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Although consumption is a universal phenomenon, it is characterised with considerable degree of diversity in relation to various factors such as culture, age, gender, ethnicity and many others. Accordingly, more often than not, these factors underpin consumers' reactions to different market offerings including luxury products. While a plethora of scholarship efforts are evident in the extant literature in regards to luxury consumption, there is dearth of studies around how this is linked hedonism and ethnic consumers. Hence, this paper aims to fill a palpable gap in the literature by exploring the UK Black African women's taste for luxury fashion consumption.

The study is interpretive in nature with the use of 20 in-depth interviews conducted with Black African women through the use of snowballing and purposive sampling methods.

The study shows that the respondents' motivation for luxury consumption is driven by success and evolutionary motives, belongingness, societal pressures, cultural connection, anthropomorphism, consumer brand relationship and hedonism.

Apart from the theoretical implication of the study, which revolves around extending the discourse of taste in consumption and ethnic consumer behaviour, the paper will be greatly beneficial for marketing practitioners, especially in the area of segmentation, targeting and positioning vis-à-vis the marketing of luxury products.

This study examines the connections between subculture theory, symbolic interaction and the work of David Matza with a special focus on exploring alcohol consumption by young adults in the UK. We apply Matza ideas of the “techniques of neutralization,” “subterranean values,” and “drift” within an ethnographic study on alcohol to suggest that young people's “calculated hedonism” can be understood as a strategy of agency in the context of a subcultural setting. This article adds to the literature of symbolic interaction, subculture and the discipline of sociology by critically focusing on the work of David Matza from its reception in the 1960s to today as a central element of the new paradigm of cultural criminology. For us the sociological imagination is “alive and well” through Matza's advocacy of naturalism whereby he sought to integrate the work Chicago School under Park and Burgess with his assessment of the so-called Neo-Chicago School. In the literature Matza's work is often defined as symbolic interactionist we see his ambition in a wider sense of wanting sociology to recover human struggle and the active creation of meaning. Our approach is to understand the calculated hedonism of young adult use of alcohol through their humanity.

The qualitative approach was applied the discover the optimum answers to the research objectives, which are (1) to understand the cultural and hedonistic characteristics of the (Lanna) Songkran festival; and (2) to examine the dilemma between cultural rituals and hedonistic activity for tourism.

This study used a case study of the Songkran festival in Chiang Mai to examine the dilemma between cultural rituals and hedonism for tourism, which brings lost or misperceived cultural values and identities. The semi-structured interview (SSI) with senior locals and participant observation during the festival was conducted in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to obtain the in-depth phenomena of the existing celebration pattern at the festival.

The study findings show three crucial phenomena that explain characteristics of unsynchronized cultural rituals and hedonistic activities for tourism: (1) the parallel phenomenon between cultural values and celebration practice, (2) the movement of local culture and(3) the hedonistic characteristics of the festival.

The study extends the knowledge on the interplay phenomena between cultural festivals and tourism; also, the involved stakeholders, such as local communities, public sectors and private sectors, can use the study findings in creating policies for using cultural festivals to promote a destination and urban economic development that will minimise cultural values distort while increase tourism economic values.

This study was conducted qualitatively, including SSIs and participant observation at the Songkran festival in Chiang Mai. The study findings were analysed, based on the empirical data, into significant themes representing the characteristics of dilemma phenomena within the festival.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between universal individual value priorities, feelings and global job satisfaction as well as satisfaction with life in Turkish context. The sub-research question is to learn the moderation effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between values, experienced feelings and life satisfaction.

Analytical type of research design was used, and the data were obtained from 390 respondents who are the employees of different organizations in three cities in Turkey. Four measurement devices (Schwartz’s ten-item Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ), Brayfield-Rothe’s overall job satisfaction (OJS), and Diener’s Scale of positive and negative experience (SPANE) and satisfaction with life scale (SWLS)) were employed.

It was understood that the participants are slightly to moderately satisfied both with their job tasks and with the evaluation of global satisfaction of their own lives. The values of self-direction, achievement, hedonism and conformity are positively and strongly linked to job satisfaction and overall satisfaction of life. The moderating effect of job satisfaction is partially confirmed. It was also understood that the priorities of Turkish citizens imply self-centered satisfaction and independency, but not risk taking. Positive affect does influence the magnitude of the association between job satisfaction and life satisfaction.

This paper is able to demonstrate the nature of associations between value orientations, experienced feelings, job satisfaction and global life satisfaction in a collectivist culture. The contradictions between value priorities of Turkish citizens and the people of Western countries would be likely interesting for academicians and researchers.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a Disney collaboration and Disney product line extension type on the perceptions of masstige brands and purchase intentions. By identifying masstige brands as two types (i.e. born-masstige versus luxury-masstige brands), this study investigates how consumers respond to a Disney collection across different types of masstige brands.

The authors conducted three studies using an experimental approach.

