Social media adoption behaviour: Consumer innovativeness and participation intention

With the emergence of social media, the trends of selfies have become common across various social networking platforms as a distinctive way of self-presentation. It has aroused the interest of various scholars to comprehend the consumer adoption behaviour for social media. Thus, built on the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) and theory of planned behaviour (TPB) perspective, this paper developed a model to empirically test whether and how critical factors of consumer selfie-posting behavioural intention on social media affect behavioural intention and word-of-mouth to consequently enhancing their adoption behaviour towards social media to post selfies. The data were gathered from 353 young consumers who post their selfies clicked via smartphone on their social media accounts. The results revealed that consumer innovativeness and participation intention directly and indirectly affect consumer adoption behaviour for social media to post their selfies. Additionally, the study identified that among all critical factors, participation intention and perceived behaviour control have strongest influence on behavioural intention to post selfies followed by consumer innovativeness, attitude towards selfie-posting and subjective norms. The study contributes to the extension of TPB by adding participation intention and positive WOM, adoption of social media. This research validated the significant roles of consumer innovativeness, participation intention, positive WOM and intention to post selfies in predicting the adoption behaviour. Practitioners and marketers of social media sites can improve the usability and effectiveness of positive WOM and intention to post selfies to attract more young consumers.     

#selfie: digital self-portraits as commodity form and consumption practice

Although selfies may appear to be the latest fad, their popularity has had a transformational influence on contemporary culture. Selfies invoke important issues in communication, photography, psychology, self-expression, and digital media studies – as they bring up a host of concerns about identity, privacy, security, and surveillance. This article provides an interdisciplinary overview of the selfie as both an object and a practice, and offers theoretical reflections on how the selfie can be seen as an important commodity form and consumer behaviour. The selfie is connected to concepts of authenticity, consumption, and self-expression, as well as practices of art history, media forms, and self-portraiture. Strategic use of the selfie reveals shifts in the traditional functions of the advertising photograph, from sources of information, persuasion, and representation to emblems of social currency. We position the selfie not as a postmodern anomaly but as a type of image with a history.     

Notes to self: the visual culture of selfies in the age of social media

This paper explores the cultural fascination with social media forms of self-portraiture, commonly known as “selfies,” with a specific interest in the self-imaging strategies of young women in their teens and early 20s. Ubiquitous on social media sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, and Instagram, the selfie has become a powerful means for self-expression, encouraging its makers to share the most intimate and private moments of their lives – as well as engage in a form of creative self-fashioning. Popularly regarded as a shallow expression of online narcissism, the selfie is both adored and reviled; yet it flourishes as one of the most effective outlets for self-definition. Through a critical engagement with a history of feminist representational politics, this paper explores the political urgency at the heart of the selfie phenomenon, and contemplates whether the urge to compulsively self-image is mere narcissism, or a politically oppositional and aesthetic form of resistance.     

A window to the ideal self: A study of UK Twitter and Chinese Sina Weibo selfie-takers and the implications for marketers

The “selfie” is a global social phenomenon - and little work has been done by marketers to understand the mindset of selfie-takers; not to mention the potential to develop selfies as vehicles for new immersive, contextual, and real-time marketing communication channels. Furthermore, marketing literature offers little insight regarding the interpretation of the style, artifacts, location, usage, participants' image, and cultural differences in these pictures. The present study tackles these areas – analyzing cross-cultural data from a total of 344 selfie photos from Twitter and Sina Weibo. Empirical evidence brings insight into the selfie phenomenon in general and drills down further to surface cultural differences between UK and Chinese consumers. Results show that selfie-takers attempt to present an ‘ideal self’; and secondly the criteria for judging this differ between UK and Chinese consumers - affected by their respective individualistic and collectivist cultures. Study findings confirm that smartphone camera technology usage is a global trend; and interestingly has encouraged a behavioral phenomenon of using selfies to actualize aspirations for perfection. However, the symbolic meanings and social capital derived from selfies are culturally nuanced.     

Can conscious consumption be learned? The role of Hungarian consumer protection education in becoming conscious consumers

The purpose of this research is to examine how consumer consciousness can be defined, along what dimensions it might be measured and, according to these dimensions, how conscious Hungarian university students are. In addition, it is also discussed how their consumer protection education might contribute to their consumer consciousness. Two hypotheses have been proposed concerning factors potentially affecting conscious consumer behaviour (gender; participation in consumer protection education). To test these hypotheses, a questionnaire survey has been conducted with a total of 280 respondents, whom are undergraduate students of a Hungarian university. It is found that different aspects of consciousness dominate the consumer decisions of females and males. Female respondents appear to be characterized more by hedonistic consumption but they are more price sensitive than males. Veblen effect is stronger for males, and they have greater trust in well‐known brands. Although the survey revealed that both research variables might affect consumer behaviour (not only gender but the participation in consumer protection education as well), the role of education cannot be unambiguously identified in the process of establishing consumer consciousness. On the one hand, the results show that the behaviour of ‘trained’ consumers is mainly characterized by price sensitiveness, while the other (‘non‐educated’) group is more reliant on marketing and brands. However, on the other hand, it might also be concluded that young adults participating in the survey already have their own consumer habits and preferences; therefore, their consumer behaviour is more difficult to be formed by means of education during their university years. These findings are nevertheless limited to Hungarian university students and cannot be generalized to the entire society or other countries.     

