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1 – 10 of over 1000This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social elements catalyse the resistance practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a post-humanist practice approach and focusses on exploring the agentic capacity of socio-material elements to generate resistance practices. The data were generated through a multi-method approach of interviews, field observations and Facebook discussions collected between 2014 and 2017.
Findings
The empirical context is the rejäl konsumtion local food network in Finland. The analysis presents two types of resisting practices – resisting facelessness and resisting carelessness – which are connected to spatial, material and social elements.
Research limitations/implications
The study focusses on one local food system, highlighting the socio-material structuring of resistance in this specific cultural setting.
Practical implications
The practical implications highlight that recognising the socio-material elements provides tools for better engagement of consumer actors with local food systems.
Originality/value
The study adds to the extant research by interweaving the consumer resistance literature and local food systems discussions with the neo-material approach. The findings present a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which consumer resistance is actualised in a non-recreational, mundane context of consumption. Consequently, the study offers new insights into the agentic socio-material actors structuring the local food system.
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Elena Barbierato, Danio Berti, Silvia Ranfagni, Luis Hernández-Álvarez and Iacopo Bernetti
The main purpose of this study is to analyze how consumers’ visual attention to wine label design correlates with their preferences. Accordingly, this study uses quantitative…
Abstract
Purpose
The main purpose of this study is to analyze how consumers’ visual attention to wine label design correlates with their preferences. Accordingly, this study uses quantitative eye-tracking metrics to understand which design proposal has greater visual salience. A more specific objective was to assess which design proposal was preferred to be marketed.
Design/methodology/approach
The experiment involved evaluating of three different labeling proposals of an Italian winery. Infrared eye-tracking was used to measure implicit eye movements on the three bottles displayed, simultaneously, on a computer screen. A generalized linear model was used to test how consumers' visual attention to wine label design correlated with their preferences.
Findings
The design proposals were evaluated significantly differently, with one set being preferred. In general, a strong positive relationship was found between pausing to peruse a specific design proposal and making an explicit choice of the same bottle.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of the experiment concerns the sample interviewed. As the sample is homogeneous, the results may not be generalizable to other segments. Furthermore, the addition of electroencephalographic devices that monitor brain activity could provide crucial information for understanding consumer behavior during the purchase decision-making process.
Practical implications
Eye-tracking methods could be useful for designers and wine producers during the evaluation process of design projects.
Originality/value
The use of eye-tracking for evaluating design proposals before placing a product on the market is relatively novel. This method provides objective, quantitative and predictive information on consumer preferences contributing guidelines to designers and marketers during the product conception phase.
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This paper aims at investigating the contemporary trend toward regional consumption from the perspective of consumers’ search for brand authenticity. In particular, the paper…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims at investigating the contemporary trend toward regional consumption from the perspective of consumers’ search for brand authenticity. In particular, the paper joins literature on brand authenticity from the marketing literature and literature on the local food movement to investigate consumers’ response to authenticity claims in the competition of local and global food brands.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper engages in a series of three experimental studies; one of which uses a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak lottery to assess individuals’ willingness to pay for authenticity claims of (non)global brands.
Findings
Findings show that authenticity perceptions lead to higher brand value independent of brand globalness; while global brands can mitigate competitive disadvantages in localized consumer markets by actively authenticating their brand image.
Originality/value
This paper reveals the usefulness of authentic brand positioning for global beverage brands when competing with local beverage brands to overcome the liability of globalness. To sustainably benefit from the local food movement, local brands thus will require to build up brand images beyond associations of mere authenticity.
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Marco Balzano and Donata Vianelli
In this study the authors aim to explore the factors that contribute to the formation of locavorism as a form of consumer ideology.
Abstract
Purpose
In this study the authors aim to explore the factors that contribute to the formation of locavorism as a form of consumer ideology.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the authors adopt an inductive approach by preselecting locavore consumers and conducting 43 semi-structured interviews, following the prescriptions of narrative-enquiry research.
Findings
The authors reveal that individual-level (i.e. values, beliefs and experiences) and social-level (i.e. groups, local communities and society) influences and exogenous factors can affect the formation of locavorism. Furthermore, the authors’ findings corroborate the concept advanced by prior studies that reinforcing loops exist among the three belief dimensions of locavorism.
Practical implications
Food producers can use these findings to shape their marketing strategies more effectively to target locavore consumers and/or stimulate the consumption of local food.
Social implications
Identifying the influences of social- and individual-level factors on the formation of locavorism can contribute to the understanding of demand shifts towards local food consumption. Additionally, by revealing the modes of thought that formulate the ideologies of locavore consumers, the authors offer guidance in the development of policies that can safeguard local economies and traditions and reduce transport pollution and food waste in favour of sustainable local consumption.