Study 1 shows that compared to a traditional collection, a Disney collection lowered perceptions of brand luxury, but the negative effect is stronger for born-masstige brands than luxury-masstige brands. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that an upward extension enhanced perceptions of luxury for the born-masstige brand more than it did with a horizontal extension, whereas there was no difference between upward and horizontal extensions for the luxury-masstige brand.

This study contributes to understanding how Disney collaborations influence consumers’ perceptions of masstige brands. It has implications for brand positioning and pricing strategies for practitioners collaborating with Disney or similar companies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to investigate consumer responses to a Disney collaborated collection across two types of masstige brands by exploring their type of product line extensions.

The present study operationalizes and tests the impact of extrinsic (store environment, promotional activities) and intrinsic (hedonism, materialism) variables on impulsive buying during the COVID-19 period. It also considers the dual-factor approach (panic and impulsive buying tendency) using the “Stimulus-Organism-Response” approach and “Dual-Factor Theory”.

Purposive sampling was used to obtain data from 362 responses from retail shoppers and analyzed by path analysis. The moderation of novel constructs (scarcity and COVID-19 pandemic) examines the backdrop of retail impulse shopping.

The store environment has a detrimental effect on panic and impulsive buying. Promotional activities have a beneficial effect on impulsive buying tendency. Similarly, hedonism and materialism have a substantial positive effect on panic and impulsive buying tendencies. Between stimulus (intrinsic and extrinsic) and response variables, organism factors (panic and impulsive buying inclinations) influenced positively (impulsive buying); in terms of moderation, scarcity and the COVID-19 pandemic exhibit substantial moderation between organism and response.

The results contribute substantially to the existing domain of customers’ panic and impulsive purchasing behavior for the scarcity of essential items during the COVID-19 epidemic. Research in this field is limited, varied and inconclusive. New insights were obtained as this research blends the “Stimulus-Organism-Response” and Dual factor theories.

Just now we are having an interesting discussion among the Boards of Study (on Economics, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology, and History) of London University on the existing confusion and overlapping in their theoretical basis (arising from a claim by the sociologists for a separate degree). If Law were not so strongly professionalized in England the Law Faculty would also be concerned. I prepared a memorandum, based on the examination questions during the last five years, showing that the conception of human nature now given, or assumed, in Economic teaching is quite different from that given in Sociological teaching, and that all the other groups of study differed in that respect among themselves. The sociologists, e.g. emphasise “Imitation” and ignore Hedonism. The economists assume Hedonism and ignore Imitation. The Psychologists reject both Hedonism and Imitation. Law is either purely empirical or Benthamite. Even the distribution of concrete subject matter leaves great gaps. No one, for instance, treats of the newspaper Press, or the Churches, or advertisement. At Oxford the confusion, overlap and insufficiency is more marked. Could you not make a memorandum showing how things stand at Columbia?

The purpose of this paper is to improve the original Brand Luxury Index (BLI) developed by Vigneron and Johnson to provide a practical tool for assessing consumer’s perception of the luxurious of a brand.

The original BLI was revised through three stages: an initial scale-item generation employing a qualitative method (i.e. focus group interviews), scale purification process using statistical techniques (i.e. exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)), and scale verification process using CFA. Data (249 for scale purification, 253 for scale validation) were collected with the help of E-rewards, a marketing research company.

The modified BLI contains five dimensions (i.e. quality, extended-self, hedonism, accessibility, and tradition). The number of the dimensions remained the same as the original conceptualization (i.e. conspicuousness, uniqueness, quality, hedonism, extended-self), however, the contents of those dimensions differed.

The modified BLI can be used to monitor and manage a prestige brand in the market place. Not only can marketers of prestige brands use the index to assess consumers’ perception of the luxuriousness of their brands but also to position their brand along the desired dimension of luxuriousness.

The modified BLI can be used to measure marketing performance of luxury brands.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a frame of reference about the relations between the responsibility and the commitment of employees on the one side and type of organization on the other. The basis is a discussion of the tension between docility and freedom.

Results from earlier empirical studies of disciplinary practices among teachers and warders form the starting point. In this paper the phenomenon of hedonism is added. Hedonism is investigated from a psychological perspective and applied to work organizations with the help of attribution theories, theories on coping and motivation and theories on the conflict between the individual and the organization, i.e. of power, culture and coherence.

The paper has developed a typology on coping strategies in work contexts, which describes four possible “ideal” roles an individual can take, referring to three dimensions, the dichotomy between freedom and docility, the individual's locus of control as external or internal, and the coherence between individual and organizational values.

The model can be used for empirical studies and contribute to the development of work organizations where people feel committed enough to take responsibility both for monotonous and dull everyday tasks and for exceptional and acute unique problem solving situations.

Most studies on disciplining and docility focus on the painful side of coping. Few studies focus on what people do in order to cope with commitment and responsibility. This paper considers the different power struggles embedded in the work context, and give varying interpretations of them.