the one of the first examinations of the role of 3D printing upon marketing activities. It has important implications for marketing scholarship by showing that 3D printing empowers consumers to physically alter the brands they consume. Our research also suggests that practitioners interested in using this technology to develop and enhance their brands should accept the notion that firms are no longer fully in control of their brand assets. Hence, we believe that brand managers should develop co-creation platforms that allow customers to easily modify, remix, and share various aspects of their brands with their peers.

We identify and label an important emerging branding practice (i.e., brand remixing). This practice has the potential to dramatically alter the branding landscape.

The purpose of this chapter is fivefold. First, it highlights that, despite apparent progress, business in general, and marketing in particular, has made little impact upon environmental sustainability. Second, it offers four explanations for the persistent challenges that contribute to this lack of meaningful progress. Third, it presents two theoretical lenses (i.e., assemblage theory and socio-ecological systems theory) for viewing environmental sustainability from new perspectives. Fourth, it offers a mid-range theory, biomimicry, to bridge the gap between these higher-level theories and managerial decisions on the ground. Finally, it offers implications and ideas for future research based on these persistent challenges and new perspectives.

Our paper is theoretical in focus. We offer a conceptual analysis of persistent challenges facing business efforts in environmental sustainability and suggest useful lenses to integrate marketing decisions more closely with our natural environment.

We present biomimicry as an actionable framework that seeks inspiration from nature and also explicitly grounds marketing decisions in the natural world.

Our paper draws attention to the challenges facing firms seeking to achieve better performance in environmental sustainability. In addition, it offers a set of fresh theoretical perspectives as well as future issues for scholarly research in this domain.

Our work is designed to be provocative; it articulates reasons why business efforts in environmental sustainability do not scale to meaningful impact upon our planet and explores theoretical lenses by which those efforts could be more impactful.