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1 – 10 of over 13000Imagination is a complex mental process where consciousness departs from reality to create new content not currently found in existence. Imagination is key to marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
Imagination is a complex mental process where consciousness departs from reality to create new content not currently found in existence. Imagination is key to marketing persuasion, but studies that examine consumer imagination in response to marketing messages illustrate confusing and sometimes contradictory perspectives about consumers’ mental processing. This paper aims to provide a review of the existing literature on consumer imagination relevant to marketing scholarship, and builds a new theoretical framework to organize and explain these papers.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review of the marketing literature was undertaken to identify all papers related to consumer imagination and its role in marketing persuasion. A focus was placed on empirical papers, review papers and meta-analyses.
Findings
A new conceptual framework was created to classify the consumer imagination literature based on both the characteristics and the content of imagination. The existing marketing literature was then organized into the framework. The framework helps to explain seeming contradictions between different studies as well as helps to collect similar studies together to summarize schools of thought.
Originality/value
The imagination framework presents an entirely new way of conceptualizing imagination research in marketing. This new categorization structure not only clarifies consumers’ use of imagination in response to marketing messages but also identifies questions for future research in this area of marketing theory.
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The purpose of this study is to examine employee imagination and implications for entrepreneurs of China. In 2015, the European Group of Organization Studies released a call for…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine employee imagination and implications for entrepreneurs of China. In 2015, the European Group of Organization Studies released a call for papers highlighting poor knowledge of employee imagination in organizations. To address this need, the current study hypothesizes employee imagination consisting of seven conditions common to the organizational experience of Chinese Entrepreneurs.
Design/methodology/approach
The current paper reviews the Chinese enterprising context. Cases from China are used to illustrate the effects of proposed conditions and their value for entrepreneurs and innovators in businesses undergoing change.
Findings
Employee imagination underpins and conditions how Chinese employees make sense of their organizations and better understand the process of organizational change. From the viewpoint of human resource management, emphasis on coaching and developing imagination enables businesses to stay competitive and adapt to environmental demands such as lack of information, too much information or the need for new information.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed conditions apply to the Chinese context; however, their application to wider contexts is suggested and requires attention.
Practical implications
Employee imagination was found to be a powerful tool, which facilitates the process of organizational change management.
Originality/value
Theoretically, the research adds new insights to knowledge of a poorly understood organizational behavior topic – employee imagination. Practically, the research findings provide mangers with knowledge of conditions, which could be adopted as powerful tools in facilitating organizational change management.
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Imagination in critical literacy research is usually referred to as a taken for granted concept that is seldom theorised, leaving the assumptions unchecked that everyone has a…
Abstract
Purpose
Imagination in critical literacy research is usually referred to as a taken for granted concept that is seldom theorised, leaving the assumptions unchecked that everyone has a shared understanding of imagination. This paper aims to challenge critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and its implication for a critical writing pedagogy. It aims to synthesise the imagination and criticality in the context of critical literacy, both theoretically and empirically and in doing so to illustrate what form a critical writing pedagogy that foregrounds the critical imagination might take.
Design/methodology/approach
This argument is illustrated through analysing two sets of data that contain embodied enactments of contested gender issues across different modes and genres. Data from student teachers’ embodied enactments of contested gender issues and from their writing on these issues were analysed thematically.
Findings
A crucial aspect of the critical imagination entails creating pedagogical spaces that mobilise affect and empathy alongside criticality. Embodied literacy work across different modes and genres can play a significant role in facilitating the critical imagination by enabling students to enact, perform and immerse themselves in different discourses, ultimately generating new insights and ways of seeing.
Research limitations/implications
Data was drawn from a relatively small sample of 30 assignments in the context of teacher education in South Africa. More empirical research needs to be conducted across a wider range of contexts.
Practical implications
The paper provides a theoretical framework and practical ideas for implementing a critical writing pedagogy that foregrounds the critical imagination and thus could be used in both teacher education contexts and school literacy classrooms.
Originality/value
This paper challenges critical literacy researchers to rethink the relationship between criticality and imagination and its implication for a critical writing pedagogy.
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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the parallels between the ethical concept of moral imagination and the psychoanalytical concept of active imagination. A model combining…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight the parallels between the ethical concept of moral imagination and the psychoanalytical concept of active imagination. A model combining both concepts is then proposed and discussed. The paper argues that such synthesis is necessary to understand the process of moral deliberation, as well as to foster more consistent moral choices in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is conceptual, and builds upon relevant literature from the field of business ethics and analytical psychology.
Findings
Imagination is a thoroughly ambivalent concept, which can be used to pursue moral as well as immoral goals. Moral imagination is an important element influencing decision making, but its quality depends on the state of balance of the psyche. A sound and effective moral imagination must be grounded in a healthy psyche, and needs the assistance of active imagination (or other similar activities) to achieve this. Such inner work is especially necessary for leaders to clarify their moral values and capabilities.
