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Young people’s attachment to their smartphones is well-documented, with smartphones often described as prostheses. While prior studies typically assume a clear human/machine divide, this paper aims to build on posthuman perspectives, exploring intercorporeality, the blurring of human/technology boundaries, between emerging adults and their smartphones. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Drawing on assemblage theory, this interpretive study uses smartphone diaries and friendship pair/small group discussions with 27 British emerging adults.

Participants in this study are characterized as homo prostheticus, living with and through their phones, treating them as extensions of their mind and part of their selves as they navigated between their online and offline, private and social lives. Homo prostheticus was part of a broader assemblage or amalgamation of human and non-human components. As these components interacted with each other, the assemblage could be strengthened or weakened by various technological, personal and social factors.

These qualitative findings are based on a particular sample at a particular point in time, within a particular culture. Further research could explore intercorporeality in human–smartphone relationships among other groups, in other cultures.

Although other studies have used prosthetic metaphors, this paper contributes to understanding of smartphones as a prostheses in the lives of emerging adults, highlighting intercorporeality as a key feature of homo prostheticus. It also uses assemblage theory to contextualize homo prostheticus and explores factors strengthening or weakening the broader human–smartphone assemblage.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of the role of social media in negotiating and managing identity for transient migrants relating to the home and host culture during the acculturation process.

Focussing on international students in the UK, this paper reports on findings from a qualitative study involving interviews with 27 transient migrants about their social media use and the negotiation of their identity online.

This paper highlights the multifaceted role that social media plays in the identity negotiations of transient migrants and it offers three theoretical contributions. First, the authors show that social media serves as a medium, consequence and determinant of identity. Second, provide four strategies for identity management are provided: boundary management, access management, online content management and offline content management. Third, contextualised support is provided for a reciprocal relationship between the different identity-related roles played by social media.

The paper highlights the complex role of social media for identity within the acculturation process for transient migrants. Identity contestation may be salient for young student migrants, especially where there is a large cultural distance between the home and host culture. Identity negotiations and struggles may not be salient with older migrants or migrants who have migrated for different reasons or where there is a small cultural distance between the home and host culture.

This paper offers recommendations for social media site designers for enhancing the users experience during acculturation by guiding the navigation with identity management strategies as well as to highlight the possible predicaments of not managing their identity online.

Based on qualitative research with transient migrants using social media during acculturation, the paper provides a theoretical model of the role and reciprocal relationship of social media for identity, serving the role as a medium, consequence and determinant. The paper incorporates four identity management strategies that migrants can use on social media.

Some background to the removal of advertising restrictions in the accounting profession are provided and the literature on accountants′ attitudes to advertising reviewed. The findings of a survey among UK chartered accountancy firms on their promotional practices following the removal of restrictions are presented. Firm size was found to have a significant effect on advertising activities, with larger firms more likely to advertise, employ the services of advertising agencies, devote greater resources to advertising and to evaluate its effectiveness. Personal service emerged as important both as a criterion in the selection of advertising agencies and as an ingredient in the advertising messages developed, which tended to have a high informational content. Finally, a heavy reliance on print media was found to exist.

While analysts of postmodernism have feasted on marketing practices, the marketing discipline has been slow to acquire a taste for postmodernism. Offers marketers a taste of what it has to offer by examining the concept of intertextuality and demonstrating its reliance to advertising texts and their production and consumption. Drawing on a qualitative study of young adults, shows how their descriptions and experiences of particular ads shaped and were shaped by their experiences of other texts. Considers the implications of intertextuality for consumers’ attitudes, involvement and literacy with respect to advertising, for the link between ad and brand consumption, and the relationship between marketing theory and practice.

The purpose of this study is to investigate narcissism in relation to consumer identity projects. Narcissism is rarely the focus of consumer culture studies, though it resonates with theories of individualistic, consumption-driven identities, and is argued to be a pervasive social trend within a hegemonic consumer culture that places the individual center stage. We explore these themes in the context of emerging adult identity projects given arguments about increasing narcissism in younger generations.

Identifying eight participants using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory – four with high and four with low scores – we conduct in-depth interviews to explore their identity projects, narcissistic traits, and brand relationships.

Through idiographic analysis, we find that those with lower narcissistic tendencies seem to have a communal orientation to both people and brands, whilst those with greater narcissistic tendencies tend to be individualistic and agentic. We relate the narcissistic consumer to Fromm’s “marketing character,” proposing four themes that emerge from the analysis: liquidity; an other-directed sense of self; conformity; and the commodification of self.

This paper discusses the societal implications of individualistic consumer identity projects, highlighting narcissism, a concept relatively neglected within consumer culture theory. Narcissism carries with it a host of societal implications, not least of which is a focus on the self and a lack of concern with the wellbeing of others.

This paper examines the value of mobile phones in ethnographic research, and seeks to demonstrate how this particular technology can support and enhance participant observation.

Reflecting in detail on one researcher's experience of incorporating this technological device into an ethnographic study, the paper considers how new observational tools can contribute to research beyond data generation.

The study suggests that the mobile phone can be an extension of the ethnographer and act as a powerful prosthetic, allowing the researcher to translate ethnographic principles into practice.

This paper reflects on the uses of a mobile phone in an ethnographic study of young men's consumer experiences. Thus, the discussion focuses on a research site where the mobile phone holds a ubiquitous position. However, there are now more than four billion mobile phones in circulation worldwide, so whilst acknowledging important differences in research sites, this research can be seen to have wide implications beyond the study of young consumers.

The paper argues that mobile phones allow researchers to record their observations, co‐create data and share experiences with their participants in ways that enhance the quality of ethnographic interpretations and understanding.

Little research attention has been paid to how emerging technologies support the more traditional participant observer, or how researchers actually embed them within their fieldwork. This paper addresses this gap and considers the wide‐ranging role that technology can have throughout this research process.

Outlines uses and gratifications theory and its limited advertising applications to date. Presents findings from a qualitative study which identifies many marketing and non‐marketing uses of advertising by young Scottish adults. Argues that this supports a view of audiences as active, selective and sophisticated consumers of advertising. Suggests that the active, reward‐seeking consumer of advertising challenges traditional models of advertising effectiveness and requires a reorientation of the advertising‐planning process.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to enhance the understanding of non-profit marketing and consumer identities by exploring volunteering as a form of symbolic consumption. Specifically, it seeks to examine how young people – both volunteers and non-volunteers – understand and relate to volunteer stereotypes, and how they manage stigma in negotiating their social identities in relation to volunteering.

Grounded in consumer culture theory, the study uses mixed qualitative methods, incorporating focus groups, paired and individual interviews and a projective drawing task.

Five volunteering-related stereotypes were identified: the older charity shop worker, the sweet singleton, the environmental protestor, the ordinary volunteer and the non-volunteer. Participants related to positive and negative attributes of these stereotypes in different ways. This led volunteers and non-volunteers to engage in a range of impression management strategies, some of which bolstered their own identities by stigmatising other groups.

The sample was drawn from 39 individuals aged 16-24 years and living in Scotland.

Because stereotypes are acknowledged as a major barrier to volunteering, particularly among young people, a greater understanding of how these stereotypes are understood and negotiated can assist non-profit marketers in recruiting and retaining volunteers.

This paper draws on theories of consumer culture and stigma to explore volunteering as a form of symbolic consumption, examines volunteering stereotypes among both volunteers and non-volunteers and uses multiple qualitative methods to facilitate articulation of young people’s experiences in this area.