Understanding co‐consumption between consumers and their pets

Pets live with people; they participate in people's everyday life activities and are often seen as human‐like family members. Consumers in the industrialized countries are investing more money in their pets and spending more time with them than ever before. The pet and the owner can even be considered to form a unit that consumes together. In this article, we develop a conceptual understanding of co‐consumption by examining how pets act as co‐consumers in everyday consumption. The pet owner and pet have joint consumption experiences in which they interact with other actors such as service providers. The consumer (pet owner) consumes because of the pet, meaning that he or she constantly needs to take the pet into account in choices and activities beyond pet‐related consumption, such as what kind of car to buy, where to work, whom to marry and how to live. The co‐consumer (pet) also acts as an active agent who experiences, feels, suffers and likes the goods and services that the consumer buys for the pet. Reciprocally, the pet provides the consumer (pet owner) with companionship, support and a boost to wellbeing. As such, our research suggests that co‐consumption provides an understanding not only of consumption with pets but also of other contexts, especially those in which the aim is shared well‐being such as consumption together with children, the disabled or the elderly.     

In‐store shopping hassles: Conceptualization and classification

A positive shopping experience provides retailers with a competitive advantage. However, retail environments pose numerous hassles that may negatively affect consumer experiences. Integrating perspectives from attribution theory and expectation theory, we examine the concept of shopping hassle and how it differs from that of retail service failure. Furthermore, we utilize qualitative approaches to explore what shopping episodes consumers perceive as hassles. Conducting semi‐structured in‐depth interviews in Study 1, we develop a classification framework of in‐store shopping hassles. In Study 2, we use a critical incident technique approach to gain a further understanding of types of shopping hassle.     

Effects of co‐creation claim on consumer brand perceptions and behavioural intentions

Increasingly often, companies ‘co‐create’ with consumers in open innovation practices to develop new products more effectively. Little is known about how co‐creation affects consumer brand perceptions in the mass market. We hypothesize that co‐creative brands – as opposed to non–co‐creative brands – are perceived as more authentic and sincere, and are associated with relatively positive behavioural intentions. A between‐subjects experiment was conducted to test these hypotheses in an online panel of consumers who did not take part in co‐creation. The experiment had a 3 (control vs. co‐creation vs. co‐creation supported with some visual proof) × 2 (well‐known existing brand vs. fictitious brand) design. Quantitative data analyses (n = 530) confirmed that for both brands, co‐creation affects brand personality perceptions directly and behavioural intentions indirectly. This study shows that co‐creating with consumers can be a strategic method to positively influence product perceptions and behavioural intentions.     

Digitally enabling sustainable food shopping: App glitches,practice conflicts,and digital failure

New digital food platforms are being launched accompanied with the promise of also promoting more sustainable food consumption. However, despite some success, many of these efforts to digitally reconfigure consumers food practices fail. The aim of this paper is to empirically explore, conceptualize and explain such failures. Taking a practice theory approach, and drawing on a field experiment using the Karma app – an anti-food waste app – the paper shows that the inability of this app to promote a new way of acquiring food is due to glitches - app failures of different sorts - but also practice conflicts. Two types of practice conflicts, practice mismatch and practice competition, make the fostering of a new sustainable food provisioning practice difficult.     

Adventures,auctions and aspirations: Illuminating shifts,tensions and contradictions in consumers' leisure shopping experiences

Drawing upon the work of Simmel ([1907–1911] 1971) and other socioculturally oriented theoreticians (e.g. Campbell 1987; Thompson et al. 1994), this paper illuminates the composite and dynamic character of leisure shopping. Using three overarching themes – the adventure, the auction and the aspiration – the paper illustrates that leisure shopping experiences comprise a synthesis of opposites, involving dynamic shifts between for example spontaneity and control, delight and disappointment, dreams and fantasies as well as rational calculations and purposive planning. Leisure shopping is thus described as a form of rational recreation (Lash and Urry 2002), where consumers seek pleasure in highly rationalized ways.     

