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The purpose of this paper is to explore the tendencies of liquid consumption in Muslim communities and analyse its impact on Muslims’ consumption practices from the holistic perspective. Liquid consumption refers to a transient and less-materialised mode of consumption that requires both minimal attachment to possessions and hybrid ownership.

This is a conceptual paper that is based on the distinction between Islam as a holistic perspective and Islamic practice as it is applied in different contexts and situations. The Continual Drift Adjustment (CDA) framework of Muslim consumers’ behaviour is developed to be deployed as an analysis framework.

The CDA framework maintains that some problematic cases of Muslim consumption behaviours indicate the drift towards disbalance. Depending on their nature, liquid consumption practices can have different impacts on the drift. Liquid consumption practices underscored by instrumental dissemblance, intellectual insecurity and spiritual scepticism intensify the drift, whereas the incorporation of spiritual sincerity, faithful submission and existential gratefulness into practices and behaviour helps to attenuate the drift.

This research contributes to the theory of liquid consumption by incorporating the religious perspective. Liquid consumption in Islam is a complex area of research, specifically considering the ambivalent meanings of liquidity in Islamic thought.

Marketers of liquid consumption solutions must be aware of these offerings’ double-edged impact on the well-being of Muslim communities. Muslim consumers should be guided towards spiritual sincerity, faithful submission and existential gratefulness in the best way possible, although it must be noted that the customary techniques of marketing would lean towards stimulating the disbalance.

This research is unique because it deals with a topic that has not been researched in the Islamic marketing discipline to this date.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the representations and experiences of beauty amongst fat women to understand how females located outside of the normative ideal consume, express, challenge and resist “straight” beauty.

A netnographic approach is taken to analyse 922 blog posts written by five female “fatshionistas” who play a significant role in the Australian fat activism movement.

The research findings illustrate that fatshionistas (re)negotiate cultural notions of beauty through three performative acts – coming out as fat, mobilising fat citizenship and flaunting fat.

The study demonstrates how beauty is negotiated as a mode of praxis, a performance in the interaction of day‐to‐day life, whereby the possibilities for multiple and provisional beauties are highlighted.

Given the active participation of those outside of the idealised form in “mainstream” beauty consumption, practitioners should make visible multiple bodily representations that are not reduced to an unhelpful construction of what is considered to be “real”.

By emphasising the lived experience of beauty as something subjective, communal and resistant, this research poses a challenge to mainstream marketing that constructs beauty as normative, singular and conformist. The paper further calls for a “queering” of the gender research agenda within marketing to better interrogate the linkages between an individual's fluid and contested identity work, consumption and marginalised or excluded status within the marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationships Generation Y females have with fashion brands online. Specifically, it examines the role of the internet and social networks in these relationships.

Narrative interviews were employed to gather data from Generation Y women. Analysis was conducted using inductive thematic analysis.

Two main themes emerged from the data: the importance of social media and the influence of the internet. Findings suggest social networks have a significant influence on the dynamics of brand consumption and inform our understanding of females' online shopping behaviours.

A qualitative methodology was utilised to elicit insights from consumers. This allowed participants to express their thoughts in their own words, which provided rich data for analysis.

We provide guidance for marketing managers seeking to harness social networks to market brands. Findings illustrate the role of social networks in driving brand consumption among Generation Y women, and highlight the criticality of the social network as a source of information and reassurance for brand choices. Further, we identify concerns about online shopping, and provide suggestions for online retailers seeking to augment consumers' shopping experiences.

This study offers insights into Generation Y females' use of the internet and social networks for brand consumption. To date such research has been mainly quantitative. Further, Generation Y has been neglected in the marketing literature. This paper addresses these gaps and illustrates the significant impact social media has on the behaviour of female consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the experiences of women who were engaged in a competitive retail shopping event.

This study employed the discovery‐oriented grounded theory approach, in order to interpret field data from observations and interviews from 30 women who participated in a bridal gown sale event.

This paper exposes the manner in which the women shoppers shifted from competitive mindsets and behaviors, to cooperative ones, with other women shoppers. Four complimentary “trajectories” help explain how this takes place by demonstrating that the women progressed through mindsets of competition, co‐opetition, cooperation, and charity. The course of this process occurs within the realm of highly dynamic environments, which help foster the women's changing behaviors. The experiences of our participants converged such that this process of competition‐cooperation contributed to positive experiential value of the shopping trip.

