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The purpose of this paper is to explore the historical origins of consumer well‐being as well as the factors that shaped its evolution.

The paper presents a review of original publications that highlight classic views of consumer well‐being, including schools of thought on functionalism, management, buyer‐behavior, macromarketing, and consumer activism.

There has been a tendency to understand consumer well‐being as a function of economic‐based choice, where a “more‐is‐better” ideology has motivated much of the extant literature on the topic.

Integrating literature from the twentieth century demonstrates that perspectives on consumer well‐being have been influenced by forces beyond the classic economic model. The paper speculates that incorporating more community‐oriented and contextually‐bound criteria into the understanding of consumer well‐being may yield new research insights.

This study seeks to investigate the interaction between marketers' strategic behaviors, social norms, and societal stakeholders within a particular historical time period, the 1960s and 1970s.

The study's findings are based on an analysis of two dominant retail industry trade publications, Chain Store Age and Progressive Grocer.

The analysis reveals an intriguing array of strategic marketing activity throughout these two decades not captured in considerations of marketing strategy at the time. The retailers examined engaged in two interesting behaviors. First, they responded to a wide range of stakeholder demands in a paradoxical fashion. Second, as retailers were confronted with social norms, instead of conforming to these norms they worked to help influence and shape them to their own advantage. This examination of retailers' behaviors over two decades has allowed the authors to present an intriguing new dimension to the understanding of marketing strategy.

The study found that throughout the 1960s and 1970s, marketers appeared to be actively engaged in a social dialogue. Through this dialogue, they not only responded to norms, but also attempted to shape the norms that came to define legitimate behavior for the marketers. This kind of strategic marketing endeavor was not accounted for in the managerial school of thought that dominated marketing thinking at the time.

Philip Kotler is one of the pioneers who has contributed to the broadening of academic inquiry in the field of marketing. He has had a significant role in shaping how marketing is taught to and practised by students and managers of marketing. By examining the personal and macroenvironmental influences that have come to shape his work, this paper seeks to explore how Philip Kotler has achieved such influence in the field of marketing.

The research was driven by a desire to understand the context in which Kotler developed his work, including the personal influences on his life as well as the macroenvironmental forces within which his work has emerged. To this end, the reseaerch employed qualitative techniques to analyze a number of data sources including depth interviews with Philip Kotler and nine of his colleagues, participant observation at Kotler's 75th birthday celebration hosted by the Kellogg School, a review of marketing textbooks, and a review of relevant literature.

The research reveals the keys to Philip Kotler's success are his ability to learn from the people around him and the events of the times, and his ability to integrate this knowledge into succinct, well‐communicated, timely lessons for others to follow. Kotler's work emerged within a period of time that has witnessed a thrust towards marketing as a science and the rise of the managerial school of thought. Given this context, the significance of Kotler's work is that it has contributed to the legitimacy of the field of marketing as both a rigorous academic discipline and a managerial domain of strategic importance within organizations.

Gaining an understanding of Philip Kotler and his work contributes to our understanding of how the marketing field has been shaped, including the kinds of academic inquiry marketers deem legitimate and the nature of how we teach students to practice marketing management.

Little attention has been paid to the factors that have influenced the work of Philip Kotler and how he has, in turn, come to shape the field of marketing. This research allows the reader to see the man behind the work and the influences on his thinking.

Purpose – This paper explores a pervasive yet little explored myth that underlies much marketing theory and practice: living in harmony with nature. While previous research typically presents “harmony with nature” as something consumers can easily find by returning to a benevolent “Mother Nature,” the current research problematizes how “harmony with nature” is discursively constructed in contemporary advertisements.

Methodology/approach – This paper traces the visual genealogy of contemporary advertising imagery to explore different discursive constructions of the harmony myth. Over 600 advertisements published in Backpacker magazine between 2007 and 2009 form the database for this research.

Findings – Drawing on a more nuanced understanding of the organic framework of nature, and representations of nature in the artistic genre of Romantic landscape painting, the current research finds that divergent images of an “Arcadian” and “Dynamic” nature give rise to different constructions of harmony that are fraught with tension. Harmony might be as easily lost as it is found, or it might never be achieved at all.

Originality/value of paper – This research shows that living in harmony with nature is less harmonic than it seems. It extends previous research that adopted an implicitly unproblematic understanding of finding harmony in nature by uncovering nuances and contradictions within contemporary manifestations of the harmony myth. Implications for marketers and for our understanding of the human/nature relationship more generally are offered.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomena of Apple iPhone jailbreaking, a novel scenario where a company actively oppresses and discourages the co-creation of value and customisation of its products by loyal consumers.

This paper conducted a qualitative content and thematic analysis of online jailbreaker discourse to understand the motivations and reasons driving consumers to resist a brand to which they remain extremely loyal.

Three themes explain jailbreaker motivations: enhanced experience, individual right of self-expression and anti-hegemony. Further two themes explain the differing motivations driving hacktivists to create the “exploits” that are subsequently used by jailbreakers (liberating the masses; status and notoriety). Finally, an integrative conceptual model is provided to showcase how disparate theories of consumer behaviour are synthesised during this novel phenomena.

In contrast to previous work, the consumer activists featured in this paper are devoted to the brand and product they are resisting. Rather than switching to an alternative brand, these jailbreakers and hacktivists remain loyal to the product in a genuine effort to help the brand. Even more interesting is the brand actively oppressing these loyal consumers’ attempts to modify and, in some cases, improve their products. Overall, this paper highlights the contradictory relationship between Apple and some of its consumers and demonstrates how brand loyalty, dissatisfaction, resistance/activism and co-creation can co-exist within the same consumer–brand relationship.

The increase in environmental consciousness around the world since 1970's pushed firms to engage in socially responsible behaviors. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has naturally gained attention in the academic and business world (Colvin, 2001; Harrison & Freeman, 1999; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Waddock & Smith, 2000). The reasons for these socially responsible behaviors are not only the external obligations or regulatory compliance but also the firms desire to increase competitiveness, to improve stock market performance (Bansal & Roth, 2000; Drumwright, 1994, 1996; Klassen & Mclaughlin, 1996; Russo & Fouts, 1997; Waddock & Smith, 2000) and to create a positive self‐image among consumers. There have been numerous studies on CSR suggesting a link between social initiatives and consumer's positive product and brand evaluations, brand choice and brand recommendations (Brown & Dacin, 1997; Drumwright, 1994; Handelman & Arnold, 1999; Osterhus, 1997; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001). Moreover, the consumers are continuing to become more interested in CSR and green product market is fast growing so the use of CSR initiatives by the firms to receive the support of the society and to influence consumer behavior has become quite common. However, these socially responsible steps must also have an effect on corporations' major objective: maximizing the profits.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a careful articulation of one’s perspective of a key construct (in this case agency) can facilitate critical reflection and move the field forward (by bridging two hitherto separate agency debates).

Four years of engagement with 24 consumers involving prolonged observations and unstructured depth interviews provided the empirical evidence for this paper.

Even humans who perceive their personal capacity to influence events as limited (whether due to actual or perceived limitations in physiological capabilities, material resources, and/or interpersonal networks) can assemble a network of persons, possessions, and practices to signal the agency to themselves, and to others. These assemblages, which invariably feature indexicons, allow people to construct semiotic agency in ways which are shaped by their habitus.

This research has important implications for social and housing policy because disadvantaged consumers are more likely to rent than own, which limits their capacity to assemble semiotic agency.

This research introduces the new concepts of semiotic agency and indexicons to consumer culture theory and shows how even disadvantaged consumers can deploy these to signal agency to themselves and others.