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Article
Publication date: 9 March 2012

Simona Ironico

This article seeks to make a critical contribution to the contemporary debate on the active role of children as consumers, exploring the different meanings children confer on…

3769

Abstract

Purpose

This article seeks to make a critical contribution to the contemporary debate on the active role of children as consumers, exploring the different meanings children confer on consumer goods and spaces in retail settings.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 60 children were unobtrusively observed in ten Italian apparel stores.

Findings

Children tend to subvert the stores' possible uses and symbolizations by actively re‐appropriating the meanings of products, promotional stimuli and spaces through play.

Practical implications

The analysis of children's lived experience of commercial spaces enables retailers to adjust the stores' environment to children's demands, recognising their role as active meaning creators.

Originality/value

The playful re‐appropriation of spaces, products and promotional stimuli emerged as a mechanism through which children learn to consume, reinforcing their knowledge and attitudes about retail settings, products and brands.

Article
Publication date: 15 November 2013

Ariela Mortara and Simona Ironico

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of creative re-appropriation of goods, symbols, and other manifestations of the dominant material culture in the Emo subculture…

1354

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of creative re-appropriation of goods, symbols, and other manifestations of the dominant material culture in the Emo subculture identity construction process.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted an ethnographic study on a purposive sample of social networks, blogs, discussion forums and online platforms for images sharing. Verbatim and visual texts as photos, drawings and moodboards were qualitatively content analysed in order to understand the network of meanings underlying the ambiguous amalgam of signs composing the Emo style.

Findings

Consistent with the literature, the qualitative content analysis of texts, images, videos, drawings and other forms of fan art typical of this micro culture revealed four key areas of semantic value: the aestheticization of inner pain, the sense of alienation and isolation from socio-cultural mainstream, the search for authenticity, and the need for emotional connection.

Research limitations/implications

The research followed a quite new research method, the netnographic approach, originally developed to analyse brand communities.

Practical implications

Emo creative practices of re-appropriation of goods, symbols and icons of the dominant culture reveal a subtle message of protest against the consumer society and the commodification of everyday life.

Originality/value

The paper presents the deconstruction of Emo Lifestyle and Aesthetics analysing the system of meanings underneath the rituals Emos share through the Web.

Details

Young Consumers, vol. 14 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-3616

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 September 2016

Bernard Paranque

This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a…

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment.

Methodology/approach

By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this chapter explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e. cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value).

Findings

This chapter offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of coordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world.

Practical implications

It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.

Originality/value

Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property.

Details

Finance Reconsidered: New Perspectives for a Responsible and Sustainable Finance
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-980-0

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 October 2016

Kafia Ayadi and Lanlan Cao

The purpose of this paper is to explore children’s responses to store atmosphere, and the role of parent-child interaction in these responses.

1757

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore children’s responses to store atmosphere, and the role of parent-child interaction in these responses.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a qualitative study within two French stores and employed a grounded-theory approach to analyse data. Data were collected from 41 in-store observations and 20 in-depth interviews with children aged 7-11.

Findings

This research reveals that the impact of store atmospherics on children’s responses to store environment and on their behaviour in-store is a complex phenomenon. Children passively and actively respond to store atmosphere. They appropriate and re-appropriate store environment for their own goal of play. Store atmospherics may lead to positive outcomes in the form of children’s exploration of the store, desire to stay longer and intention to revisit. However, store atmosphere can also become the source of conflicts between parents and children, and therefore have a negative impact on children’s behaviour in-store.

Research limitations/implications

The study deepens the understanding of children’s responses to store atmosphere by taking account of parent-child interaction. It extends research on the effects of store atmosphere on children’s behaviour by suggesting the moderating effect of parent-child conflict. Nevertheless, the number of stores selected limits the findings.

Practical implications

The findings of this study enable retailers to improve the atmosphere of their stores by making it fun and creative in order to attract children to play there. Furthermore, the study provides interesting findings for retailers on how to overcome the challenge of inappropriate store atmosphere creating or aggravating parent-child conflict during shopping trips.

