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The purpose of this paper was to examine the interplay between sports fanship and brand-related perceptions in the context of sports sponsorship. The effects of sport fans' self-enhancement strategies: Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) and cutting off reflected failure (CORFing) were investigated in response to how sports fans connected themselves to a sponsor brand as well as whether their sponsor brand trust and loyalty were activated.

An experiment was designed in the first study to examine immediate effects of team performance and sports fandom on sports fans' connection to the sponsor brand, while an online survey was conducted in the second study to investigate the joint effects of team performance and game venue on sports fans' sponsor brand trust and loyalty.

The first study found that both team performance and sports fandom yielded significant effects on sports fans' connection to the sponsor brand. Specifically, sports fans with higher fandom reported the highest connection to the sponsor brand after the success of their favorite team, while others with lower fandom exhibited the lowest connection after the failure of their favorite team. The second study suggested that team performance and game venue yielded both main and joint effects on sponsor brand trust and loyalty. Moreover, fan identification mediated the joint effects of team performance and game venue on both sponsor brand trust and loyalty.

Replicating the concepts of BIRGing and CORFing into the context of sports sponsorship, this paper verified the vigorous roles of BIRGing and CORFing in influencing sports fans' perceptions of the sponsor brand. Moreover, both theoretical and practical insights into BIRGing and CORFing concepts applicable to examine the impact of the fan–team relationships on sport fans' perceptions of the sponsor brand through sports sponsorship would be generated for the advancement of sports business research.

Existing brand literature on assemblage practices has focused on providing a map or geography of brand assemblages, suggesting that an artist brand’s ability to evolve and achieve brand longevity remains constant. Using geology of assemblage, this study aims to explore the types and mechanisms of change in brand evolutions to address the problem of identifying when and how a brand can transform in an evolving marketplace.

The authors apply an interpretive process data approach using secondary archival data and in-depth interviews with 31 self-identified fans to explore the artist brand David Bowie over his 50-year career.

As an artist brand, Bowie’s ability to evolve his brand was constrained by his assemblage. Despite efforts to defy ageing and retain a youth audience appeal, both the media and his fans interpreted and judged Bowie’s current efforts from a historical perspective and continuously reevaluated his brand limiting his ability to change to remain relevant.

Brand managers, particularly artist brands and human brands, may find that their ability to change is constrained by meanings in past strata over time. Withdrawal from the marketplace and the use of silence as a communicative practice enabling brand transformations.

The geology of assemblage perspective offers a more nuanced understanding of brand changes over time beyond the possibilities of incremental or disruptive change. We identify the mechanisms of change that result in minor sedimentation, moderate cracks and major ruptures in a brand’s evolution.

It is fashionable among Russians to travel all over the world. The author researches the social and cultural phenomenon of fashions in tourism based on analysis of the views of Russian tourists and experts from the tourism sphere. The criteria for prestige of a tourism destination are considered. Fashion trends in the practices of Russian tourists are analyzed.

The conceptual foundations, principles, and mechanisms of territorial branding concerning the prospects of rural development in the Third World countries are the subject of the study. The systematization and study of the problems and experiences of territorial branding as a technology of development and overcoming of poverty in the agrarian society of Ukraine is the purpose of the paper. The socioeconomic condition of the modern agrarian society of Ukraine is analyzed with explaining the nature and extent of poverty in rural areas. The basis of the research was the thesis on the expediency of social stratification, including explanation of the causes of poverty by the criterion of economic behavior of individual groups of agents. The data obtained are available in adjusting further agrarian reforms, especially regarding its social orientation, where it should be involved: sociological stratification of groups of agents of each community to identify and stimulate an economically active society, analysis of the causes of the spread and nature of poverty in this rural area, determination of domestic sources of economic growth for local economy, and the implementation of these factors in the process of modernizing of economic relations.

