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The 1922 Supreme Court anti-trust exemption awarded to organized baseball was quick to grasp the prerogatives of the emerging U.S. popular culture industries, and displays the anomalies of performance in the law. The trade and commerce in cultural performances yield contradictory opinions about the distinctions between the functions of work and play, as well as the properties of work and the performing arts. The interconnecting functions of a sport like organized baseball, as an industry, an art, and a popular cultural entertainment makes baseball a rich object for analysis in the perplexing historical puzzle of decentralized U.S. cultural policy.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of cultural production, consumption and intermediation in the context of digital music.

This research adopts an interpretivist, ethnoconsumerist epistemology along with a netnographic research design combined with hermeneutic analysis. Interpreting both the text view and field view of an ethnoconsumerist approach, the netnographic research design includes participant observation across multiple social media platforms as well as virtual interviews and analysis of media material. The context of application is a digital music subculture known as Vaporwave. Vaporwave participants deliberately distort fundamental aspects of modern and postmodern culture in a digital, musical, artistic and storied manner.

Hermeneutic analysis has identified a critical and nostalgic narrative of consumerism and hyper-reality, evident as symbolic parallels, intertextual relationships, existential themes and cultural codes. As a techno savvy community embracing lo-fi production, self-releasing promotion and anonymity from within a complexity of aliases and myriad collaborations, the vaporous existentialism of Vaporwave participants skirts copyright liability in the process. Accordingly, Vaporwave is documented as blurring reality and fantasy, material and symbolic, production and consumption. Essentially, Vaporwave participants are shown to be digital natives turned digital rebels and heretical consumers, better described as cultural curators.

This research demonstrates a more complex notion of cultural production, consumption and intermediation, argued to be more accurately described as cultural curation.

As digital heretics, Vaporwave participants challenge traditional notions of modernity, such as copyright law, and postmodern notions such as working consumers and consuming producers.

Vaporwave participants present a case of digital natives turned digital rebels and consumer heretics, who are actively curating culture.

This interpretive ethnoconusmerist study combining netnography and hermeneutic analysis of an online underground music subculture known as Vaporwave shows digital music artists as cultural curators.

Major technological innovations are usually associated with central R&D facilities in large companies and leading edge technologies that are key to unlocking business opportunities in promising, embryonic markets. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze several factors that determine the success of a major process innovation in a mature but changing industry. The paper furthermore shows that the periphery of a company can be as innovative as headquarters and central R&D‐labs.

This paper is based upon an in depth case study of the “Business Group Influenza” (BGI) at Solvay, a multinational company in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry based in Brussels. BGI turned a mature business into a growth engine for the company through the development of a cell culture technology. Next, we identified 20 success factors of innovations based on extensive literature research. These factors can be placed in four main categories; strategic factors, market environment factors, development process factors, and organizational factors. In this paper, we apply these key drivers to the renewal of Solvay's influenza vaccine business.

It is found that a systematic analysis of the case using the 20 key drivers allows us to evaluate the management of this major innovation process. In this way, one can easily spot the drivers that need more attention or require another management approach. We also find that the management of attention of the top‐management is crucial in long‐term innovation projects.

The contribution of this study is twofold. On the one hand, the rejuvenation of Solvay's influenza vaccine business shows that changing markets conditions in combination with a breakthrough process technology can turn a cash cow into a growth business. On the other hand, the systematic analysis of key innovation drivers allows one to identify the strength and weaknesses in the management of a long‐term, breakthrough process innovation.

Whey products have conventionally been professed as a means of reducing ingredient costs. The authentic benefits of adding whey products are the enhanced worth resulting from flavor, texture and nutritional improvements as well as nutraceutical or health‐enhancing payback. Therefore, the present study aims to isolate and characterize suitable starter cultures for the production of wheyghurt drink.

Keeping in view all the benefits of yoghurt technology this study was planned to isolate the starter cultures and optimize the conditions for the production of wheyghurt drink. The starter cultures (Lactobacillus delbruceckii ssp. Bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus) were isolated from the yoghurt and further characterized on the basis of their morphological and biochemical characteristics. The wheyghurt drink prepared from starter cultures with varying starter culture concentrations (1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 percent) was analyzed for the physicochemical and sensory characteristics to explore the potential of wheyghurt drink.

During storage, color, flavor, taste and overall acceptability were affected significantly. But the interaction between treatments and storage was found non‐significant to all the sensory parameters. At zero day maximum score (7.40) for overall acceptability was recorded for T₃ and minimum score (5.60) was awarded to T₄. After five, ten and 15 days of storage, judges observed a slight decline in overall acceptability in all wheyghurt drink samples. Hence it was concluded that wheyghurt drink sample T₃ obtained maximum scores regarding the organoleptic evaluation and remained the best.

The key to growth is a continuous evaluation and modification of the product to match consumer expectations. Currently there are many apparent benefits that result from incorporating selected whey products into yogurt formulas. The starter cultures for the production of fermented whey products are not presently produced in Pakistan and are imported for industrial use. The use of LAB as starter culture may help to improve the quality and shelf life of the whey products.

The research is useful for food manufacturers in order to develop functional food products for consumers. Understanding consumer needs and preferences is critical to successful product development and enhancing marketing values of a product. Nutritionally improved foods, such as wheyghurt over the conventional counterpart, will be highly successful in the marketplace. Consumers will prefer such kinds of foods because they are more conscious about their health and such foods provide them with what they desire, i.e. health benefits with good nutrition.

The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the concept of meaning and the meaning making process in consumer behavior. While the study of the consumption focuses increasingly on how consumers create meaning in a marketing dominated world, it views this process as relatively unproblematic. This paper challenges that perspective and argues that this process is inherently ambiguous.