College students’ consumer competence: a qualitative exploration

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate college people's perception of the competence necessary to play the consumer role and of the different socialization agents and processes involved in their consumer learning. Perception of the meaning of consumer competence seems mostly based on characteristics associated to preventive behaviours. If, on the whole, the subjects think they are competent consumers, their perception of other consumers is much less favourable. The mother appears to remain the most influential socialization agent but the father seems to play an increasing role. Young people's consumer socialization process is mainly achieved through communication, observation, and by learning through trial and error. Some of them find that consumer education in high school was useful but boring, and some others didn’t remember having received this education. The need to study further the competence of young adults and to provide consumer education is discussed.     

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.     

Finnish young people's narrative construction of consumer identity

This article examines how young Finns represent their consumer identity through narratives. Young consumers are easily seen as careless spenders and selfish hedonists in the contemporary consumer society. However, an empirical approach is required in order to find out whether this generation of young Finnish consumers is one of ‘raving hedonists’ or ‘ultimate materialists’, as their peers are often presented in public discussion in many western societies. The empirical data was collected in five upper secondary schools between the end of November 2001 and the beginning of January 2002. These schools are located in five different districts in Finland, varying from metropolitan to rural areas. The study focused on students aged 16–19 years and used essay writing as the method for collecting qualitative data. The data thus consists of 159 life stories as a consumer written by young Finnish people. Qualitative research methods, such as narrative analysis, were used in this study. It is argued that Finnish young people are representing their identities as consumers through a combination of various levels of consumer discourses besides hedonism and squandering: rationality and economizing are an essential part of their consumer identities. Some youngsters also present themselves as responsible consumers including ecological and ethical choices as part of their narrative. The way these youngsters combine discourses gives evidence of the various features of the present‐day young consumer. It is also suggested that their consumer identity develops and changes with age. Young people describe their identity changing through a hedonist/squanderer discourse to a rational and economical one or vice versa. They also combine hedonist, rational, economical and responsible discourses simultaneously.     

Love my selfie: selfies in managing impressions on social networks

This study aims to provide insights on personal branding and impression management practices in the context of selfie production and sharing on online social networking sites (oSNSs). The theoretical framework of the study was constructed according to Goffman’s ‘Dramaturgy Theory’ and Belk’s ‘Digital Extended Self’ theory. Four constructs; de-materialization of photography, co-construction of the self, sharing economy of digital media and online social networks, and distributed memory were included in the study. The results of the literature review were further explained according to the production and consumption of selfies. This study provides detailed information about how selfies can be used as a mediator for purposes of self-extension and personal branding. Even though selfies are seen as an everyday activity and a raw presentation of the subject, they also include extra contextual information about the subject. The results of the study exert that selfies shared online can be used as a tool for impression management in oSNSs.     

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.     

消费信贷对经济增长的影响研究——以青海为例

近年来,我国消费信贷的规模不断扩大,基于鼓励消费的独特作用,消费信贷已成为促进我国经济增长的重要手段。本文利用青海省1995—2018年的时间序列数据,包括消费信贷余额与GDP,使用VAR模型来论证消费信贷与经济增长之间的关系。通过实证分析表明,青海省消费信贷的发展确实会促进经济增长,但由于诸多因素的存在,消费信贷对经济增长的促进效果并不太明显。基于此,本文提出一些相关的政策建议来促进青海消费信贷的发展从而更好地促进青海经济的发展。     

Materialism and conspicuous consumption in China: a cross‐cultural examination

With the growing rise in consumer spending and economic power in Asian societies, it is increasingly important to explore the implications of these developments on consumer culture. This cross‐cultural study first discusses the rise of materialism and conspicuous consumption in post‐revolution China then examines differences in these phenomena between young adult consumers, aged 18–35, living in urban China and the United States. Utilizing survey data from over 600 respondents, significant differences were found in both materialism and conspicuous consumption, with Chinese young adults scoring higher in both variables. The findings show, that compared with past comparative studies, it appears both materialism and conspicuous consumption are on the rise among urban Chinese consumers.     

Framing consumer education conceptual innovations as consumer activism

This position paper developed the argument that creating innovative and forward‐thinking conceptual approaches to consumer education is a proactive process, the trademark of consumer activism. Assuming that (re)conceptualizing consumer education is a form of consumer activism, this article identified the conceptual contributions and intellectual innovations of 24 consumer education initiatives in North America (1962–2012). Using an historical analysis method, this study profiled consumer educators who tried to stay ahead of the curve by creating leading‐edge approaches to socializing people into their consumer role. In effect, they were expressing their personal and intellectual convictions about the potential and possibilities of consumer education as a means to promote change to protect and empower people in their consumer‐citizen role.     