The main method of research was the study of the unique experience of individual rural communities. The methodology of the study foresaw the study of the prospects of rural development of the post-industrial type through the determining role of the factor of territorial branding. Monitoring the potential of territorial branding for rural areas of Ukraine using SWOT analysis has shown the uniqueness of risks, limitations, and prospects. It has been established that the conditions of neutralization of weaknesses and risks are in the combination of economic (primarily investment) and cultural and political initiatives, where a significant role belongs to the effects of community self-organization. At the same time, the prospects are due to the presence of unique institutional assets, natural, climatic and economic conditions, and possible perception of the idea of the rural population as such, which does not contradict the basic cultural values. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the realization of rural development in Ukraine as a national policy should take into account that Ukrainian rural communities remain “difficult,” mostly depressed economies, where the level of economic activity is traditionally low and unemployment is high. At the same time, studying the experience of the effectiveness of territorial branding allowed to generalize and classify the factors of brand-forming content for the rural areas of Ukraine, which became (1) a unique institutional history; (2) landscape and recreational potential; (3) special economic behavior of local inhabitants; (4) investment attractiveness of the territory; (5) unique economic specialization of the territory; (6) tourism activity; and (7) the role of local government. Significant socioeconomic effect of these examples is fixed. The area of application of these results is, first of all, the activity of local authorities of rural communities, nongovernmental organizations, and universities, as well as regulatory policy in terms of decentralization.

The increased income and modernity have greatly impacted Chinese consumers’ attitudes and purchasing behavior, making them more sophisticated than ever before. The purpose of this paper is to examine the interrelationship among social stratification, materialism, post-materialism, and consumption values contributing uniquely to understanding Chinese consumers in the context of drastic economic and social changes.

Survey method was used to test the proposed model and answer the research questions. The data were collected in Shanghai, the largest city on the eastern coast of China. A multi-stage random sampling strategy was employed to acquire a representative sample of the population in the city. A total of 2,910 completed questionnaires were used for data analysis.

The results show that objective social status has a negative effect on post-materialism, whereas subjective social status has a positive effect. Social status does not seem to have a significant effect on materialism. Post-materialism also has a strong positive effect on the consumption orientations of emotional value and social value.

China was chosen as the research context in this study. As a booming emerging market, China provides an intriguing platform to examine social stratification and materialism. At the macro level, China is developing a new social structure due to the drastic social and economic changes. At the individual consumer level, as China moves further into a market-oriented economy, traditional Chinese values have changed rapidly. Western consumption values and phenomena such as overspending and conspicuous consumption have begun to take hold in China, especially among young people. It is critical for business managers to understand the shift of consumption values among Chinese in order to successfully capture this market.

A cursory review of past literature reveals that researchers have examined materialism primarily along two avenues: one puts materialism within a macro framework involving political interest or civic engagement (e.g. Davis et al., 1999; Inglehart, 1990); the other one takes a micro perspective exploring the impact of materialism on consumer attitudes and behavior (e.g. Park and Rabolt, 2009; Xiao and Kim, 2009). However, little research has been conducted linking the two approaches. The present study intends to examine the interrelationship among social stratification, materialism, post-materialism, and consumption values. Hopefully, it will shed some light on the connection between macro environment and micro consumer behavior. Furthermore, the current research provides evidences for the emerging transformation to a post-materialistic marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension in brand management created through the rapid transformation of social media, mapping the maintenance of increasingly complex B2B relationship dynamics with key intermediaries.

In-depth interviews with 17 social media practitioners from leading fashion brands, agencies and platforms in the UK and Australia informed this study. Analysis used grounded theory, and results were interpreted through the lens of network and stakeholder theories.

Social media platforms have evolved into critical brand stakeholders, serving as gatekeepers in an increasingly unbalanced system between provider and marketer. The perpetuation of a hierarchical power dynamic affects the development of both practitioner and firm capabilities with negative implications and consequences for organisational control of branded social media communications. Three theoretical propositions are offered relating to the nature of platform hegemony, the notion of social media democratisation and the limiting impact of rapid change on the formation of relational ties.

This study extends the conceptualisation of communal custody of brands in social media settings to incorporate a growing number of commercial stakeholders, challenging the traditional dyadic consumer-brand relational paradigm. This study sheds new light on the impact of digital transformation on power distributions in social media communities not hitherto addressed.