Social implications

The authors suggest solving conflicts between children and parents through common activities within the store or through interactive technologies that favour communication and enable children to learn through play.

Originality/value

The originality of this paper lies in its focus on the role of parent-child interaction in children’s responses to store atmosphere. The authors intend to reveal the complicated relationship between store atmosphere, children’s responses and parent-child interaction in-store.

Details

International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, vol. 44 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-0552

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2018

Roel Wijland and Stephen Brown

This paper aims to explore brand rhythm in a lyrical analysis. It aims to provide insights into the appropriation of temporal meaning in material, collective and individual…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore brand rhythm in a lyrical analysis. It aims to provide insights into the appropriation of temporal meaning in material, collective and individual contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

The design offers a structured advance in lyrical qualitative research and the complementary third alternative to story and drama as more frequent representational forms in interpretive projects. This project presents an aesthetic performance in the sequential constructs of mimesis, poiesis and kinesis.

Findings

The inquiry confirms the paradoxical evolution of a brand’s temporal aspects and the importance of rhythm perception as a performative act of semantic bootstrapping and evolving brand meaning in general.

Research limitations/implications

This project shows the importance of brand rhythm and pace in a triangulated methodological sequence of poetic perspectives as an advance of the current qualitative poetic state of play in research. It has implications for the strategic style management of brands in general.

Practical implications

This paper proposes the importance of brand rhythm as a differentiating attribute. The project presents a repeatable case study which depicts managers a structured poetic approach to capture the temporal essence of brands.

Social implications

This project is situated in the context of an area that has become to be known as the Timeless Land. The artistic (re-)appropriation of a temporal aspect has had an impact on the development of public attitudes and policy.

Originality/value

This project offers new insights into the temporal aspects of brands and the construct of brand rhythm in particular. It completes Altieri’s three literary approaches in a performative inquiry. The proposition of the lyrical third way in a theoretical framework should facilitate the acceptance and increasing currency of future poetic projects in marketing.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 21 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 September 2019

Isto Huvila

Information science research has begun to broaden its traditional focus on information seeking to cover other modes of acquiring information. The purpose of this paper is to move…

Abstract

Purpose

Information science research has begun to broaden its traditional focus on information seeking to cover other modes of acquiring information. The purpose of this paper is to move forward on this trajectory and to present a framework for explicating how in addition to being sought, existing information are made useful and taken into use.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual enquiry draws on an empirical vignette based on an observation study of an archaeological teaching excavation. The conceptual perspective builds on Andersen’s genre approach and Huvila’s notion of situational appropriation.

Findings

This paper suggests that information becomes appropriable, and appropriated (i.e. taken into use), when informational and social genres intertwine with each other. This happens in a continuous process of (re)appropriation of information where existing information scaffolds new information and the on-going process of appropriation.

Originality/value

The approach is proposed as a potentially powerful conceptualisation for explicating information interactions when existing information is taken into use rather than sought that have received little attention in traditional models and theories of human information behaviour.

Article
Publication date: 15 June 2010

Louis Mathiot

This study seeks to show that children are not passive consumers, rather that they have a reflexive attitude towards their eating practice and the ability to override food‐use…

Abstract

Purpose

This study seeks to show that children are not passive consumers, rather that they have a reflexive attitude towards their eating practice and the ability to override food‐use rules invented by the manufacturers.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on an ethnographic survey conducted among families with children aged from six to 12, the paper will seek to show, from the child's point of view, why fun products, which at first sight are so beguiling, are not in fact much fun when used. From the observations made of the children's eating practices with regard to specific fun foods, and from interviews with the children on these, it emerges that these foods give the child little scope for deciding how to eat them.

