The everyday intimacy of sleeping: an embodied analysis of intimate practices

Previous consumer research has generated rich knowledge about the dynamics of everyday intimacy. However, what is lacking is an understanding of the role the body plays in intimacy. To redress this gap, we set out to think of consumers’ intimate lives from an embodied perspective. To this aim, we take a practice lens to study the intimate practice of sleeping that offers, we argue, a fruitful context for highlighting the significance of bodily aspects. It also enables us to shed new light on the previously identified emotional, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions that structure and organize intimate practices. Our exploratory study employs a set of sleep-related cultural data to illustrate how consumption in sleeping practices is present in many previously unrecognized ways.     

The political motivations of ethical consumers

Consumer‐driven labelling schemes such as Fairtrade and the Forest Stewardship Council, are based upon several assumptions of consumer decision making and behaviour. This study aimed to test the validity of some of these assumptions, including the belief that consumers are acting ‘on behalf’ of workers and communities in economically developing countries by supporting fair and ethical trade. It examines the political motivations underlying ethical consumption, such as its relationship to other forms of political activism, reasons behind high purchase frequency and how existing values interact with consumption choices. Drawing upon the results of a series of six focus groups with 58 participants and a nationally representative panel‐based survey of 1014 Australian consumers, this paper argues that many of the factors involved in consumer decision making are inconsistent with the assumptions made by private economic governance schemes in attempting to harness consumer power, calling into question the effectiveness and legitimacy of such schemes. However, by tailoring the marketing strategies to different types of consumers, along with suppliers and retailers, these schemes can potentially increase their effectiveness.     

Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption

Despite the popularity of online spaces that simulate aspects of consumption‐like experiences (online virtual worlds, video games and interactive functions on online retailers) conceptual tools that aim to comprehend such consumer practices are yet to emerge. In an effort to better understand them this paper puts forward a taxonomy that may help us capture emerging consumer behavior in the digital virtual terrain in relation to virtual and material consumption. This may be read as a fluid template that considers the movement between what resides in consumer imaginations as ideal or virtual, its actualization in material and now also digital virtual spaces. We then offer examples of the practices that are emerging, specifically the increase in imaginative resources that interactive media provide; practices that actualize probable, everyday commodities and experiences in the digital virtual and practices that actualize fantastic commodities and experiences in the digital virtual. Finally, we discuss the potential for these to produce new consumer subjectivities and new markets, and as a result we conclude with a discussion of the implications of such developments for consumer cultures, noting the potential for both liberatory/celebratory and critical discourse as well as avenues for future research.     

Ethical selving in cultural contexts: fairtrade consumption as an everyday ethical practice in the UK and Germany

Fairtrade consumers, by enacting their political and moral concerns through consumer choice, are at the same time constructing themselves as ethical selves. I will argue that they can only do so by drawing on cultural contexts. While fairtrade is instituted in supranational organizations and acts on a global level, there are still differences on a national level. On the basis of an Anglo‐German study, this paper seeks to map out the cultural contextualization of fairtrade consumption on both a supranational and a national level. The paper identifies the framing role of global consumer culture and an implicit ethics of equitability inscribed in capitalist practices of exchange and specifies how these play out differently in Germany and the UK. In both cases, there are strong references to sovereign consumer choice, and expectations of equitability in commodity exchange have been found. But while, in the British case, there is more emphasis on individual choice and taste, German fairtrade consumers seem to follow more what they perceive as an authoritative discourse. And, while British respondents envisaged the relation to be achieved with producers along the lines of a business relationship, German respondents conceptualized it more as a paternalistic employment relation between fairtrade organizations and producers. Differences will be explained in terms of distinctive consumer cultures, national moral economies and colonialist histories. I will argue that the two national settings not only offer different opportunities and challenges in terms of market success but also pose distinct ethical questions for fairtrade marketers.     

Financial service providers: Does it matter if banks don't behave ethically?

The ethical consumer literature predominantly concentrates on fast‐moving consuming goods and thus, neglects insights to consumer behaviour within ethical services. As the financial services sector continues to grow in the UK, this paper addresses this anomaly by providing further insight into consumers and their ethical banking practices. More specifically, it examines their motivations as well as the trade‐offs and barriers which prevent greater uptake. Using a combination of in‐depth interviews and projective techniques, the research draws on Freestone and McGoldrick's model to reveal a lack of awareness towards ethical financial service providers and sheds light on various perceptions regarding what constitutes an ethical financial service. Additionally, numerous underlying personal benefits of ethical financial services became apparent alongside consumer expectations of customer care. In conclusion, our findings help to create a revised model which identifies more precisely the stages of ethical awareness, motivation and behaviour of ethical consumers both in the context of ethical financial services but also ethical consumption practices in general.     