Research limitations/implications
The Active and Moral Imagination (AMI) model proposed has not been empirically tested; therefore its implications are tentative at this stage. The paper does not discuss in detail other psychological activities which may be complementary to active imagination.
Practical implications
Managers and leaders should reflect on their own unconscious, so as to understand the deeper mechanisms influencing their decisions and behaviours.
Originality/value
The paper presents an interdisciplinary approach to the role of imagination in ethics.
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Spencer J. Maxcy and Stephen J. Caldas
An increasingly popular argument proposes that the problems inpublic schooling may be solved through stronger, more morallyimaginative leadership. School administrators ought to…
Abstract
An increasingly popular argument proposes that the problems in public schooling may be solved through stronger, more morally imaginative leadership. School administrators ought to set forth a vision growing out of this moral responsibility, and may be trained to utilise moral imagination in directing teachers and students towards certain moral visions. A critique of the argument is presented and alternative (and conflicting) meanings of “moral imagination” surveyed. Four models of moral imagination are located: as discovery; as moral authority; as faculty of mind, and as super science. It is argued that each of these conceptions has inherent difficulties. The logical relationship of these views is explored. The notion of “school leadership” is traced in the literature as it has been attached to “moral imagination”. The work of W. Greenfield is examined and a philosophy of school administration, with certain assumptions, regarding values and authority, that reveal key difficulties for the unfettered use of “moral imagination” in school administration, is found. It is concluded that “moral imagination” ought to be replaced with “critical imagination”, coupled with “democratic value deliberation” and by so doing a richer leadership will result, leading to the empowerment of teachers and a fuller serving of the public good.
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Manveer K. Mann and Yuping Liu-Thompkins
This study aims to examine gender differences in the impact of imagining product use on purchase decisions. The authors argue that while imagination can enhance purchase intention…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine gender differences in the impact of imagining product use on purchase decisions. The authors argue that while imagination can enhance purchase intention for female consumers, it can be detrimental to male consumers. This study explores the conditions under which imagination can be turned into a positive device for male consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experimental studies were conducted. The first two studies illustrate the differential effects of imagination on males vs females. Given the negative effect found among males, the third study focused exclusively on male consumers to identify conditions under which the negative impact of imagination on these consumers can be alleviated.
Findings
Studies 1 and 2 show that while an imagination tactic has positive or no effect on female consumers, a generic imagination request lowers male consumers’ purchase intention. Focusing on potential ways of alleviating this negative effect, Study 3 shows that for males without prior brand ownership experience, imagining product use in a less-typical context can increase purchase intention.
Research limitations/implications
The results provide evidence that gender impacts the effectiveness of imagination in improving product evaluation. Furthermore, the context of imagination and previous brand experience can be used together to determine how male consumers respond to imagination.
Practical implications
The study’s findings warn against the blind use of imagination tactics. Instead, retailers need to customize imagination tactics based on gender, previous brand experience and product usage context.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers to examine the impact of gender on the influence of imagination on product evaluation.
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Chloe Preece and Alexandros Skandalis
While the spatial dimensions of augmented reality (AR) have received significant attention in the marketing literature, to date, there has been less consideration of its temporal…
Abstract
Purpose
While the spatial dimensions of augmented reality (AR) have received significant attention in the marketing literature, to date, there has been less consideration of its temporal dimensions. This paper aims to theorise digital timework through AR to understand a new form of consumption experience that offers short-lived, immersive forms of mundane, marketer-led escape from everyday life.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw upon Casey’s phenomenological work to explore the emergence of new dynamics of temporalisation through digitised play. An illustrative case study using AR shows how consumers use this temporalisation to find stability and comfort through projecting backwards (remembering) and forwards (imagining) in their lives.
Findings
The proliferation of novel digital technologies and platforms has radically transformed consumption experiences as the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, fantasy and reality and play and work have become increasingly blurred. The findings show how temporary escape is carved out within digital space and time, where controlled imaginings provide consumers with an illusion of control over their lives as they re-establish cohesion in a ruptured sense of time.
Research limitations/implications
The authors consider the more critical implications of the offloading capacity of AR, which they show does not prevent cognitive processes such as imagination and remembering but rather puts limits on them. The authors show that these more short-lived, everyday types of digitised escape do not allow for an escape from the structures of everyday life within the market, as much of the previous literature suggests.
Practical implications
The authors argue that corporations need to reflect upon the potential threats of immersive technologies such as AR in harming consumer escapism and take these into serious consideration as part of their strategic experiential design strategies to avoid leading to detrimental effects upon consumer well-being. More nuanced conceptualisations are required to unpack the antecedents of limiting people’s imagination and potentially limiting the fully fledged escape that consumers might desire.
Originality/value
Prior work has conceptualised AR as offloading the need for imagination by making the absent present. The authors critically unpack the implications of this for a more fluid understanding of the temporal logics and limits of consumer escapism.