Consumer workers as immaterial labour in the converging media markets: three value‐creation practices

This paper takes a practice‐based approach to consumer studies and focuses on the strategic and productive roles that consumers play as immaterial labour or consumer workers in the converging media markets. Based on a case study of a print media organization and its customers, the aim is to discuss the collaborative practices through which value is created in the market. By means of a textual analysis of online and interview data, three value‐creation practices are abstracted and illustrated: constructing a sense of belonging and collective identity, mutual helping and peer support, and building pride and self‐respect. Overall, the paper suggests that in global media environments, consumer‐customers are playing increasingly significant strategic roles in the practices and processes through which value is co‐created in the market. It is therefore concluded that the idea of consumers, and media audiences in particular, as recipients of communication and targets of marketing activities needs to be problematized and the dynamic strategic roles that consumers currently play in the market need to be acknowledged and actively incorporated into the business praxis of media corporations.     

Consumer socialization,social structural factors and decision‐making styles: a case study of adolescents in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the process of consumer socialization will determine adolescents’ decision‐making styles. Eight decision‐making styles were conceptualized as outcomes of the socialization process, which is acquired via interaction with socialization agents, namely parents, peers, printed media, television commercials and in‐school education. The study also proposed five social structural variables (social class, gender, ethnicity, residence and religion) as being associated with the socialization agents and decision‐making styles. The study sample consisted of 934 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 19 years. The data were collected using a self‐administered questionnaire and analysed with the SPSS computer program. As a result of regression analyses, significant relationships were found between social structural factors and socialization processes, suggesting that the influence of socialization agents on adolescents may vary according to certain demographic characteristics. Significant relationships were also found between social structural factors and socialization processes. Peers appeared to be the most important agents of consumer socialization, contributing to a variety of desirable as well as undesirable consumer decision styles. Printed media and television commercials were also found to be significant sources of the acquisition of both desirable and undesirable decision‐making styles. Parents and in‐school education, however, were insignificant in the acquisition of any decision‐making styles among adolescents. Information obtained from this study could be useful to government agencies and consumer educators. The most revealing finding of this study is that parents did not contribute to the formulation of decision‐making orientation for adolescents. This points to the need for consumer educators to take steps in designing programmes that will involve parents as primary socialization agents at home; this may be facilitated via printed materials. Apart from this, the information can also be helpful in enabling marketers to be more effective in targeting various adolescent markets by formulating marketing strategies according to demographic factors, socialization process and decision‐making styles.     

E‐commerce: consumer protection issues and implications for research and education

The impact of e‐commerce on consumers, public policy, business and education is examined. It behoves academics and students alike to keep abreast of new developments in this field and to contribute to the public debate on the widespread effects of e‐commerce. A discussion of public policy initiatives, research questions and ideas for future research are given.     

Young consumers’ innovativeness in apparel choices: A model including consumer self‐confidence

In industries with network effects, consumer innovators help to trigger the critical mass needed for a product innovation to be successful. Thus, firms can benefit from actions that increase consumer innovativeness in their target markets. Consumer innovativeness has been associated with variables such as hedonic shopping motivation, impulsiveness and status seeking. There is limited work on the impact on consumer innovativeness of consumer characteristics that reflect consumers’ self‐confident ability to choose. This study proposes and tests a model for consumer innovativeness that incorporates variables from previous research and uncovers the importance of consumer self‐confidence. We collect survey data from 534 Chilean girls, ages 10–15. After building constructs with the help of exploratory factor analysis, we analyze the data with linear regression estimation (via OLS). Our results reveal that consumer self‐confidence is positively and significantly related to consumer innovativeness. Our findings also add evidence ‐from a younger age group‐ regarding the significance of status seeking, impulsiveness and hedonic shopping motivation on consumer innovativeness. Results suggest that companies could leverage consumer innovativeness by taking actions to increase consumers’ self‐confidence. Innovative apparel choices in young consumers could possibly also be strengthened by communicating status achievement and by enhancing shopping enjoyment.     