This study focused only on women shoppers in the USA and concentrated only on one retail sale event. Future studies should expand the cultural diversity of the participants and increase the contextual boundaries of the phenomenon to include other instances of competitive shopping.

Understanding how women consumers engage in competition, and consequently cooperation, should be of considerable interest to retailers wishing to execute competitively natured events and promotions. The paper's findings suggest that women value competitive shopping events because of the social experience they provide, not solely for the product that might be acquired. The study contributes to our understanding of how women interpret social interaction, manage relationships with one another in retail settings, and are co‐creators of intrinsic shopping value. It also offers a more favorable viewpoint of competition in the retail domain than what is often construed in mainstream media.

This research is one of the first to focus on women shoppers who are engaged in a competitive shopping event. For consumer theorists, this study offers insights into social behavioral processes. It provides a platform for continuing research in the area of consumer competition.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate young female consumers' motivations and perceptions of their alcohol consumption in the context of the changing drinking culture among women.

All the data were collected on a university campus in Poland. The research was conducted in two phases, using two research methods: consumer diaries and consumer collages. In Phase 1, purposive sampling was used to establish a group of five female students, all aged 22, who were asked to keep individual written diaries. In Phase 2, consumer collages were prepared and interpreted by four groups consisting of 24 female students.

Both sets of data were thematically analysed, and the emerging themes were divided into two major issues: drinking motives and control and limits.

This research is limited by a small sample recruited from one university, and the indicative findings should be used in further research.

Better understanding of female students' drinking culture will help to develop more targeted and effective policies and social marketing programmes to prevent further rise in alcohol consumption among female students.

This research contributes to the existing literature by deepening our understanding of the unique characteristics of female undergraduate students' drinking, and identifying the areas of convergence between male and female alcohol consumption. It also explores the motivations behind these convergence processes and highlights areas in which differences between genders are still strong.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how and why environmentally conscious consumers rationalise their non-green purchase behaviour.

Seven focus groups were conducted. A total of 51 people, aged 19-70 years, participated in the study. Theoretical thematic analysis was used to organise the data as various themes emerged.

Through application of neutralisation theory, this study identified additional barriers to green consumption. Two new neutralisation techniques emerged, namely protecting (maintaining) one’s sense of self and consumer attachment to the brand. These techniques recognise the impact consumer culture has had on consumers.

The study took place in an urban centre hence the views of the participants may be different from those who live in rural centres; low-income consumers were under-represented; and more male participants would have been desirable.

Despite its limitations, this study reveals that consumers will rationalise their decisions in order to protect their self-esteem and self-identity. Until green becomes a social norm, consumers will continue to place individual goals over collective goals. Understanding this rationalisation process is important if marketers and policy makers want to encourage behavioural change.

This study makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the green attitude-behaviour gap. It provides fresh insights into how environmentally conscious consumers vindicate their non-green consumption behaviours and how marketers and policy makers can overcome these challenges. It also identifies two new neutralisation techniques and extends the theory to a consumer culture context.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the editorial content of monthly women's magazines and consider their role in facilitating the Christmas food rituals. Of particular interest is the extent to which the special food features have adapted to support the changes in women's lifestyles over the last 20 years.

The authors conducted a longitudinal social semiotic analysis of Christmas food features in women's magazines in Australia and the UK over the period 1991‐2011.

The analysis reveals a recurring conflict between the magazine content and the lifestyles of their readers. For families to participate in and maintain the Christmas ritual still means devotion, typically by a woman. The message has not changed, even though the work/home balance for many women has. The responsibility for putting the “magic” in Christmas lies firmly at the woman's feet. The magazines' text convey a contradictory message by offering readers budget and timesaving tips, while their visuals imply that such “shortcuts” stand in the way of the sought‐after magical Christmas, the rituals must be followed in full.

Adopting a longitudinal social semiotic analysis enabled the authors to conduct a detailed comparison of both text and imagery across the magazines and across the years. The authors were also able to report on how the sign complexes such as colour and text worked in combination to create a social message.

Whilst women's magazines remain an important vehicle for the transmission of social values, the paper's findings demonstrate that they are not necessarily adapting to social change.