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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a network perspective to the study of collective consumption. The authors examine the characteristics of heterogeneous consumption collectives formed around a Finnish footwear brand. The case is both theoretically and practically relevant. It differs from previous research by featuring consumer grassroot activities, face-to-face interaction and strong pre-existing social relationships.

Qualitative case study research was conducted with different methods of data generation including interviews, participant observation and cultural materials such as newspaper articles and photos.

A new concept of collective consumption network is introduced. Five kinds of consumption collectives are identified, including place focussed, brand focussed, activity focussed, idea focussed and social relations focussed consumption collectives. The strength of ties as well as the role of the brand varies within the collectives.

Suppliers should find an appropriate network position, where they can enable and support shared value creation. Developing skills to identify and cultivate weak links as well as mobilize resources are important.

The findings illustrate the heterogeneity and complexity of collective consumption. In particular, the paper discusses the way self-organizing and emergent consumption collectives and the supplier interact and integrate resources within the network.

Heavy episodic drinking in young women has caused concern among many groups including public health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of young women’s alcohol consumption so as to facilitate better health education targeting.

This qualitative descriptive study examines the narratives of 16 young women’s experience of a “night out” framed as the Alcohol Consumption Journey.

The young women’s Alcohol Consumption Journey is a ritual perpetuated by the “experienced” and “anticipated” pleasure from social bonding and collective intoxication. The data showed three sequential phases; preloading, going out and recovery, which were repeated regularly. The young women perceived that going out was riskier than preloading or recovery and employed protective strategies to minimise risk and maximise pleasure. Alcohol was consumed collectively to enhance the experience of pleasure and facilitate enjoyment in the atmosphere of the night time economy. Implications for health interventions on collective alcohol consumption and perceived risk are presented.

The concept of socio-pleasure is valuable to explain the perpetuation of the young’s women ritualised Alcohol Consumption Journey. The binary concepts of mundane/celebration, individual/collective and insiders/outsiders are useful to illustrate the balancing of collective intoxication with group protective strategies in navigating the edge between risk and pleasure.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the collective consumption rituals associated with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and one of the largest shopping days in the USA.

The research design for this study followed the approach of psychological phenomenological interviewing. Over a two‐year period, the authors, along with trained research assistants, conducted interviews with experienced female Black Friday shoppers.

Qualitative data from 38 interviews indicated that Black Friday shopping activities constitute a collective consumption ritual that is practiced and shared by multiple generations of female family members and close friends. Four themes emerged from the data: familial bonding, strategic planning, the great race, and mission accomplished. The themes coalesced around a military metaphor.

The findings of this study indicate that Black Friday shoppers plan for the ritual by examining advertisements and strategically mapping out their plans for the day. Recommendations for retailers are presented.

This exploratory investigation of Black Friday as a consumption ritual offers new insight into the planning and shopping associated with this well‐known American pseudo‐holiday. Findings also extend theory and research on collective consumption rituals.

Many aspects of well-being depend critically on individual-level expenditure and consumption. The Millennium Development Goals include the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, which partly have to do with women’s access to resources within households. Many important questions in labour, public and development economics also hinge on the intra-household distribution of resources. This paper aims to estimate the resource shares within a household in the rural and urban sectors of West Bengal through a collective household model, where each household member has a specific utility function. The sharing rule parameters, that determine the apportionment of resources between members within a household, are estimated in an intra-household collective framework. The analysis is based on a system of log-quadratic Engel curves estimated using the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumption expenditure data of the Indian National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for rural and urban sectors separately for the state of West Bengal.

The sharing rule parameters (that determine the apportionment of resources between members) within a household are estimated in an intra-household collective framework as suggested by Dunbar et al. (2013). The analysis is based on a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System (QUAIDS) estimated using the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumption expenditure data of the Indian NSSO.

In this paper, the authors estimate the sharing rule of total household expenditure between couples in a household in the state of West Bengal. They use a modified version of the QUAIDS and the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumer expenditure data provided by the NSSO. From the exercise, it emerges that on an average, the resource shares between husband and wife in a household is about 66:34% in the rural sector and about 60:40% in the urban sector. Based on a classification of households by the distribution of resource shares, where higher resource share for the husband is classified as “Husband dominated” and the reverse as “Wife dominated”, the percentage of “Husband dominated” households is much more in both sectors. This unequal distribution of resources may have far-reaching consequences on allocation of expenditure on the children of the household. The authors leave this exercise as a future project.

This paper is an attempt to estimate the sharing rule for households using NSSO consumption expenditure data. This paper also highlights the intra household unequal resource allocation through the sharing rule. They use a modified version of the QUAIDS and the 68th round (2011–2012) household-level consumer expenditure data provided by the NSSO. From the exercise, it emerges that on an average, the resource shares between husband and wife in a household is about 66:34% in the rural sector and about 60:40% in the urban sector. Based on a classification of households by the distribution of resource shares, where higher resource share for the husband is classified as “Husband dominated” and the reverse as “Wife dominated”, the percentage of “Husband dominated” households is much more in both sectors. This unequal distribution of resources may have far-reaching consequences on allocation of expenditure on the children of the household. The authors leave this exercise as a future project.

Young adult’s drinking is about pleasure, a communal practice of socialising together in a friendship group. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolving support practices of drinking groups for better targeting of health communications messages.