An oral history to examine the evolution of the empowered consumer and brand consciousness from 1918 to 1965 as a critical analysis of mass consumer culture in Britain.

The authors trace the changing experience of consumer empowerment and importantly show oral testimony (oral history) as a method able to reveal the complexities of this experience.

Women locate increased choice and responsibility within changing marketing and retailing systems (including self‐service, branding and the media). The authors show how increased choice and responsibility was often experienced (at least initially) as challenging or confusing.

The study identifies that empowerment is a complex or paradoxical process. It provides empirical support for a growing number of claims that have challenged the linear benefit assumptions given to increased choice arising from classic economic theory and outline a model of the paradox of the evolution of the empowered consumer.

The “Social Determinants of Health” construct is well-entrenched in the way that both health care providers and researchers think about the effects of social conditions on health. Although there are a number of theories that fall under this rubric for the social production of health and illness, the core of this construct is the idea that social stratification leads to health disparity. In this chapter we show how such a mechanism might work for relating social stratification and job stress.

We used the pooled 2002, 2006, 2010 Quality of Work Life modules of the General Social Survey to test a model of the relationships between gender, age, education, and nativity with “bad jobs” and indicators of health status.

Findings show that social status is positively associated with job quality and with health in turn. Lower social status characteristics are related to bad jobs and poorer health.

Health disparities are thus “explained” by the consequences of social status for occupation and job quality, thereby depicting exactly how health disparities arise in normal social life. The theory and results underscore the importance of explicitly modeling social status factors in explanations of health disparities.

It is common to relate health disparities to social status but it is not common to show the mechanisms whereby social status actually produces health disparities. Addressing health disparities means addressing the consequences of social inequalities for normal activities of social life such as work. Improving job quality would be a health “treatment” that addresses health disparities.

This chapter demonstrates the value of explicitly tracing the consequences of status differences on differences in social context such as work conditions and then health. In the study of health disparities this is not often done. In this chapter we show how social inequality leads to occupational and job quality differences that, in turn, lead to health differences.

Generation Z makes up 20% of China’s population, and accounts for the highest share of household spend at 13% (vs. 3% for the United Kingdom and 4% for the United States). To advance marketers’ understanding about this group of consumers and capitalise on China’s booming market, this chapter uses rich statistics and information to show that China’s Generation Z has distinct behaviour patterns, which can be attributed to the unique background in which they grew up: (1) rigidity of social stratification, (2) abundance of materialism, (3) digital era, (4) limited (vs. extended) family, and (5) heavy schoolwork. Growing up in such a background, Generation Z’s lifestyle and consumption-related attitudes and behaviour are distinct from their predecessors. The chapter presents specific actions that marketers can take when targeting this distinct group of consumers in China, along with useful guidelines to HR managers for hiring them.

This paper aims to theorize counterfeit luxury consumption among millennials from a generational identity perspective.

The paper proposes and tests a model of counterfeit buying behavior using an online survey of 467 millennial respondents. The study uses multi-item measures from the extant literature and uses the structural equation modeling technique to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal when millennials have a self-defining relationship with their generation, they tend to internalize the generational norm pertaining to counterfeit luxury consumption. Millennials’ counterfeit related values: market mavenism, postmodernism, schadenfreude and public self-consciousness contribute to their generational identity. Moreover, market mavenism, cool consumption and public self-consciousness establish counterfeit luxury consumption as a generational norm.

The findings of this paper suggest that the expertise and influence of market mavens can be used to deter counterfeit consumption. Moreover, luxury brands must communicate a cool image to offset the rebellious image of counterfeits. Further, from a standardization versus adaption standpoint, the generational perspective allows for the standardization of anti-counterfeiting campaigns.

The paper makes a novel contribution to the counterfeiting literature by demonstrating that millennials pursue counterfeit luxury brands when they pledge cognitive allegiance to their generation. The paper, thus, extends the identity perspective of counterfeit luxury consumption to group contexts. The authors also test and validate the role of descriptive norms in group contexts by introducing the construct generational norm to counterfeiting literature.