Social Interaction and Beer Consumption

The aim of this article is to describe young consumers’ attitudes and conduct regarding beer consumption, analyzing the consumer as an individual (addressing internal factors) and in a collective (external factors). The research was designed in Brazil involving 52 participants, divided into 16 focus groups, and the respective data was transcribed and analyzed. The findings show three distinct types of consumers were identified. The authors termed these the Inductor, the Induced, and the Sophisticated. The article details how each type of consumer can be distinguished through different attitudes and factors. The results suggest that, rather than thinking of beer consumption as an individual item, beer consumption should be thought of as different types, involving different behavior, attitudes, and social interaction. The article demonstrates originality and value to put forward the notion that beer consumption should not be defined as an individual item. The framework offered in this article will assist future researchers to consider consumption of different types and brands of beer, based on social interaction.     

Why buy new when one can share? Exploring collaborative consumption motivations for consumer goods

The notion of collaborative consumption or sharing economy—where consumers share access to ownership of properties such as cars, clothes and accommodations—has gained tremendous popularity in recent years. Development of communication technologies and peer‐to‐peer communities has enabled consumers to coordinate sharing activities through various online platforms. Collaborative consumption involves sharing of both intangible (e.g., music, space and car rides) and tangible assets (e.g., household items, clothes and furniture). Activities such as renting, swapping, trading and purchasing/selling used consumer goods are included in the latter. Despite increasing academic attention on collaborative consumption, little research has been pursued in the context of consumer goods. The nature of consumption for tangible goods can be entirely different from that of intangible goods because people can exercise greater control over tangible goods, which results in greater psychological ownership than that for intangible goods. To address this gap, the objective of this study is to develop a scale that examines consumer motivations for collaborative consumption of consumer goods. Following Churchill's paradigm of scale development, the procedures of scale item generation, purification and validation were conducted via in‐depth interviews, literature review and surveys. The study identified five underlying dimensions of collaborative consumption of consumer goods: concern‐for‐sustainability, social, variety‐seeking, fun and cost‐saving. Study findings and implications are discussed, and future research avenues are suggested.     

The Impact of Price Disclosure on Dynamic Shopping Decisions

A potentially powerful way to assist consumers in making dynamic shopping decisions is to disclose price information to them before they shop, for example by posting prices on the Internet. This paper addresses the differential impact of disclosing either only current, or both current and future prices, on consumer shopping decisions in multi-period tasks involving multiple product purchases. In the context of an Internet-based experiment, we find that consumer expenditure deviates more strongly from that of a normative model when both current and future prices are disclosed than if only current prices are disclosed. We investigate the behavioral effects underlying this finding by estimating a model that allows for variations in consumer discounting, strength of store price format preferences, as well as choice consistency between different price disclosure conditions.     

中国城乡居民消费持续低迷的心理因素分析

消费心理是消费需求的具体表现 ,又是消费行为的内在因素 ,同时居民消费行为将对经济运行产生一定的影响。城乡居民消费持续低迷固然是由多方面的原因造成的 ,其中心理因素发挥着重要的不容忽视的作用。了解、分析消费者心理 ,对正确地引导居民消费是十分必要的。     

Consumer Perceptions,Concerns, and Purchasing Practices of Rabbit Meat in Hungary

Nationwide consumer research was conducted in 2014 on consumer perceptions, purchasing practices, and consumption of rabbit meat. The questionnaire revealed that respondents basically found rabbit meat healthy; however, better knowledge of positive physiological effects would lead to increased consumption. Transforming public awareness may also include the criticism of housing systems suspected to be “humanitarian.” The experiment-proven conditions, in which—in contrast to human empathy and preconceptions—rabbits indeed feed well and are “happy,” should be presented to the public.     

A typology of Polish consumers and their behaviours in the market for sustainable textiles and clothing

The paper discusses Polish consumers' behaviours in the market for sustainable textiles and clothing. The analysis presented in this article was undertaken because of:

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The Tragic Consumer: A Nietzschean Reading of Irremediably Unsatisfactory Consumption

This essay criticizes the romantic ethic of consumption (Campbell, 1987) from the tragic perspective (Nietzsche, 2006). By tragic, we refer to the constant tension between Apollo and Dionysius (Nietzsche, 2006, p. 47). It is suggested that the romantic ethic of consumption, which orders our existence, is associated with Apollonian ideals, thus, creating a protective and individuating illusion against the chaotic, the amorphous, and the contradictory—characteristics associated with the Dionysian. What has been considered as the romantic-Apollonian ethic of consumption promises to satiate our desires (Campbell, 2006), even though this is not possible since incompleteness is inherent to the individual (Freud, 1996, 1997). This ethic may prove frustrating for some consumers since the satiation of wills has a transient effect and the individual therefore remains in a state of desire. In cases like these, an alternative to the romantic meaning would be the adoption of a tragic conception of consumption, a conception consubstantiated in the knowledge of its uselessness as a strategy to recover a lost completeness. Thus, this article describes the figure of the tragic consumer, the one who knows the chaotic side of the act of consuming, but who reaffirms his or her will, either consuming—since he perceives that there is no escape from the logic imposed by consumption—or by choosing to abandon specific categories of goods that do not respond to the reiteration of his will. As a practical instance for the development of this critique, we have reflected on the phenomenon of category abandonment (Suarez & Chauvel, 2012).