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The advocacy to extend relationship marketing into the management of the exchange processes within retailing and consumer service markets has meant a growing interest in the opportunities which are offered by technology‐based systems of customer management. A prerequisite for the successful translation of the relationship marketing paradigm from organizational to retailing and consumer service markets is customer information. As the technology for collecting customer data has become more sophisticated, so marketing managers have witnessed an increasing concern among consumers about the impact of these new marketing management techniques on their private rights. Discusses different aspects of information privacy and reports an exploratory study of consumers’ different privacy thresholds. The results indicate different levels of involvement towards privacy issues, and different perceptions of the trustworthiness of service sector companies, among consumers. The implications for relationship marketing strategies are discussed.

Relationship development is presented as an optimal strategy across all sectors of economic activity, although relationships, and their appropriateness, vary by industry sector. In order to contribute to academic and managerial understanding of relationships in professional business services, this study aims to investigate the characteristics of relationship development in management consultancy.

Data collection involved semi‐structured interviews with both consultants and clients and employed a multilevel perspective for the investigation of relationships.

The findings provide a more nuanced reading of relationships and relationship development. First, a distinction between within‐project and between‐projects relationships and the important strategic implications which flow from these two different types of relationships are identified. Second, a distinction between relationship‐seekers and relationship‐switchers, and the resource allocation decisions associated with managing these two different client groups are identified.

This is an exploratory study based on a qualitative methodology and thus no claims are made about generalizability. The study primarily aimed to achieve a theoretical generalization. The emerging conceptualizations could be extended to and tested by other cases in future studies.

The study has implications for managers because of the insights it offers into the mechanisms for relationship development; the strategic value of relationships; what the clients have to say about relationships; and the elements that characterize successful long‐term relationships.

The study contributes to relationship management theory within services marketing by offering a more refined understanding of company‐client relationships, compared with the more generic interpretations of relationships which often characterize studies of relationship management.

Self‐esteem is an important motivational drive for consumption involving both the acceptance and rejection/avoidance of symbolic goods. This paper examines the relationship between self‐esteem and the rejection of goods and brands within the context of fashion consumption by young professionals. A conceptualisation which accounts for consumers’ use of various strategies in their efforts to maintain or enhance their self‐esteem is suggested. A small‐scale exploratory study is used to examine first, how consumers invest products and brands with negative symbolic meanings; and second, how this leads consumers to reject products and brands. The importance of understanding negative symbolic consumption when marketing high involvement products such as fashion goods is identified; and the implications for fashion retailers and marketing management are discussed.

The relationship between self‐image and product/brand imagery remains an important area of concern in marketing research and marketing practice because of its impact on product/brand evaluation and choice; however many studies report inconclusive findings about this relationship. A conceptual model is developed which links a function of attitudes – as the pursuit and maintenance of self‐esteem and self‐identity – to the public and private contexts of self‐concepts; and the subsequent intrinsic and extrinsic congruence between brand evaluation and choice. In this exploratory study the Self‐Monitoring Scale is used to explore the link between the social and psychological determinants of self‐presentation in the pursuit of self‐esteem and maintenance of self‐identity, and to inform the examination of the relationship between self‐concept and product symbolism. Findings from the qualitative and quantitative stages of a study of the UK alcoholic soft drinks market are presented. There were distinct differences between the self‐monitoring groups when the interpretation of specific brand images was investigated. The results provided empirical support for viewing the self as a divisible entity. The implications for marketing practice are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the political functions of government‐sponsored social marketing campaigns aimed at changing citizens’ behaviour and to argue for the reconsideration of the boundaries between political, public sector and social marketing.

Critical discourse analysis of print advertisements and promotional material of a government‐sponsored social marketing campaign is used.

The paper identifies the discursive ways in which the campaign influences the public's views of social issues and actors and discusses the role of such campaigns in the redefinition of the relationship between the citizen and the state.

The paper contributes to critical perspectives on the wider impact of social marketing activities on democracy by demonstrating the political impact function and effects of campaigns run by governments.

This paper seeks to challenge the tendency to represent gender as a unitary theoretical construct; and would argue for a more differentiated view of how the psychological aspects of gender influence the consumption of advertising. We use a small‐scale exploratory study to examine the potential impact of gender identity within consumers’ self‐schemas on their consumption of advertising. Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (SRI) was administered to 25 young adults who then watched video clips of two television advertisements. The focus group discussions about the two advertisements were analysed within the context of the respondents’ gender schemas identified via the Bem SRI scores: masculine, feminine, androgynous or undifferentiated. The centrality of gender identity to self‐schemas affected how consumers processed and interpreted the advertising. This provides support for a more differentiated approach to representing men and women within gender research and advertising because gender groups are neither necessarily homogeneous nor isomorphic with sex.

The emerging consumer-dominant logic of marketing captures consumers’ active and primary role in a range of mainstream marketing processes such as branding, product development and sales. However, consumers’ active role in driving pro-social behaviour change has not yet received close attention. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explore consumer dominance in social marketing. The authors propose a definition of consumer-dominant social marketing (CDSM) and explicate five key elements which underpin the phenomenon.

This conceptual study offers an analysis informed by exemplars with significant representations of consumer-dominant pro-social behaviours and projects. The methodological approach is characterised as “envisioning conceptualisation”, which is explained in terms of MacInnis’ (2011) framework for conceptual approaches in marketing.

As a phenomenon, CDSM operationalises the following elements: power, agency, resources, value and responsibility. The authors demonstrate how these elements are interconnected and define their meaning, significance and implications in the context of social marketing and pro-social behaviour change. The authors also identify this new form of social marketing as existing on a continuum depending on the level of involvement or dominance of the consumer and of social marketers; at one end of this continuum, exclusive CDSM is entirely consumer-driven and does not engage with businesses or organisations, while on the other end, inclusive CDSM encompasses partnership with external stakeholders to achieve pro-social behaviour change.

The existence of inclusive and exclusive CDSM points towards an intricate power balance between consumers, mainstream social marketers and businesses. While this study identifies and explains this substantial distinction, it is an important task for future research to systematise the relationship and explore the optimal balance between consumer activism and involvement of formalised organisations such as charities and businesses in pro-social behaviour change projects.

The study provides social marketing professionals with an understanding of the benefits of harnessing consumer empowerment to enhance the impact of social marketing interventions.

The study makes a theoretical contribution by introducing, defining and explicating consumer dominance as a substantive area of social marketing.

This study aims to follow a rigorous approach to identify, critically analyze and synthesize 75 papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The study presents a systematic literature review on identity expressiveness (IE), clarifying and expanding what is currently known about the concept.

To synthesize current knowledge on IE, the study uses the overarching framework of antecedents-phenomenon-consequences, using this same framework to identify gaps and future research directions. The findings show individual and brand-related factors such as the need for uniqueness and anthropomorphism as antecedents of IE, and eWOM/WOM, impulse purchases and upgrading to more exclusive lines as consequences of IE.

The study contributes to theory by synthesizing and mapping current understanding of the state of knowledge on the concept of IE while highlighting gaps in the extant literature and paving future research directions for scholars in the field.

The study offers useful insights for practitioners, broadening marketers’ actionable options in identity-based marketing. Marketers can use insights from this study to inform marketing strategy and communication campaigns for different types of brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind and offers an integrative review of the current literature on IE, thus enhancing understanding of the concept, its antecedents and consequences. The study also contributes to knowledge by highlighting future research priorities for researchers in this field of enquiry.