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1 – 10 of over 3000Sarah Dodds, Sandy L. Bulmer and Andrew J. Murphy
This paper aims to explore consumer experiences of spiritual value and investigates whether it is distinct from ethical value within a large and growing private sector health-care…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore consumer experiences of spiritual value and investigates whether it is distinct from ethical value within a large and growing private sector health-care setting. Understanding consumers’ experiences of spiritual value versus ethical value has important implications for corporate social responsibility as increasingly, consumers want their spiritual needs met.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts an exploratory case study approach using in-depth interviews with 16 consumers who use complementary and alternative medicine health-care services. Drawing on consumer value frameworks, a thematic analysis identified dimensions of spiritual and ethical values co-created during their consumption experiences.
Findings
From a consumer’s perspective, spiritual value is distinct from ethical value. The key finding is that participants talked about spiritual value predominantly in reactive terms (apprehending, appreciating, admiring or responding), whereas ethical value was referred to as active (taking action).
Research limitations/implications
This paper enhances the understanding of spiritual value and provides evidence that people want their spiritual needs met in a private health-care context. Furthermore, this study provides insights into the consumption experience of spiritual value that can be considered, with further research, in other health-care and service contexts.
Originality/value
This paper offers a new view on corporate social responsibility by taking a consumer’s perspective, and identifying that consumer experiences of spiritual value are important and distinct from ethical value.
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Janine Williams and Jayne Krisjanous
The rapidly increasing practice of “sharing” and “liking” religious and spiritually inspiring content on social media platforms suggests it is engaging for consumers, but it is…
Abstract
Purpose
The rapidly increasing practice of “sharing” and “liking” religious and spiritually inspiring content on social media platforms suggests it is engaging for consumers, but it is unclear why. This study aims to investigate consumer interpretations of spiritual content on social media in relation to participatory roles.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative in-depth interviews and thematic analysis are used. Members of social networks actively engaged in social media posting were identified through researcher networks and snowballing.
Findings
The social media space facilitates enhanced consumer agency in the consumption of spiritual messages which are readily accessible in this secular context. Three levels of interpretive meaning for consumers, conditional on the perceived sender motivations and temporality of receipt and related to participatory roles are identified. Despite being widely disseminated and immersed in the profane, some participants receive spiritual inspiration, which helps them achieve self-transcendence. Others receive inspiration through affirmation of their values and identity; however for a few, inspirational messages are met with scepticism and are not meaningful. Social media facilitates consumers’ ability to provide others with positive inspiration, however, this is not always their intent.
Originality/value
This work contributes unique insight regarding consumption of spirituality in a social media environment highlighting the importance of sender mediation and temporal context with implications for spiritual meaning and online engagement with spiritual content. A unique typology relating interpretive meaning to participatory roles is presented.
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Deirdre Shaw and Jennifer Thomson
Although consumption of spirituality and growth of the market in this area have been well documented, it has been largely neglected in marketing. Existing literature exploring…
Abstract
Purpose
Although consumption of spirituality and growth of the market in this area have been well documented, it has been largely neglected in marketing. Existing literature exploring spirituality has suggested consumers in this area can experience uncertainty, but lacks clarity as to whether this uncertainty results in negative or positive affective states. The aim of this paper is to explore the theoretical concept of consumer uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopts a qualitative exploratory approach through the use of interviews. It explores the theoretical concept of consumer uncertainty and its impact on affect.
Findings
The research reveals that consumers of spirituality did indeed embrace many of the products and services offered by the market in this area and they also experienced uncertainty, however, rather than negative as much of the literature surrounding uncertainty suggests, the uncertainty they experienced resulted in positive affective states.
Research limitations/implications
It is acknowledged that the current research is limited by its exploratory nature, however, it highlights that consumer uncertainty should not always be viewed as negative and provides important insights into the consumption of spirituality.
Originality/value
The current research makes a number of contributions. First, consumption of spirituality in marketing is under researched. The current research found that individuals did embrace the market in this area and enjoyed the uncertainty inherent in many of the products/services on offer. Second, uncertainty as pleasure is under researched generally in the literature. The current research has contributed to this literature through findings which reveal that uncertainty can result in positive effect and this is stable even when individuals do not know that the outcome of uncertainty will be positive or that their uncertainty will be reduced.
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The paper aims to understand how Eastern spiritual and Western secular traditions coexist in the US commercial marketplace and what lessons spiritual messages of Eastern wisdom…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to understand how Eastern spiritual and Western secular traditions coexist in the US commercial marketplace and what lessons spiritual messages of Eastern wisdom offer Western consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses qualitative methods by engaging in close reading and analysis of the narratives on food and drink packages that have a direct reference to Eastern spirituality in the form of symbolic Eastern vocabulary and images.
Findings
The paper proposes that artful sacralization of the spiritual to brand the mundane is an additional mode of cultural production used by marketers, and that this proposed mode extends the two modes (sacralization of the mundane and commodification of the spiritual) reported in previous studies.
Research limitations/implications
The relationship between Eastern spirituality and Western commercialism deserves more in-depth studies. For example, how does the Western treatment of Eastern spirituality affect its perceived authenticity and purity? Finally, what do the newly wise Westerners do with mastery of an Eastern science of life?
Practical implications
This work finds Western supermarkets to be emerging channels of Eastern spirituality. The author argues that narratives on food and drink packages perform as carriers of Eastern wisdom.
Social implications
The author also finds that the borrowed spiritual wisdom of the East has yet to be reconciled with the prevailing secular norms of Western society.
Originality/value
This has been the first known academic attempt to explore the spiritual connotation of the labels on branded food and drink packages sold in Western supermarkets.