This qualitative descriptive study examined the narratives of 28 young people’s (age 18-24 years old) experience of a “night out” framed as the Alcohol Consumption Journey.

The Alcohol Consumption Journey ritual consisted of three phases: preloading, going out and recovery. The participants described multiple forms of support practices located at each phase of the Alcohol Consumption Journey for maximising pleasure, minimising risk, encouraging supportive behaviours, enhancing group cohesion and protecting the drinkers from alcohol-related harm. Hence, support practices played a critical part in constituting and consolidating the drinking group. While the support practices appeared to be structured into the Alcohol Consumption Journey, they were activated differently for young men and young women. Support practices were an important driver in perpetuating the Alcohol Consumption Journey.

The paper extends Vander Ven’s concept of “drunk support” to better understand young adults’ evolving support practices in the ritualised Alcohol Consumption Journey.

The purpose of the paper is to build a sociocultural perspective of brand revitalization. Maintaining brands and bringing them back to life in the market has received much less interest than their creation. Moreover, the existing literature is dominated by the marketing management paradigm where the company’s role is emphasized. This paper addresses the phenomenon of brand revitalization from a sociocultural perspective and examines the role of consumer collectives in the process.

Using a data-driven approach, the study builds on the case of a consumer brand of footwear that has risen to unprecedented popularity without traditional marketing campaigns. Data were generated using an inductive theory building approach utilizing multiple methods, including interviews, participant observation and cultural materials.

The paper presents a conceptual model of cultural brand revitalization that has four stages: sleeping brand, spontaneous appropriation, diffusion and convergence.

Implications for companies in consumer markets are discussed, suggesting ways to facilitate the process of sociocultural brand revitalization.

The paper contributes to the literature first by offering a sociocultural brand revitalization scenario that highlights the interplay between the actions of consumers and the company, second, by examining the interaction between the symbolic meanings associated with the brand and the practices used by consumers and, third, by offering insights into the relevance of national identity in creating brand meaning.

The standard approach in measuring demand responses and consumer preferences assumes particular parametric models for the consumer preferences and demand functions, and subsequently fits these models to observed data. In principle, the estimated demand models can then be used (i) to test consistency of the data with the theory of consumer behavior, (ii) to infer consumer preferences, and (iii) to predict the consumer's response to, say, new prices following a policy reform. This chapter focuses on an alternative, nonparametric approach. More specifically, we review methods that tackle the earlier issues by merely starting from a minimal set of so-called revealed preference axioms. In contrast to the standard approach, this revealed preference approach avoids the use of parametric models for preferences or demand. The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, we introduce the basic concepts of the revealed preference approach to model consumer demand. Next, we consider issues like goodness-of-fit, power, and measurement error, which are important in the context of empirical applications. Finally, we review a number of interesting extensions of the revealed preference approach, which deal with characteristics models, habit-formation, and the collective model.

The risk associated with heavy episodic drinking in young people has caused concern among public health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender differences in the perception of risk in alcohol consumption behaviour for better targeting of messages.

This qualitative descriptive study examines the narratives of 28 young people’s experience of a “night out” framed as the Alcohol Consumption Journey to examine the ways young men and women experience context-specific risks for alcohol use.

The young people perceived participation in the Alcohol Consumption Journey involved risk to their personal safety. Both young men and young women described their alcohol consumption as controlled and perceived the risks as external inevitabilities linked to the public drinking establishments. However, they displayed noticeable gender-based differences in the perception and management of risk in diverse contexts of the Alcohol Consumption Journey. Young women drink in close friendship groups and have a collective view of risk and constructed group strategies to minimise it. Comparatively, the young men’s drinking group is more changeable and adopted a more individualistic approach to managing risk. Both groups exhibited prosocial tendencies to protect themselves and their friends when socialising together.

The concept of “edgework” is effective in providing an explanatory framework for understanding young people’s ritualised Alcohol Consumption Journey and to illustrate the context-specific risks associated with alcohol use.

Investigates patterns of consumption in society and choices therein, citing the literature – in particular the 1964‐74 period. Examines the ‘consumption pattern’ both colloquially and informally and the nature of consumption. Contends that such differences in the ways and means of satisfying needs in different consumption categories do indicate different consumption patterns. Looks at emerging consumption patterns in the USA and other advanced Western economies characterised by the private, individual and passive extremities of the dimensions and outlines these. Concludes that the issue of patterns of consumption is an important one, considering its impact on an individual's life – although consumption patterns are a major component of a consumer's life process as a whole.

European Union (EU) member states are dedicated to a set of sustainable development goals, among them to: (1) promote well-being for all at all the ages and (2) achieve gender equality. This chapter uses the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) methodology that enables comprehensive measurement of intergenerational transfers, both public and private, and differences in the gender equality promotion among the countries. Our analysis is based on the fully comparable NTA results for 25 EU countries from 2010. The authors perform cluster analysis based on five indicators, measuring the importance of different types of age reallocations and the differences in gender equality promotion among the EU countries. Since the economic life cycle (showing the level of dependency) and its financing strongly depend on country-specific institutional and cultural settings, the authors link their results with the typical welfare regimes’ typology. The authors end up with three different groups of countries showing a clear north–south division of countries.