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Damiano Cortese and Alex Murdock
The paper suggests moral imagination as an approach to picture sustainable scenarios in the food industry, which are based on knowledge sharing among stakeholders and knowledge…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper suggests moral imagination as an approach to picture sustainable scenarios in the food industry, which are based on knowledge sharing among stakeholders and knowledge management. This can lead to a wider awareness, consequently a deeper understanding and finally more sustainable behaviors and choices in the food sector.
Design/methodology/approach
The research paper analyzes the relevant literature on sustainability, stakeholder theory, knowledge management and moral imagination. It proposes a moral imagination process and provides some cases to clarify its applicability.
Findings
Inter-stakeholder shared knowledge and consequent knowledge management can lead to the projection of more aware sustainable scenarios over time, overcoming a short-sighted or partial vision. The process of moral imagination can be an approach and tool for coping with sustainability-related critical issues, challenges and dilemmas in the food sector.
Research limitations/implications
The article is a research paper, but the suggested process of moral imagination intends to provoke further reasoning and contributions to moral imagination and the stakeholders' role, responsibility and awareness related to sustainability in the food industry.
Practical implications
Even if theoretical, the paper can have well replicable managerial implications and applications in the design of sustainable scenarios in the food sector overcoming the asymmetries and bias. In particular, it is very useful conceiving the choices and outlining the behaviors upon which the firm's actions are based.
Originality/value
The article considers the broad spectrum of sustainability and its wide global reflection as well as the role of all stakeholders without a solely strategic focus and implications.
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Ross Gordon, Joseph Ciorciari and Tom van Laer
This paper aims to present a study using encephalography (EEG) to investigate consumer responses to narrative videos in energy efficiency social marketing. The purpose is to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a study using encephalography (EEG) to investigate consumer responses to narrative videos in energy efficiency social marketing. The purpose is to assess the role of attention, working memory, emotion and imagination in narrative transportation, and how these stages of narrative transportation are ordered temporally.
Design/methodology/approach
Consumers took part in an EEG experiment during which they were shown four different narrative videos to identify brain response during specific video segments.
Findings
The study found that during the opening segment of the videos, attention, working memory and emotion were high before attenuating with some introspection at the end of this segment. During the story segment of the videos attention, working memory and emotion were also high, with attention decreasing later on but working memory, emotion and imagination being evident. Consumer responses to each of the four videos differed.
Practical implications
The study suggests that narratives can be a useful approach in energy efficiency social marketing. Specifically, marketers should attempt to gain focused attention and invoke emotional responses, working memory and imagination to help consumers become narratively transported. The fit between story object and story-receiver should also be considered when creating consumer narratives.
Social implications
Policymakers and organisations that wish to promote pro-social behaviours such as using energy efficiently or eating healthily should consider using narratives.
Originality/value
This research contributes to theory by identifying brain response relating to attention, working memory, emotion and imagination during specific stages of narrative transportation. The study considers the role of attention, emotion, working memory and imagination during reception of stories with different objects, and how these may relate to consumers’ narrative transportation.
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Wooyoung (William) Jang, Kevin K. Byon, Antonio Williams and Paul M. Pedersen
While each genre and gender has been revealed as significant moderators for esports gameplay intention, exploring the interaction effects between genre and gender could broaden…
Abstract
Purpose
While each genre and gender has been revealed as significant moderators for esports gameplay intention, exploring the interaction effects between genre and gender could broaden our understanding of the drivers’ relative effects on esports gameplay intention. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the interaction effects of gender and genre in the relationship between esports gameplay intention and its drivers (i.e. hedonic motivation, habit, price value, effort expectancy, social influence and flow).
Design/methodology/approach
The hypothesized model was examined using data from a sample (N = 1,194). For the purposes of data analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to examine the hypothesized model. Then, a series of structural invariance tests were conducted to compare the interrelationship between the six determinants and esports gameplay for the six-group model.
Findings
The results of the six-group model comparison indicated that the interaction between gender and genre moderates the relationship between drivers and esports gameplay intention. In particular, the following moderation effects were observed: (1) “social influence-esports gameplay intention” between “male-physical enactment” and “female-physical enactment”; (2) “habit-esports gameplay intention” and (3) “effort expectancy-esports gameplay intention” between “female-imagination” and “female-physical enactment”; (4) “hedonic motivation-esports gameplay intention” and (5) “effort expectancy-esports gameplay intention” between “female-physical enactment” and “female-sport simulation.”
Originality/value
The findings of this current study contributed to clarifying the genre and gender effects in esports gameplay intention and thus the extension of the Esports Consumption (ESC) model (Jang et al., 2020a) and the technology adoption literature. Since the ESC model grounded the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2), the improvement of the ESC model extended UTAUT2. In consumer behavior research in the esports context, this current study contributed to the extension of UTAUT2 on the new moderating mechanisms by adding the interaction between gender and esports game genre.
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