This paper is primarily conceptual in nature. It utilizes a post-structural perspective to theoretically examine the concept of meaning and the meaning making process. It then applies this analysis to the consumption and production of popular culture. Three exemplars from the domain of digital fandom are provided to explore the conceptual arguments in the paper.

The paper argues that if the meanings of all texts are fundamentally unstable and that meaning itself is endlessly deferred in the meaning making process, then as the consumer becomes the author of the text, the instability and ambiguity of meaning and the meaning making process transfers equally to the consumption process. Rather than view this as a negative aspect of consumer culture, this paper argues that some consumers relish this ambiguity and the freedom that it gives them to manipulate these products, their textual meanings, and the readers’ identities.

The primary limitation of this paper is that it is conceptual in nature. Future research should empirically examine different cases of meaningless consumption to provide more evidence of this interesting and potentially pervasive aspect of consumer behavior.

There is virtually no research that examines meaningless consumption. The value of the paper is that it challenges a core concept in cultural theories of consumer behavior and extends our understanding of consumption.

This study aims to address the question of what coordination mechanism can be used for cultural production and, in particular, for the governance of music culture production. The authors locate their reflection within the specific institutional innovations introduced in Italy in 2017, focusing on the idea of shared administration and the public–private collaboration instituted in Trentino (a province located in northern Italy) in support of its cultural policy.

This study focusses on the Trentino’s music school system. This includes 13 organisations (musicians’ cooperatives as well as associations of musicians and students, plus one municipal school which do not overlap with the public school system). To analyse shared administration features, the authors rely on selected information from 50 interviews with Trentino Music Schools (TMS) teachers and administrators, and on the proceedings of the 1994 music school conference organised by the schools at the time when this novel educational system was created.

To offer an innovative educational service, the public actor (Provincia Autonoma di Trento [PAT]) and the schools (TMS) have developed a strong interdependence at the different levels of decision-making: PAT needs organisations that are sufficiently structured and organised to respect requirements of transparency and accountability, as well as educational standards, whereas TMS need public funding to maintain their service accessible for users, good labour conditions and be financially sustainable. Likewise, the success of TMS in educating thousands of students every year, including additional teaching programmes funded by PAT within general public schools, has contributed to decrease the exclusion from music education, raise interest in young people for music and fed enrolment in TMS as well as in the public schools related to the conservatoire filière. Conclusions emphasise the existence of a polycentric system of music culture production which needs to acknowledge the risk of being trapped in a static disequilibrium, while recognising change and the need to support and promote a culture of cooperation among schools and across layered institutional levels over time.

Further research can observe this system of cultural production over time, to appreciate changes and organisational tranformations, while introducing comparative analysis with other systems in different regions.

The relationship between the public and private sectors to design, organise and manage activities of collective interest (in the social, cultural, sporting and other fields) can increasingly become an effective and efficient alternative to the traditional bureaucratic as well as to the competitive method. For this to happen, however, all actors involved must be aware not only of areas of efficiency but also of inefficiency. To remedy the latter, corrective measures will have to be introduced. For example, fostering and improving “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione” means giving all stakeholders involved the opportunity to actively participate. Should the number of participants increase, more discussion fora could be set up because one alone may not be sufficient to foster maximum involvement, to enhance different points of view, to allow for intersectoral and multidisciplinary interpretations and responses.

The system governance based on co-programming and co-design has allowed – despite limitations – to pursue educational purposes and thus well-being for the users, as well as for the teachers and the community as a whole. The continuity of this educational and cultural action has been guaranteed by the economic and financial sustainability of the schools, which is highly dependent on the public actor funding personnel costs, and in turn tied to the number of students (demand) attending each school. Actors embedded in the system need to build awareness of industry and cultural changes and knowledge of how to introduce more adaptive capacity. This points towards the need for strengthening networking capacity and collaboration among schools and other relevant stakeholders.

The case presented is a unique system of music culture production in Italy, and its governance has never been addressed by previous studies. It provides an application of shared administration to which public administrations and communities can learn to improve access to music culture and education. For public and private organisations to take advantage of the method of “co-programmazione” and “co-progettazione”, to make the production of a meritorious good more efficient and to favour its maximum accessibility, this study considers the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, or the areas of efficiency and inefficiency, for which new measures will have to be introduced.

Fans are proactive consumers of pop culture products, who can be seen as prosumers. Fanvideo production is one of their most widespread practices in the participatory culture scenario. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze how ludic prosumption is featured on plays performed in Brazilian fanvideos based on successful pop culture franchises.

Research based on the interpretive content analysis of fanvideos of plays produced by Brazilian fans based on five emblematic pop culture franchises and published on YouTube.

Results have shown six play types in the analyzed fanvideos – i.e. child's play, performing powers, cosplay, play in social rites, teaching to play and “zuêra” –, which revealed a way of having fun in different situations through different practices based on ludic consumption experiences in different spheres of social life.

CCT-based studies focused on investigating plays as ludic consumption phenomenon, as well as fan culture, remain at early research stage. Thus, the main contribution of the present study lies on associating such concepts based on the concept of prosumption.

Since the arrival of mass production, commodification has been plaguing markets – none more so than that for music. By separating production and consumption in space and time, commodification challenges the very conditions underlying economic exchange. This chapter explores authenticity as the institutional response to the commodification of music, rekindling the relationship between isolated market participants in the increasingly digitized world of music. Building upon the “Production of Culture” perspective, we unpack the commodification of music across five different institutional realms – (1) production, (2) consumption, (3) selection, (4) appropriation, and (5) classification – and provide a thoroughly relational account of authenticity as an institutional practice.