内疚广告诉求对消费者道德消费意愿的影响机制研究

基于认知失调理论和心理抗拒理论,通过两个实验探究了企业道德营销中内疚与非内疚诉求影响消费者道德消费意愿的心理作用机制。结果表明,内疚诉求比非内疚诉求更能促进消费者的道德消费意愿,强迫性感受和操纵意图推断发挥了中介作用,且该中介作用受到消费者涉入度的调节。具体而言,低消费者涉入度情境中,相比于非内疚诉求,内疚诉求能够降低消费者的强迫性感受和操纵意图推断,进而增强其道德消费意愿;高消费者涉入度情境中,相比于内疚诉求,非内疚诉求能够降低消费者的强迫性感受和操纵意图推断,进而增强其道德消费意愿。研究结论有助于企业设计道德属性产品的广告策略,有效降低受众心理抗拒反应,提升受众广告体验,进而推动道德消费。     

Voluntary simplicity and the ethics of consumption

The increased levels of consumption that have accompanied our consumer‐oriented culture have also given rise to some consumers questioning their individual consumption choices, with many opting for greater consumption simplicity. This link between consideration of actual consumption levels and consumer choices is evident among a group of consumers known as ethical consumers. Ethical consumers consider a range of ethical issues in their consumer behavioral choices. Particularly prevalent is voluntary simplification due to concerns for the extent and nature of consumption. Through the presentation of findings from two qualitative studies exploring known ethical consumers, the relationship of consumer attitudes to consumption levels, and how these attitudes impact approaches to consumer behavior, are discussed. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Labelling fashion markets

The present article discusses how an ethical and environmental labelling system can be implemented in fashion garment markets. Consumers act in markets that provide them with more information than their limited cognitive capacity allows them to handle. Ethical and environmental labelling in markets characterized by change, such as the fashion garment market, makes decision‐making even more complicated. The ethical and environmental labelling system proposed here is designed to alleviate firms' administrative burden and give consumers more choice. It proposes that information on ethical and environmentally friendly production should be combined to enable consumers to decide whether they want to contribute an extra sum for the item they purchase in the store, which would then be transferred to the workers or an environmental organization. The beneficiaries – garment workers in developing countries and environmental organizations – would decide what to do with the money. This is a simpler and more direct solution than those suggested by scholars and activists trying to solve the problems of ‘sweatshops’ and the environmental consequences of the production of fashion garments. It also reduces administration compared with existing systems. At the same time, it can be implemented alongside systems based on strict regulation of production.     

Factors affecting non‐green consumer behaviour: an exploratory study among Chinese consumers

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors that affect a typical non‐green consumption behaviour among Chinese consumers. A conceptual framework was developed and an empirical study was conducted using a geographically diverse sample of Chinese consumers. Based on the consumer choice theory, the conceptual framework in the current study included both economic and non‐economic factors. Ten research hypotheses were developed under the framework. A survey was conducted among 600 consumers in four cities in China in 2013. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used for hypothesis testing. The empirical results showed that consumer preference, reference groups, and face perception have a significantly positive effect on the consumers’ non‐green consumption behaviour; whereas budget constraints and social responsibility consciousness have a significantly negative effect on the consumers’ non‐green consumption behaviour. Furthermore, the current research demonstrated that the relationships between consumer non‐green behaviour and its four antecedents – budget constraint, reference groups, social responsibility consciousness and face perception – are significantly moderated by extravagant atmosphere; whereas the relationship between consumer non‐green behaviour and consumer preference is not moderated by extravagant atmosphere.     

Food consumption and political agency: on concerns and practices among Danish consumers

Increasingly ordinary individual consumers are expected to perform some kind of societal or political agency. In the debates about political consumption it is a recurrent topic to what degree consumption practices can be seen as political practices and how many consumers perform such practices. The aim of this article is to empirically qualify the demarcation of the political in individual consumer activities by integrating the concept of political agency in the definition of political consumption. On the basis of empirical results from a representative survey among food consumers in Denmark, the article suggests that by supplementing the criteria of consumers performing specific consumption activities with a criteria of consumers expressing political agency, a more precise empirical delimitation of political consumption can be achieved. Three groups of food consumers are identified: those who perform political consumption practices; those who perform politicized consumption practices; and those who vocalize the discourse of political consumerism.     

How consumers as aesthetic subjects co-create the aesthetic experience of the retail environment

The consumer aesthetic experience, diverse and complex, seems to depend on the individual׳s subjective perception. Studies have questioned if this experience can be conceptualized and explained through underlying patterns. Most studies have focused on the properties of aesthetic objects, explaining their influences on consumer responses, while ignoring consumers as aesthetic subjects. Based on the view that consumers seek pleasure out of even the most mundane objects in their everyday consumption, this study explains how consumers interact and formulate aesthetic experiences in the retail environment.     

