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1 – 10 of 89Hang Tran, Lan Anh Nguyen and Tesfaye Lemma
This study aims to articulate the conceptual foundations of the role of accounting infrastructure (calculative practice and the communicative dimension of accounting) in…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to articulate the conceptual foundations of the role of accounting infrastructure (calculative practice and the communicative dimension of accounting) in extractive industries (EIs) towards a sustainable orientation from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a literature-based analysis of the calculative property and communicative dimension of accounting in EIs, using the concepts of calculability, assemblage and other related concepts from ANT to identify potentialities and limits of the roles of accounting in this sector.
Findings
While accounting infrastructure can influence social and environmental outcomes, it has not, as yet, led to ecologically and socially sustainable practices in EIs. Calculative properties and the communicative dimension of accounting infrastructure have capabilities to foster the phenomenon of “sustainability” in EIs by valuing, disclosing (reporting) and governing EIs towards a sustainable orientation. Conceptualizing sustainable EIs as a promissory economy, accounting infrastructure serves as a tool not only to represent past performance but also to enact the future: it helps to shape a sustainable future for the industry by informing and triggering behavioural decisions of EIs firms towards sustainable practices.
Research limitations/implications
This conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future sustainability accounting research. The research agenda discussed in this paper can be used to enrich our understanding of the role of accounting in sustainability.
Originality/value
This paper charts a direction for future research by interpreting the role of sustainability accounting within networks of sociotechnical relations, using ANT concepts which attach importance to the dualism of nature and society. Conceptualizing sustainability accounting and reporting as an infrastructure, which draws more attention to the relationality characteristic of accounting, the study goes beyond the traditional interpretation of accounting as a mediation device and draws on a contemporary view of accounting by invoking the dynamic relation between accounting and society, in the context of EIs.
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İrem Taştan and Zeynep Ozdamar Ertekin
This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer communities in conjunction with ideological capacities.
Design/methodology/approach
The community of “presenteers” is conceptualized as a self-organized tribe with heterogeneous components that generate capacities to act. Netnographic observation was conducted on 18 presenteer accounts and lasted around six months. Real-time data were collected by taking screenshots of the posts and stories that these users created and publicly shared. Data were analysed by adopting assemblage theory, combining inductive and deductive approaches. Firstly, a qualitative visual-textual content analysis of the tribe’s defining components was conducted. Then, the process continued with the thematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the tribe’s enactments.
Findings
Findings shed light on the ways in which consumer communities interpret the entanglement of religious, political, and cultural ideologies in shaping their experiences. In the case of the presenteers tribe, findings reflect a novel ideological interplay between neo-Ottomanism, post-feminism and consumerism.
Research limitations/implications
The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.
Originality/value
The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.
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Pablo Aránguiz Mesías, Guillermo Palau Salvador and Jordi Peris-Blanes
This paper aims to explore how young students experience the contribution of a pedagogical assemblage based on design thinking (DT) while contributing to the transition to a more…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how young students experience the contribution of a pedagogical assemblage based on design thinking (DT) while contributing to the transition to a more just and sustainable university.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative research considers the case of two pedagogical experiences developed at Universitat Politècnica de Valencià, Spain. In both experiences, a methodological proposal that includes practices of care, just transitions and DT was implemented. The data obtained through in-depth interviews, surveys and digital whiteboard labels was analyzed under the lens of three relational categories in the context of sustainability.
Findings
Learnings are acquired through five categories: place-based learning, prior learning, embodied learning, collaborative teamwork and intersectionality. The research shows how the subjective knowledge of young students positions them as co-designers and leaders of a University that drives a more just and sustainable transition.
Originality/value
The originality of the paper lies in the shift of DT from a human-based approach to a justice-oriented relational approach.
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Cristina Mele and Tiziana Russo-Spena
In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology…
Abstract
Purpose
In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.
Findings
Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).
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James W. Peltier, Andrew J. Dahl and John A. Schibrowsky
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming consumers' experiences and how firms identify, create, nurture and manage interactive marketing relationships. However, most marketers…
Abstract
Purpose
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming consumers' experiences and how firms identify, create, nurture and manage interactive marketing relationships. However, most marketers do not have a clear understanding of what AI is and how it may mutually benefit consumers and firms. In this paper, the authors conduct an extensive review of the marketing literature, develop an AI framework for understanding value co-creation in interactive buyer–seller marketing relationships, identify research gaps and offer a future research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors first conduct an extensive literature review in 16 top marketing journals on AI. Based on this review, an AI framework for understanding value co-creation in interactive buyer–seller marketing relationships was conceptualized.