Investigating social motivations,opportunity and ability to participate in communities of virtual co‐creation

Communities of virtual co‐creation are emerging as a new form of consumer engagement, where through a collaborative and interactive process, ideas and knowledge from consumer are applied differently to create new value for the consumers themselves, the company and all stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to explore the drivers, namely motivation, opportunity and ability, of consumer willingness to participate in communities of virtual co‐creation. The role of social motivations, that is, altruism and social reputation, particularly relevant inside online communities, is investigated. Data were collected through an online survey on 180 consumers from diverse nationalities. The unit of analysis was a virtual co‐creation activity for food products. Findings show that consumer motivation and ability have a relevant influence on willingness to participate in co‐creation projects, while opportunity has not. In particular, ability showed to be the most relevant factor, suggesting that virtual co‐creation initiatives should be properly designed to facilitate the engagement of consumers. Further, results indicate that consumers' motivations are driven by both altruism and social reputation, where altruism plays a greater role. This confirms that social relations are key motivational drivers in virtual communities, where value is created through interaction with like‐minded people, exchange of information and experiences, provision of support.     

Consumers as legitimating agents: How consumer‐citizens challenge marketer legitimacy on social media

Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer‐citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business‐society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. First, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer‐citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Second, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer‐citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities.     

Not just a mother: embodied and positional aspects of consumer learning from a practice perspective

Consumer socialization is usually associated with young consumers, but transitions that require learning new types of consumption patterns can occur at any point in life. Although the literature on transitional consumers is quite fragmented, an important body of consumer research explores transitional consumers from the perspective of role theory. Nonetheless, role theory has not problematized learning and due to its static nature role theory tends to overlook how consumer learning becomes embodied over time as well as how this learning is affected by experiences from related practices. With a practice theory approach to learning and based on an ethnographic study of mothering through dinner consumption, this paper highlights learning as an embodied experience influenced by the practitioners’ positioning in time and space as well as by multiple sources among which the market has become increasingly important.     

Fast‐food addiction and anti‐consumption behaviour: The moderating role of consumer social responsibility

This study aims to understand the drivers of fast‐food addiction and the role of consumer social responsibility (CSR) on the relationship between fast‐food addiction and anti‐consumption. Due to growing health concerns, an increasing number of consumers have been avoiding the consumption of fast food. Based on a sample of 539 respondents, all pertaining to generation Y in Pakistan, this study tests a model including addiction and anti‐consumption behaviour. Empirical results provide strong evidence that individual and sociocultural factors together with advertising practices influence consumers’ fast‐food addiction. Results also reveal that CSR moderates the relationship between fast‐food addiction and anti‐consumption behaviour. Interestingly, the present study pioneers the discussion on how addiction can drive anti‐consumption. The findings can help public policy makers and managers to understand consumers’ anti‐consumption tendencies and help promote healthier consumption habits.     

Consumer‐generated media and product labelling: designed in California,assembled in China

Product country‐of‐origin labelling is an important extrinsic cue for consumers about a product's attributes. In a globalized world where products components and parts originate from multiple countries, companies have resorted to inventive country‐of‐origin labelling. The objective then of this paper is to better understand consumers' evaluation of products that have inventive country‐of‐origin labelling (i.e. Designed in California, Assembled in China). Exploratory qualitative data were collected from consumer‐generated media (36 weblogs) using Nielsen's Research BlogPulse tool. A grounded theory analysis revealed that four key themes emerged from the data that related to confusion about the labelling strategy, strong symbolic and emotional ties to country‐of‐origin, and the importance of country‐of‐origin as a quality signal.     

Fashion consumer profiles in the Portuguese market: involvement,innovativeness, self‐expression and impulsiveness as segmentation criteria

This study identified fashion consumer profiles among Portuguese young adults. The work was based on four constructs: fashion involvement, fashion innovativeness, self‐expression through fashion products and impulsiveness. Another purpose of this study was to test these instruments in this cultural context in order to contribute to the generalizability of the scales. A cluster analysis uncovered three groups: Moderates, Apathetic and Enthusiasts. On the whole, this study proposes a new way of segmenting Portuguese fashion consumers and demonstrates that the four constructs employed can be used in different cultural contexts.     

