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The aim of this paper is to provide an advanced understanding of the dynamics of a scholarly career.

An assemblage of a theoretic lens was adopted to help make sense of how the focal scholar came to have certain capacities and characteristics and how these evolved over time.

The critical determinants of the capacities of this scholar have arisen from intersections with the institutions she has been a part of and individuals with whom she has been privileged to interact.

This paper is the first to adapt an assemblage theoretic lens to make sense of a professional’s career accomplishments and trajectory and to draw inferences for career management from this perspective.

Interpretive consumer researchers frequently devote months, if not years, to writing a new paper. Despite their best efforts, the vast majority of these papers are rejected by top academic journals. This paper aims to explain some of the key reasons that scholarly articles are rejected and illuminate how to reduce the likelihood of rejection.

This paper is a dialogical collaboration between a co-editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and two junior scholars who represent the intended audience of this paper. Each common reason for rejecting papers, labeled as Problems 1-8, is followed by precautionary measures and detailed examples, labeled as solutions.

The paper offers eight pieces of advice on the construction of interpretive consumer research articles: (1) Clearly indicate which theoretical conversation your paper is joining as early as possible. (2) Join a conversation that belongs in your target journal. (3) Conclude your review of the conversation with gaps, problems and questions. (4) Only ask research questions that your data can answer. (5) Build your descriptive observations about contexts into theoretical claims about concepts. (6) Explain both how things are and why things are the way that they are. (7) Illustrate your theoretical claims with data and support them with theoretical argumentation. (8) Advance the theoretical conversation in a novel and radical way.

The goal of this paper is to help interpretive consumer researchers, especially junior scholars, publish more papers in top academic journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research.

The case is set in the Fall of 2008 as Susan Schor, Chief Culture Officer, at EILEEN FISHER Inc. is meeting with the other two members of the Facilitating Leader Team, Jim Gundell, Vice President of Retail and e-Commerce and Jonci Coukier, Vice President of Design and Merchandising Processes, as well as founder, Eileen Fisher. Faced with significant projected financial loss in 2009, Susan reflected on the evolution of the company as influenced by her perspective with her organizational behavior expertise and collaborative leadership that embraced a values-based culture. Stories, voices and structures are examined in this retrospective view as Dr Schor sets the stage for how this example of best practice leadership will tackle the challenge at hand.

The research for this case was conducted over an 18-month period with over 40 interviews, extensive observation of the various teams at EILEEN FISHER Inc., and review of corporate communications, publications and other secondary sources. This case focuses on stories and voices that explain the unique leadership of EILEEN FISHER. The use of extensive quotes allows for an authentic “hearing” of the experiences and values as well as allowing the students to better understand the nature of qualitative data. Some of the discussion questions are posed as experiential exercises as this method allows the students to better relate to understand and apply values concepts.

Graduate and undergraduate organizational behavior, leadership, retail management and ethics.

Reports a study of 214 Chinese Canadian consumers across eight product categories. This study shows that intracultural differences in consumer behavior are inadequately explained by the psychological construct of ethnic identification, and that additional explanatory power is achieved when incorporating the ethnic homogeneity of social ties. The results of the study support the proposition that the ethnic homogeneity of strong social ties exerts significant influence over an individual’s consumption of ethnic products, and is a much more robust predictor variable than ethnic identification. Also calls for a more theory‐based measure for the construct ethnic identification.

Considers the pluralistic cultures which exist within a nation and outlines the history of previous research into this field. Introduces the concept of embeddedness which means that the society within which a person lives will influence their behaviour. Discusses intracultural differences and presents some research strategies for looking at the ethnic consumer.

Hong Kong is often portrayed as a society where conspicuous consumption rules. We wanted to find out whether this peculiar consumer behavior would still be transparent among Hong Kong people who have emigrated to Canada. Through a survey, we tested the subjects’ propensity towards conspicuous consumption (as measured by two established scales) and attempted to find relationships between the dependent variables and a person’s ethnic identification as well as the strength of the person’s ethnic social ties. We failed to find support for the proposition that conspicuous consumption is related to a person’s ethnicity. Offers explanations and directions for future research, and also serves as a warning to the marketer that blindly accepting stereotypes could be erroneous in a practical as well as moral sense.

Research has shown that activist consumers create places that are imbued with idiosyncratic meanings, conventions, rules, and activities. However, research on why and how such places are created is scant.

This ethnography in the context of voluntary refugee helpers shows why and how a meaningful place is produced.

By drawing on spatial theory from human geography, I map out how activist consumers create a hyper-place: embedded in the dynamics of demarcating and linking, voluntary helpers set a place apart from the surrounding space and other places. This place allows for practices that combine materiality, activities, and meanings in new ways in comparison to practices in traditional places. This place allows for the enactment and the conveyance of values that are not accommodated in traditional marketplaces.

I contribute to literature on activist consumers and the role of place within consumer research.