Originality/value
In the present article the authors explore the psychological and contextual mechanisms that contribute to the formation of locavorism.
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Thiago Ianatoni Camargo, André Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão and Bruno Melo Moura
Fans have been characterized as specialized consumers who often express disagreements with the entertainment industry's decisions, especially when it comes to the original content…
Abstract
Purpose
Fans have been characterized as specialized consumers who often express disagreements with the entertainment industry's decisions, especially when it comes to the original content of the works that serve as the basis for the development of media products, evidencing a kind of consumer resistance. Under a Foucauldian perspective aligned with the consumer culture theory (CCT), power relations are established in a dynamic of power exercise and resistance to power. Based on this, the authors pose the following research question: how do fans of media products resist the changes made by the entertainment industry in relation to their canons?
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted the Foucault's genealogy of power as a method, analyzing the comments posted on the Westeros.Org website, the main discussion forum of fans of A Song of Ice and Fire (ASoIaF) book series and Game of Thrones (GoT) TV series.
Findings
The findings reveal ways of resistance in relation to the adaptation of the media text permeated by an entertainment dispositif, which considers the adaptation legitimate, and a fannish dispositif, which criticizes the way this adaptation was made. However, their empirical categories reveal that they are forged not only from singularities but also from overlaps. The authors conclude, therefore, that this process occurs in an agonist way, in which conflicts are fought as a reciprocal incitement revealing a productive and ethical relationship.
Originality/value
The agonism shows how consumers can simultaneously be led to incorporate and resist to discourses and market practices. This demonstrates how resistance is not necessarily a force opposed to another, but a dynamic of reciprocal negotiation.
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Brooke Wooley, Steven Bellman, Nicole Hartnett, Amy Rask and Duane Varan
Dynamic advertising, including television and online video ads, demands new theory and tools developed to understand attention to moving stimuli. The purpose of this study is to…
Abstract
Purpose
Dynamic advertising, including television and online video ads, demands new theory and tools developed to understand attention to moving stimuli. The purpose of this study is to empirically test the predictions of a new dynamic attention theory, Dynamic Human-Centred Communication Systems Theory, versus the predictions of salience theory.
Design/methodology/approach
An eye-tracking study used a sample of consumers to measure visual attention to potential areas of interest (AOIs) in a random selection of unfamiliar video ads. An eye-tracking software feature called intelligent bounding boxes (IBBs) was used to track attention to moving AOIs. AOIs were coded for the presence of static salience variables (size, brightness, colour and clutter) and dynamic attention theory dimensions (imminence, motivational relevance, task relevance and stability).
Findings
Static salience variables contributed 90% of explained variance in fixation and 57% in fixation duration. However, the data further supported the three-way interaction uniquely predicted by dynamic attention theory: between imminence (central vs peripheral), relevance (motivational or task relevant vs not) and stability (fleeting vs stable). The findings of this study indicate that viewers treat dynamic stimuli like real life, paying less attention to central, relevant and stable AOIs, which are available across time and space in the environment and so do not need to be memorised.
Research limitations/implications
Despite the limitations of small samples of consumers and video ads, the results of this study demonstrate the potential of two relatively recent innovations, which have received limited emphasis in the marketing literature: dynamic attention theory and IBBs.
Practical implications
This study documents what does and does not attract attention to video advertising. What gets attention according to salience theory (e.g. central location) may not always get attention in dynamic advertising because of the effects of relevance and stability. To better understand how to execute video advertising to direct and retain attention to important AOIs, advertisers and advertising researchers are encouraged to use IBBs.
Originality/value
This study makes two original contributions: to marketing theory, by showing how dynamic attention theory can predict attention to video advertising better than salience theory, and to marketing research, showing the utility of tracking visual attention to moving objects in video advertising with IBBs, which appear underutilised in advertising research.
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Omneia Helmy, Mona Fayed and Kholoud Hussien
The theoretical and empirical literature stipulated that exchange rate shocks do influence the domestic price of imports. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the underlying…
Abstract
Purpose
The theoretical and empirical literature stipulated that exchange rate shocks do influence the domestic price of imports. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the underlying relationship between the exchange rate and prices known as the exchange rate pass-through.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) model, drawing on Bernanke (1986) and Sims (1986), to empirically examine and analyze the pass-through of exchange rate fluctuations to domestic prices in Egypt.
Findings
The empirical results of the monthly data between 2003 and 2015 revealed that the exchange rate pass-through in Egypt is fairly substantial but incomplete and slow in the three price indices [IMP, producer price index and consumer price index (CPI)]. However, the impact is more prominent for consumer prices than for any other price index. This finding could be attributed to the fact that the CPI in Egypt is composed of a relatively large number of subsidized commodities and goods with administered prices as well as the authorities’ behavior in manipulating prices (i.e. export ban). This is expected to weaken the transmission of exchange rate shocks.