Findings
The literature review led to a number of key research findings and summary areas: (1) an historical perspective, (2) definitions and boundaries of AI, (3) AI and interactive marketing, (4) relevant theories in the domain of interactive marketing and (5) synthesizing AI research based on antecedents to AI usage, interactive AI usage contexts and AI-enabled value co-creation outcomes.
Originality/value
This is one of the most extensive reviews of AI literature in marketing, including an evaluation of in excess or 300 conceptual and empirical research. Based on the findings, the authors offer a future research agenda, including a visual titled “What is AI in Interactive Marketing? AI design factors, AI core elements & interactive marketing AI usage contexts.”
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Amani Alabed, Ana Javornik, Diana Gregory-Smith and Rebecca Casey
This paper aims to study the role of self-concept in consumer relationships with anthropomorphised conversational artificially intelligent (AI) agents. First, the authors…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the role of self-concept in consumer relationships with anthropomorphised conversational artificially intelligent (AI) agents. First, the authors investigate how the self-congruence between consumer self-concept and AI and the integration of the conversational AI agent into consumer self-concept might influence such relationships. Second, the authors examine whether these links with self-concept have implications for mental well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted in-depth interviews with 20 consumers who regularly use popular conversational AI agents for functional or emotional tasks. Based on a thematic analysis and an ideal-type analysis, this study derived a taxonomy of consumer–AI relationships, with self-congruence and self–AI integration as the two axes.
Findings
The findings unveil four different relationships that consumers forge with their conversational AI agents, which differ in self-congruence and self–AI integration. Both dimensions are prominent in replacement and committed relationships, where consumers rely on conversational AI agents for companionship and emotional tasks such as personal growth or as a means for overcoming past traumas. These two relationships carry well-being risks in terms of changing expectations that consumers seek to fulfil in human-to-human relationships. Conversely, in the functional relationship, the conversational AI agents are viewed as an important part of one’s professional performance; however, consumers maintain a low sense of self-congruence and distinguish themselves from the agent, also because of the fear of losing their sense of uniqueness and autonomy. Consumers in aspiring relationships rely on their agents for companionship to remedy social exclusion and loneliness, but feel this is prevented because of the agents’ technical limitations.
Research limitations/implications
Although this study provides insights into the dynamics of consumer relationships with conversational AI agents, it comes with limitations. The sample of this study included users of conversational AI agents such as Siri, Google Assistant and Replika. However, future studies should also investigate other agents, such as ChatGPT. Moreover, the self-related processes studied here could be compared across public and private contexts. There is also a need to examine such complex relationships with longitudinal studies. Moreover, future research should explore how consumers’ self-concept could be negatively affected if the support provided by AI is withdrawn. Finally, this study reveals that in some cases, consumers are changing their expectations related to human-to-human relationships based on their interactions with conversational AI agents.
Practical implications
This study enables practitioners to identify specific anthropomorphic cues that can support the development of different types of consumer–AI relationships and to consider their consequences across a range of well-being aspects.
Originality/value
This research equips marketing scholars with a novel understanding of the role of self-concept in the relationships that consumers forge with popular conversational AI agents and the associated well-being implications.
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This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper proposes a way of reflexing on how we think within critical disaster studies. It focuses on the biases and unthought dimensions of two concepts – resilience and development – and reflects on the relationship between theory and practice in critical disaster studies.
Design/methodology/approach
Premised on the idea of epistemic reflexivity developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and drawing on previous research, this theoretical article analyses two conceptual biases and shortcomings of disaster studies: how resilience builds on certain agency; and how development assumes certain political imagination.
Findings
The article argues that critical disaster scholars must reflect on their own intellectual practice, including the origin of concepts and what they do. This is exemplified by a description of how the idea of resistance is intimately connected to that of resilience, and by showing that we must go beyond the capitalist realism that typically underlies development and risk creation. The theoretical advancement of our field can provide ways of thinking about the premises of many of our concepts.
Originality/value
The paper offers an invitation for disaster researchers to engage with critical thought and meta-theoretical reflexions. To think profoundly about our concepts is a necessary first step to developing critical scholarship. Epistemic reflexivity in critical disaster studies therefore provides an interesting avenue by which to liberate the field from overly technocratic approaches and develop its own criticality.
