The Kafka quagmire for the poor in India

Khare and Varman present a compellingly pessimistic analysis of the plight of the poor in India. The dilemmas of the poor are often exacerbated by large corporations seeking to find ways to market products to impoverished emerging market consumers. In India, consumers are frequently hurt by these initiatives, small retailers may suffer, while corruption and trickery by petty bureaucrats and ruthless landlords help the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. The article by Khare and Varman is a scathing indictment based on detailed ethnographic evidence but it reveals only a fraction of the disadvantages and traps of disempowerment facing those Indians living lives of great precarity. In this comment, we seek to build upon Khare and Varman’s insightful analysis both in order to reinforce their conclusions about the Kafkaesque existence of India’s poor and to introduce some further considerations and complications that make the quagmire even more entrapping. We focus on four sources of these problems: patriarchy, bureaucracy and corruption, class and caste power and hierarchies, and uneven and inadequate infrastructure. We also highlight some largely individual and non-government initiatives that may offer hope of escaping this quagmire for the poor.     

Christmas in Japan: Globalization Versus Localization

Products and services promoted on a global scale raise issues of globalism that are more superficial than the issues raised by the globalization of world holidays. It is one thing to have an Ikea and a KFC in the city, and conceivably quite another thing to have Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Holidays like these have more complex cultural ideologies behind them. They threaten to displace traditional local holidays. And they offer a significant context in which to examine the interplay of global and local forces in the contemporary marketplace. We ask to what degree Christmas in Japan represents Western cultural imperialism, global homogenization, and a Westernization of Japan, versus local cultural adaptation, hybridization, and appropriation.     

Normative Violence in Domestic Service: A Study of Exploitation,Status, and Grievability

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper contributes to business ethics by focusing on consumption that is characterized by normative violence. By drawing on the work of Judith Butler this study of...     

Store environment and consumer purchase behavior: Mediating role of consumer emotions

This article presents a large-scale cross-sectional field study of the effect of store environment on consumer emotions and the resulting influence on aspects of consumer behavior with actual shopping behavior used as an example. Cast into a stimulus–organism–response framework, the results suggest that a consumer's emotions can be a mediating factor in the purchase process. In this study, we identify and explore how store environment and emotional states may influence various dimensions of purchase behavior. This research confirms that although cognitive factors may largely account for store selection and for most planned purchases within the store, the environment in the store and the emotional state of consumers may be important determinants of purchase behavior. This research has many pragmatic applications, because pleasure was associated with the amount of money spent and affinity for the store, whereas arousal was associated with money spent in the store, time spent in the store, and the number of items purchased in the store. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

This We Remember: Consuming Representation via the Web Posting of War Photographs

Consumers are increasingly searching for beautiful memories. Memory is not solely the work of the mind retrieving a “true” past. People represent their unique past to (re)construct their identity and seek social links with others who share the remembered events. Through visual analysis of the web posting of war photographs by Vietnam veterans, this paper explores how people consume representations in remembering, reconstructing identities and building a mnemonic community. The analysis suggests that individual remembering is nested within collective remembering. A conceptual framework viewing remembering as mediated action helps to explain how consumers use representations in remembering. This process is carried out not only by individuals but also by cultural institutions. American Vietnam veterans use consumer products including private photographs, movies, books, travel trips and the Internet as tools to assist in the on‐going process of remembering. They add their own voice into the social representation system to create representations that further express who they are and to connect with their community. The constructed memory shapes consumers' present. This in turn modifies their representation of their pasts which become involved in changing the larger social representation system.     

Marketing a new African God: Pentecostalism and material salvation in Ghana

• Pentecostalism is an American creation that has been exported to various parts of the world. Its message of hope is produced and promoted by churches that are led by religious entrepreneurial salespeople who create value for customers through the use of marketing techniques that facilitate the blending of the local and the global; the sacred and the profane. Its success in Africa has been attributed to the African penchant for connecting every human experience to the religious. Using the marketing strategic framework of target market and four Ps as an organization tool, we draw on a year-long ethnography in Kumasi, Ghana, to suggest that Pentecostalism in Ghana is marketed as an effective route to material success without risk to postmortem salvation. While the effective blend of the sacred and the profane allows for open public discourse, it fails to deliver on its promise of economic salvation for the poor. In fact, it causes the condition of the poor to deteriorate even further through application of its fundamental requirement: give and God will bless you according to the extent of your giving. We conclude that the new African Pentecostalism and its open embrace of contemporary consumption and materialism have arrested local religiosity and imposed an “economic imperialism” that impregnates every human experience with a commercial character.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Content of Internet Advertisements and its Impact on Awareness and Selling Performance

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the different relationships consumers build with anthropomorphised devices and how these relationships affect actual and intended future usage. An exploratory, three-week empirical study of 39 informants using voice controls on their smartphone uncovered a diversity of relationships that the informants built with such devices. We complement anthropomorphism theory by drawing on extended-self theorising to identify three primary roles that emerge from consumers’ interactions with these devices. Our findings theorise the distinct ways in which consumers perceive the object agency of anthropomorphised smart devices and how these perceptions impact the consumers’ engagement and future use intentions.     

Consumer resilience and subservience in technology consumption by the poor

ABSTRACT

Consumer technology theorists have explored technology consumption primarily through a de-linked, individualistic lens. We augment existing theories on technology consumption by widening the scope of the theorizing lens to include the role of class-based societal domination on consumption by the oppressed. We show that the poor respond to oppression by practices that go beyond non-compliance and subterfuge. We highlight the overlooked phenomenon of Consumer Resilience, and unveil the practices of Subservience in technology consumption by the poor in India. These are consumption practices that help the dominated classes appease those dominating them, at the expense of their own dignity and well-being.