Practical implications
The result has interesting implications for Egypt’s ability to attain an effective inflation targeting regime.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature by assessing the effect of changes in the exchange rate (the Egyptian £ vis-à-vis the US$) on prices using an updated time series from 2003 to 2015. It addresses the limitations of the study of Nafie et al. (2004), which found no strong relationship between the exchange rate and inflation rate in the Egyptian context. One of these limitations was using the CPI, as the only price index.
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Stanley Frederick W.T. Lim, Xin Jin and Jagjit Singh Srai
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the extant research on last-mile logistics (LML) models and consider LML’s diverse roots in city logistics, home delivery and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the extant research on last-mile logistics (LML) models and consider LML’s diverse roots in city logistics, home delivery and business-to-consumer distribution, and more recent developments within the e-commerce digital supply chain context. The review offers a structured approach to what is currently a disparate and fractured field in logistics.
Design/methodology/approach
The systematic literature review examines the interface between e-commerce and LML. Following a protocol-driven methodology, combined with a “snowballing” technique, a total of 47 articles form the basis of the review.
Findings
The literature analysis conceptualises the relationship between a broad set of contingency variables and operational characteristics of LML configuration (push-centric, pull-centric, and hybrid system) via a set of structural variables, which are captured in the form of a design framework. The authors propose four future research areas reflecting likely digital supply chain evolutions.
Research limitations/implications
To circumvent subjective selection of articles for inclusion, all papers were assessed independently by two researchers and counterchecked with two independent logistics experts. Resulting classifications inform the development of future LML models.
Practical implications
The design framework of this study provides practitioners insights on key contingency and structural variables and their interrelationships, as well as viable configuration options within given boundary conditions. The reformulated knowledge allows these prescriptive models to inform practitioners in their design of last-mile distribution.
Social implications
Improved LML performance would have positive societal impacts in terms of service and resource efficiency.
Originality/value
This paper provides the first comprehensive review on LML models in the modern e-commerce context. It synthesises knowledge of LML models and provides insights on current trends and future research directions.
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Ethan Pancer, Matthew Philp and Theodore J. Noseworthy
Recent research has demonstrated that people are more likely to engage with fatty food content online. One way health advocates might facilitate engagement with healthier…
Abstract
Purpose
Recent research has demonstrated that people are more likely to engage with fatty food content online. One way health advocates might facilitate engagement with healthier, calorie-light foods is to alter how people process food media. This research paper aims to investigate the moderating role of viewer mindset on consumer responses to digital food media.
Design/methodology/approach
Two experiments were conducted by manipulating the caloric density of food media content and/or one’s mindset before viewing.
Findings
Results show that the relationship between nutrition and engagement is moderated by consumer mindset, where activating a more calculative mindset before exposure can elevate social media engagement for calorie-light food media content.
Research limitations/implications
These findings contribute to the domain of obesogenic digital environments and the role of nutrition in consuming food media. By examining how mindsets interact with affective evaluations, this work demonstrates that a default mindset based on instinct can be shifted and thus alter subsequent behavioral intentions.
Practical implications
This work provides insight into what can boost the visibility and engagement of healthy food content on social media. Marketers can help promote healthier food media by cueing consumers to think more deliberately before exposure.
Originality/value
This research builds on recent work by demonstrating how to boost engagement with healthy foods on social media by cueing a more thoughtful mindset.
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Amélia Brandão and Paolo Popoli
This paper aims to investigate whether brand anthropomorphism has a direct impact on brand hate and what are the prevailing factors that play a significant role in this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate whether brand anthropomorphism has a direct impact on brand hate and what are the prevailing factors that play a significant role in this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
This study provides insights on brand anthropomorphism phenomenon and negative consumer–brand relationships in the context of social media-based anti-brand communities. Using a quantitative analysis of the data gathered from an online survey, this study analyzes brand anthropomorphism in the three main online anti-brand communities toward Apple.
Findings
Findings indicated that brand anthropomorphism in itself does not impact on brand hate directly. Nevertheless, when it is used by consumers to express their negative feelings toward the hatred brand, the consumers’ attribution of responsibility and intentionality to Apple brand’s behavior positively affects brand hate, and ideological incompatibility is a good moderator for brand hate.
Research limitations/implications
The results of this study are based on a limited number of survey respondents because anti-brand community members are very difficult to access, and thus, it was not easy to have their collaboration for this research.
Practical implications
This study highlights the power of social media as a tool for establishing negative consumer–brand relationships. Therefore, brand managers must recognize that consumer activists may be a serious threat to the company and deal with the consumers’ tendency to use anthropomorphism to express their hate.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the link between brand anthropomorphism and brand hate, analyzed through a quantitative analysis.
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