Children as co‐researchers voicing their preferences in foods and eating: methodological reflections

There is an increasing and sustained interest in participatory research with children. We subscribe to these new perspectives by involving children as co‐researchers investigating their preferences when it comes to foods and eating. The overall aim of the research project Sustainable Eating Children's Way: Promoting Healthy Food Habits among Children 10–12 (Barn som medforskare i matlandskap) is to create an understanding of how children's food habits can develop in healthier and more sustainable ways. The specific aim of this paper was to discuss the methods used in the first phase of the project in order to find an answer to the question: ‘Is it possible to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of children's preferences in foods and eating?’ The research process in this project can be looked upon as two parallel processes: the overall one initiated by the senior research team and the one incorporating the children as co‐researchers. The children participating were 10‐year‐olds attending two classes in the fourth grade of a Swedish government‐funded school. We found the children knowledgeable and competent as co‐researchers. Involving children in the research processes and giving them freedom to explore is a promising way of letting their voices be heard in health promotion programmes.     

Perceptions,attitudes, and behaviors toward sustainable fashion: Application of Q and Q‐R methodologies

While sustainability has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners, consumer attitudes and behaviors toward sustainable consumption have not yet been elucidated. The decision‐making process around sustainable consumption involves diverse and complex considerations including some forms of compromise (tradeoff). In addition, sustainability is a broad and subjective concept, and is not a primary attribute of a product Impacting the choices of consumers. Therefore, it is necessary to apply new methods to overcome the limitations of conventional evidence‐based research. This research uses Q and Q‐R methodologies to identify consumers' subjective viewpoints toward sustainable fashion and to present socio‐demographic differences across segments of sustainable fashion consumers. Study 1 uses Q methodology to interview 26 consumers and to identify four types of decision makers: doubtful egoists, single‐minded bystanders, wavering intellects, and opinion leaders. Study 2 uses Q‐R methodology to verify the psychological and socio‐demographic variables among 328 consumers. The research provides useful suggestions for selecting and approaching target consumer segments in the sustainable fashion industry.     

Emotions,deliberations, and end‐of‐life products

Death is inevitable; yet, not all consumers prepare for death by purchasing end‐of‐life (EOL) products. Using the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the dual‐process model framework, this study aims to examine the role of emotions and cognitions in influencing consumers' decisions to engage in planning for death. A mixed methodology design was used. Study 1, a qualitative study, uncovered positive and negative emotions and deliberative reasoning that comprise consumers' EOL purchase decision process. Study 2, a quantitative study, confirmed that emotions and deliberations independently and jointly influenced consumers' EOL attitude and behavior and that emotions affected deliberations for both prepaid funerals and wills. Subjective norms outperformed attitude in predicting both products' purchase behavior. These finding supported the dual‐process model of behavior and the TRA in the EOL research context and contributed to the EOL literature by investigating the effects of emotions and deliberations concurrently; thus validating the important role of emotions in influencing EOL planning and purchase. In light of our findings, marketers could, after due cognizance of the morbidity and sensitivity of the topic, develop actionable promotional and segmentation strategies for EOL products and other emotion‐laden, unsought products and service.     

Family life in grocery stores – a study of interaction between adults and children

Today the family is seen as a unit for food choice and consumption. The influence of family members on food choice comprises several stages that can be carried out both in the private home and in the public sphere, such as the grocery store. This makes the grocery store a context in which ordinary family life can be observed. The aim was to study families and the interaction between children and adults in the grocery store, focusing on young people's involvement in food shopping. Hidden observation and family interview methods were used. A total of 338 people were observed in seven different grocery stores in Stockholm during the summer and autumn of 2003. Seven family interviews, involving a total of 29 persons, were conducted in Uppsala in the spring of 2003. In the interviews, parents reported avoiding shopping for food together with children as they experienced it as stressful and exhausting. The observations showed that family life in the grocery store comprises not only the food purchase, but also bringing up children and consumer education. Young people's involvement in the food purchase varied depending on their age and the specific product. The different behaviour observed may be interpreted as reflecting the variation in ways of bringing up children at home. Another conclusion is that a public place such the grocery store facilitates pedagogical situations and can work as a tool for informal education.