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Tseng-Lung Huang and Henry F.L. Chung
Drawing on embodied cognition theory, this study examined the impact of midair, gesture-based somatosensory augmented reality (AR) experience on consumer delight and stickiness…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on embodied cognition theory, this study examined the impact of midair, gesture-based somatosensory augmented reality (AR) experience on consumer delight and stickiness intention. The mediating effects of three psychological states for body schema (i.e. natural symbol sets, vivid memory and human touch) on the relationships between somatosensory AR and consumer delight/stickiness intention are determined. By filling gaps in the research, we hope to provide guidance on how to drive delightful somatosensory AR marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments were conducted (Study 1 and Study 2) to test the research model and hypotheses. These experiments compared the effects of the “presence” (midair, gesture-based) and “absence” (mouse-based traditional website) conditions in somatosensory AR on consumer body schema and the creation of a delightful virtual shopping experience (i.e. consumer delight and stickiness intention).
Findings
The consumer delight and stickiness intention created in the presence condition was much higher than those in the absence condition. Consumers appeared to prefer engaging in a midair gesture-based somatosensory AR experience and exploring an augmented metaverse reality to interacting with a mouse-based traditional website. We also found that giving online consumers more somatosensory activities and kinesthetic experiences effectively inspired three psychological states of body schema in online consumers.
Originality/value
The results contribute to the AR experience and somatosensory marketing literature by revealing the role of natural symbol sets, vivid memory and the sense of human touch. This research breaks through the long-developed research paradigm on consumer delight, which has been limited to traditional entities and web contexts. We also extend embodied cognition theory to the study of somatosensory AR marketing.
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Tejas R. Shah, Pradeep Kautish and Sandeep Walia
This paper aims to establish and empirically investigate a research model examining the effect of four dimensions of the technology readiness index – optimism, innovativeness…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to establish and empirically investigate a research model examining the effect of four dimensions of the technology readiness index – optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity – on customer engagement that further influences purchase intention in the context of online shopping through artificial intelligence voice assistants (AI VAs).
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected in India from 429 customers in a self-administered online survey. Data analysis uses the structural equation modelling technique.
Findings
Technology readiness dimensions, e.g. optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity, are critical factors driving customer engagement. Customer engagement further results in purchase intention in online shopping through AI VAs.
Research limitations/implications
This study adds to the literature by understanding how customers’ technology readiness levels drive engagement and purchase intention. However, this study includes customer engagement as a unidimensional construct. Further research can consist of customer engagement as a multidimensional construct.
Practical implications
The findings offer guidelines for e-retailers to enhance customer engagement that matches their personality traits, thereby strengthening their purchase intention through AI VAs.
Originality/value
The research contributes to the literature by empirically investigating a research model, revealing optimism, innovativeness, discomfort and insecurity as crucial parameters for customer engagement and purchase intention.
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Vipul V. Patel, Richa Pandit and Ramzan Sama
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between conumers' emotional attachment towards fashion apps and positive behavioral outcomes, such as e-WoM and…
Abstract
Purpose
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between conumers' emotional attachment towards fashion apps and positive behavioral outcomes, such as e-WoM and repurchase intention. The study also aims to explore how e-servicescape, customer experience and perceived value of online shopping influence this relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The study has used quantitative research methods to collect data from a sample of 484 consumers who had previous experience of purchasing using fashion apps. Data were collected from university students enrolled in university in Gujarat, India using an online self-administered questionnaire. The data are analyzed using structure equation modeling to determine the relationships between the variables under investigation.
Findings
The results demonstrate relationships between e-servicescape, customer experience and perceived value of online shopping, emotional attachment and the two consumer outcomes: repurchase intention and e-WoM. The study found support for hypotheses 1, 2 and 3, highlighting the influence of e-servicescape, customer experience and perceived value of online shopping in developing emotional attachment with fashion apps. The study also confirmed hypotheses 5 and 6, which suggest that consumers who have a stronger emotional attachment to fashion apps are more likely to intend to repurchase fashion products and engage in positive electronic word-of-mouth behavior for fashion brands.
Originality/value
In today's digital age, fashion apps are vital for fashion retailers to remain competitive and offer their customers a smooth and immersive shopping experience . Given the potential impact of fashion apps on the customer behavior, it is essential to investigate the relationship relationships between e-servicescape, customer experience and perceived value of online shopping, emotional attachment and the two consumer outcomes: repurchase intention and e-WoM in the context of fashion apps. The findings of the study are expected to contribute to the understanding of consumer behavior in the context of fashion apps and e-commerce more broadly. The results may also provide insights into how fashion retailers can improve their online presence and customer experiences to increase emotional attachment and positive behavioral outcomes.
Practical implications
The results of this study have several implications for online retail managers and fashion app developers. The study provides strong support for the idea that the extent to which online customers feel emotionally attached to fashion apps is strongly related to their e-WoM and repurchase intention. Moreover, the results of the study suggest that online retailers who are looking to cultivate emotional connections with consumers through fashion apps should prioritize three key areas: e-servicescape, customer experience and perceived value of online shopping.
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