Findings

Over the years, there has appeared on the market a range of fun food products for which clear instructions are given on how children should eat and play with them. Despite copy, produced with the young consumer in mind, and carefully defined product affordance, consumer practice is far removed from what the product designers expect. For children, however, deviating from prescribed use and re‐appropriating products with their own “art of doing” or food‐use techniques are key elements of their eating practice.

Originality/value

Most of the studies on that topic are centred on fun food manufacturers and industry. The most original aspect of this study is to focus on the children's representations, discourses and practices. Thus it provides a new aspect on fun food consumption.

Details

Young Consumers, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-3616

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1997

Véronique Aubert‐Gamet

An intentional meander around the central issue of servicescapes design. Proposes that there are worthwhile lessons to be learned from the way in which users divert and subvert…

6236

Abstract

An intentional meander around the central issue of servicescapes design. Proposes that there are worthwhile lessons to be learned from the way in which users divert and subvert the planned design of physical support. Advocates that servicescape is not only acting on users in order to achieve marketing goals, but also it is acted on by users in order to frame existential goals. In this constructivist approach, the consumer is considered as a co‐builder of the servicescape. While experiencing service, the consumer can create new meanings and unusual functions which could raise opportunities to improve service management.

Details

International Journal of Service Industry Management, vol. 8 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0956-4233

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 November 2023

Mark Badham, Vilma Luoma-aho and Chiara Valentini

This paper refines the Digital Media–Arena (DMA) framework to address the diversity of stakeholders contributing to the production, (re)appropriation and (re)distribution of…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper refines the Digital Media–Arena (DMA) framework to address the diversity of stakeholders contributing to the production, (re)appropriation and (re)distribution of organisational messages in digital environments. It also presents a case analysis for the purpose of demonstrating the applicability of the revised conceptual framework to a critical situation.

Design/methodology/approach

Grounded in key public relations, corporate communication and strategic communication research, this study first extends the DMA framework by introducing six new forms of media-arenas. Next, the study takes a public sector perspective to analyse the revised framework against a critical situation involving the Finnish prime minister in summer 2022.

Findings

The application of the revised DMA framework to analyse the critical situation shows the importance of mapping and understanding diverse discourses across multi-arenas and their communication role in a rapidly unfolding scandal surrounding the prime minister of Finland. Findings also reveal the diversity of stakeholder voices forming their own versions of organisational messages and sometimes converging organisational messages within and across DMAs.

Practical implications

The DMA framework can offer practical suggestions to guide communicators to make strategic choices in what, where, how and with whom they can communicate.

Originality/value

The revised DMA framework contributes expanding the field's knowledge of the strategic communicative use of the digital environment in typically highly volatile and multi-vocal situations by offering instrumental understanding of the conflicting challenge between subjugating and liberating organisational messages across the digital spectrum.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 19 October 2023

Daniel Simonet

Often linked to the New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, agencification has been on the priority list of policy makers for over two decades. This article proposes an analysis of…

Abstract

Purpose

Often linked to the New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, agencification has been on the priority list of policy makers for over two decades. This article proposes an analysis of the role of agencies in the French health system and the impact of government agency reform on physicians and the public.

Design/methodology/approach

The research analyzes the perceived implementation of a re-concentration of decision-making powers within public agencies as the declared goal of agencification at the French health care system, specifically primary care providers and hospitals. The assessment relies on secondary sources from ministerial bodies such as the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, the Social Security and the General Accounting Office, and specialized French technical agencies.

Findings

Decentralization in France and the subsequent rise of public health care agencies had outcomes below expectations. Hence, a re-concentration of decision-making powers within the larger Regional Health Agencies; a streamlining of the public administration; and a re-appropriation of decision-making powers by the Ministry of Health are needed. The monitoring of health providers allows central health authorities to govern at a distance.

Originality/value

The analysis of health care agencies in France and of their use of efficiency-enhancing techniques may trigger a change of values within the medical profession.

Details

Public Administration and Policy, vol. 26 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1727-2645

Keywords

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