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Conversations surrounding gender are sweeping the globe as the voices and lived experiences of people are being heard and shared at unprecedented rates. Discourses about gender in advertising are embedded in cultural narratives and legitimatized by a broad system of institutional structures and actors, at both macro and micro/consumer levels. This study aims to explore how consumers (one type of institutional actor) engage in legitimizing/delegitimizing messages of gender in the marketplace.

This research draws on a qualitative approach, specifically the use of in-depth interviews with men across three global contexts.

This research identifies the ways in which men engage in (de)legitimizing messages of masculinity in advertising such as reiteration, reframing, ascribing to alternate logics and prioritizing personal norms.

Across three contexts, this research theorizes the (de)legitimization of gender ideals in advertising and situates consumer narratives within broader institutional forces, providing a holistic understanding of the phenomenon.

Understanding the ways in which individuals either accept or reject gendered ideals in media aids advertising and marketing professionals in tailoring messages that resonate with audiences.

Understanding how individuals negotiate their gender and the messages they deem as legitimate are crucial to understanding gender issues related to consumer welfare and public policy.

While research has examined advertising practitioners’ views regarding gender from an institutional perspective, research on how consumers construct and maintain the legitimacy of gendered messages in the marketplace is scarce. This research theorizes and illustrates the (de)legitimization of gender ideals across three contexts.

This paper reflects on the protocol suggested for using shopping with consumers (SWC) as a means for gathering high‐quality, naturalistic text in the field.

The original SWC method combined accompanying consumers in the field as they shopped with in‐depth interviews.

This paper reflects on how SWC has been used in past research, including new and innovative applications of the method to a variety of research phenomena.

The primary limitation of the approach is the amount of time required to implement SWC thoroughly.

SWC has the advantages of a multi‐method research design. In addition, SWC hastens trust and rapport with informants, potentially yielding richer data.

This paper is unique in terms of reflections on how a variety of scholars have used SWC to investigate phenomena of interest beyond that investigated in our original data collection. In addition, we offer suggestions for future research in areas that could clearly benefit from application of the method.

The aim of this paper is to expand the scant literature related to retail branding ideology and the application of mythotypes to flagship stores within the Chinese setting. The study explores the transplantation of a retail brand ideology in the form of complex home‐country cultural content to a host culture whose local retail narratives differ significantly from those of the brand enterprise.

This is an ethnographic study that spans the two years of the focal store's existence. With the help of native‐speaking graduate assistants, store visits, interviews with Chinese locals and internet mentions and secondary information were collected. Data include fieldnotes, interview transcripts, photographs, news articles, blog comments and website information.

The paper details the mythotypic mistuning of marketscape and mindscape that contributed to the failure of this flagship store and build theory concerning the implementation of retail brand ideology and retail theatrics. The paper concludes that successful themed flagship brand stores encapsulate ideology in stories composed of mythotypes and encourages the enactment of that ideology through multiple, interrelated brand experiences. Misalignments of these mythotypes can impede the acceptance of retail brand ideology and the diffusion of the retail theatre concept.

While foreign and domestic flagship brand stores have flourished in China, cultural propriety of these stores includes a host of physical design cues that must mesh with the local culture's sensibilities and the brand's provenance. To translate the retail brand ideology into customer‐centric meaning is challenging. The presence or absence of mythotypes comprising the servicescape profoundly affect their success.

In this editorial introduction to the special issue, the authors lay out the problem of inadequate qualitative research about markets and consumers in the vast demographic‐economic space represented by Asia and present an integrative view of six articles that tackle this problematique. The aim of this editorial and the rest of the special issue is not so much to redress the imbalance of inadequate qualitative work on Asia's markets and consumers, but rather to begin to address the problem and start offering directions and suggestions that may make strides toward addressing it.

This editorial introduction presents the perspectives of the special issue editors and introduces the six articles that are part of this issue. It is a conceptual piece.

While the authors' main goal here is to summarize and introduce the work of the authors featured in this issue, they also strive to present a meta‐theoretic frame to guide future similar efforts.

The efforts of the authors in this special issue should serve as demonstrable evidence that interesting, well‐executed qualitative research on Asian markets and consumers is possible and publishable, and motivate other researchers – particularly those based in Asia – to undertake further such work.

Qualitative work on Asian markets and consumers, particularly if produced organically in Asia, would help in a rounder and more insightful understanding of this demographically enormous, culturally rich and economically rising space.

The value of this introductory piece lies in its integration of the articles in the issue, and in presenting a meta‐theoretic frame on the central problematique of inadequate qualitative research on markets and consumers of Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the author’s involvement in the paradigm wars of the 1980s in marketing and consumer research. In this paper, the author describes his role in the ecological succession of the discipline at a critical juncture between the early efforts of the pioneering scholars and the establishment of a mature climax community of consumer culture theorists.

The author employs an autobiographical approach.

Among the many contributions of a host of talented and insightful fellow travelers, the author’s penchant for ethnographic research and anthropological analysis helped nudge the discipline into interesting new niches.

This personal reminiscence of the philosophical debates surrounding our interpretive turn may be triangulated with others to construct a synchronic account of a moment in disciplinary evolution.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The concept of polyphony, taken from music and extended by literary critic Bakhtin to describe the world of Dostoevsky′s novels, provides a metaphor for understanding patterns of organizing among those who hold beliefs and values from a variety of backgrounds. Addresses organization as multiple discourses. Describes Bakhtin′s work and uses it to generate ideas about how people organize to perform complex tasks and change their patterns of interaction.