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Using the canvas of the author’s sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat, this study aims to exhibit reflections on how spaces can be categorized as more sacred…
Abstract
Purpose
Using the canvas of the author’s sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat, this study aims to exhibit reflections on how spaces can be categorized as more sacred or less sacred according to a specific religious worldview. The paper extends the conversation on Mary Douglas’s concepts of purity and danger by sharpening the focal lens on place in Douglas’s theoretics. The paper also proffers the idea of a sojourn as a vehicle of purification.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper depicts findings from the author’s multi-sited ethnographic field notes carried out from a 40-day sojourn with the Islamic preaching group Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan.
Findings
The study unveils the concept of relative sacredness or how some spaces can be considered more sacred than others. The differential sacred status of these variegated spaces, each with its own etiquettes, meaning and consumption rituals is a means for purification for sojourners.
Originality/value
This paper prioritizes a focus on place in Mary Douglas’s arguments on purity and impurity in a religious consumption context. The thesis argues that place is a significant concept associated with metaphorical cleanliness/sacredness, which in religious terms guides consumer action.
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Mamta Soni, Sunny Dawar and Amit Soni
Global warming and drastic environment fluctuations have given rise to worldwide emergency, demanding to discover the most unexplored area in the field of social responsibility…
Abstract
Purpose
Global warming and drastic environment fluctuations have given rise to worldwide emergency, demanding to discover the most unexplored area in the field of social responsibility that is, consumer social responsibility (CnSR). This study aims to define the novel term “CnSR” and its antecedents to accomplish long-term sustainability. An in-depth analysis is executed to discover key antecedents, and proposed tool validation is implemented with the help of the big size of consumer population.
Design/methodology/approach
Primary data are collated using consumer responses, and reliability statistics were analyzed implementing Cronbach's alpha, and factor analysis is performed for required validation.
Findings
Probing existing research, CnSR was mostly correlated with consumers’ ethical and moral behavior. The present work proposes a unique tool which has successfully revealed a broader approach resulting in four vital antecedents: environmental orientation (EO), ethical and moral disposition (EMD), spiritual orientation (SO) and orientation toward shared consumption (OSC). Cronbach's alpha is adopted to determine internal consistency of the survey and has showed precision of 0.953 which affirms accuracy of the proposed tool.
Research limitations/implications
Splitting of EO using factor analysis into environmental oriented preference (EOP) and recyclable oriented preference (ROP) has indicated further required inputs for better understanding.
Practical implications
Sustainable issues were limited to corporates in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Present work demands consumer awareness about their consumption consequences and fix their responsibility to achieve long-term sustainability.
Originality/value
The present study is the first to identify the antecedents of CnSR and effectively demonstrates a tool for the same.
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Manoël Pénicaud and Anne-Gaëlle Jolivot
To date, a few studies have examined the use and circulation of votive materiality in religious pilgrimages. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has explored…
Abstract
Purpose
To date, a few studies have examined the use and circulation of votive materiality in religious pilgrimages. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has explored the ritual reuse of votive materiality within pilgrimages. This paper aims to explore the (re)uses and circulations of votive materiality in the ritual process.
Design/methodology/approach
In the analysis, the authors adopt the cross-views of an anthropologist and a marketing researcher. Votive practices are examined through the anthropologist’s past ethnographies. Audiovisual data play a central role in this analysis. Moreover, the authors choose a comparative perspective by focusing on two not famed pilgrimage arenas, each mobilising Muslim pilgrims and food offerings.
Findings
Revisiting the thoughts of Weber (1978) on the religious field and those of Kotler (2019) on transformational experiences, the authors propose a graphic schematisation to trace the circulations of votive materiality (sugar) involving four interdependent ideal-typical actors: the merchant, the priest, the mystical operator and the pilgrim-consumer who, in her/his quest for the divine, is the target for the first three. Either pilgrims or mystical operators can ritually reuse votive materiality. However, such reuses are not performed for ecological purposes, but for practical reasons, mainly due to an overabundance of votive materiality.
Originality/value
It is often believed that a votive object is only for single use, used only once, for a single request or thanksgiving, by a single person. But the authors show that once used, certain votive objects – as vehicles for grace – can be reused, revealing an unexpected ritual reuse.
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Qiongwei Ye and Baojun Ma
Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to…
Abstract
Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.
Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction based on first impression bias, which explains how customers’ perceived…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction based on first impression bias, which explains how customers’ perceived service-entry waiting time (PSWT) influences their first impression of service staff and satisfaction in the context of online service. Furthermore, the moderating effect of three information formats (formal, informal and hybrid) of opening remark on the relationship between PSWT and first impression, and the moderating effect of perceived in-service waiting time (PIWT) on the relationship between first impression and customer satisfaction are investigated.
Design/methodology/approach
Two studies were used to verify the research model. First, an experiment on prepurchase consulting services for cruise tourism products was designed, and 810 Chinese individuals have participated. Second, 20 interviews with e-commerce practitioners in China were conducted.
Findings
The results show that, first, PSWT negatively influences customers’ first impression of service staff. Second, customers prefer the hybrid format to present opening remarks, which not only conveys the respect of the staff but also fosters a relationship. Third, in-service waits are equally as important as service-entry waits in online service. When PIWT is longer, the positive influence of first impression on customer satisfaction is weakening, resulting in lower customer satisfaction.
Practical implications
This study provides suggestions for online service enterprises to minimize the negative impact of waiting time and improve customer satisfaction through waiting time management.
Originality/value
This study provides a new perspective for exploring the mechanism of waiting time on customer satisfaction in online service context, and extends previous research related to waiting time by exploring the influence of waiting time in multiple service stages and expression modes of service staff.
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