Becoming a tree when I will be dead? Why not! Generation X,Y and Z,and innovative green death practices

Within the theoretical field of ethical consumption, the study focuses on consumer behavior and innovative green death practices. While scarcely investigated in the marketing and consumer behavior research domains, at least four main reasons spur to consider the funeral industry as an interesting subject of enquiry: i) the sector boasts of a significant economic relevance; ii) it is extremely impactful from an environmental and social point of view; iii) it is witnessing interesting innovative processes in the direction of social and environmental sustainability; iv) consumer movements are rising all over the world asking for more sustainable death practices. Thus, adopting an augmented version of the theory of planned behavior (TPB), which includes individuals’ environmentally responsible consumption, and egoistic and altruistic environmental concern, the study investigates behavioral intention to adopt innovative green death practices (a green funeral) of people belonging to three different generations: X, Y, and Z. A purposive sample of 627 Italian people participated in an online the survey. Collected data were analyzed adopting an ordinal logit model. The results confirm the TPB predictive power also in the field of green funeral behavioral intention. Furthermore, environmentally responsible consumption and environmental concern – even though only in its altruistic component – positively influence behavioral intention, and generation exerts a moderating effect among the examined constructs. Overall, the research attempts to enrich the literature on ethical consumption by exploring the underinvestigated phenomenon of buying behavior of unsought and end-of-life products, that of green funerals, and provide managerial recommendations to funeral service sellers.     

Promoting sustainability through social marketing: examples from New Zealand

This paper investigates the social marketing of sustainability in New Zealand and examines the usefulness of advertising campaigns to enlist and empower people, as both consumers and citizens, towards environmental care. It draws on discussions about ‘citizen‐consumer subjectivities’ and the model of the ‘political economic person’, which link sustainability and consumption through asserting people’s capacities as reflecting citizens. Printed advertisements by local and national government agencies about air pollution, fuel dependency and energy consumption are analysed to see whether advertising campaigns can operate on multiple levels for a range of audiences – desirable for broadening understanding of sustainable consumption and dealing with the complexity and experiential aspects of ‘doing’ sustainability. The advertisements analysed have an authoritative dimension that downplays this complexity and variability. The paper concludes that these advertisements do not go far enough to involve individuals in processes of co‐producing knowledge about sustainability, and to vest them with expertise in exercising sustainability in their daily lives. The implications are that advertising campaigns that engage with the complexity surrounding consumption in people’s modern lives, and with variability in meanings of sustainability, have the possibility of inciting citizen‐consumer political subjectivities.     

Fair trade and global cognitive orientation: a focus on Spanish fair trade consumers

In the past few years, there has been an increase in the ‘ethical consumer’, characterized by more reflexive values like solidarity, social responsibility, multiculturalism and ecology. This idea has found support in the appearance and development of proposals like fair trade, along with others, such as responsible consumption, the recycling business or sustainable development. In a parallel way, also during the past few years, various analysts have pointed out that the phenomenon of globalization is changing not only the aspect of the world but also our way of perceiving it, which is progressively becoming a ‘global orientation’. In the framework of these two tendencies, this paper examines the extent to which ‘global orientation’ is also a characteristic of consumers of fair trade products. The paper presents a two‐phase exploratory study. The first phase, of a quantitative nature, showed the greater global orientation of Spanish consumers of fair trade products, and it obtained a typology of them. This typology showed, however, that not all the clusters of consumers of fair trade products have a high global orientation, which reveals that the relationship between this dimension and the consumption of fair trade products is not a direct, straightforward one. The subsequent qualitative study examined the components of this global orientation in each of the three clusters where the consumption of fair trade products was the highest. The results showed that the purchase of fair trade products is influenced by the ‘global orientation’ of the consumer, although other factors, such as a sense of social responsibility and trust in international non‐governmental organizations, can condition this influence.     

Construction of consumer choice in the market: challenges for environmental policy

Drawing from the literature on the analytics of government, the paper discusses marketing as a form of government, elaborating and illustrating the many ways in which consumer choice is shaped, modified and directed in the market through practices and techniques of consumer marketing. The aim is to critically reflect upon and render problematic the individualistic ideas of the green consumer as a powerful market force and to provoke discussion on the conceptualization – and construction – of consumer subjectivity and social problems in marketing. Taking examples particularly from the fashion and clothing industry, the paper discusses the ways in which marketing activities come to shape consumer conduct by operating through the choice of individuals who freely pursue their needs and desires, and by working on the environment within which this freedom of choice is exercised. The paper contributes to the literature on green consumerism by systematically interrogating and elaborating on the modes and practices of marketing thought and expertise through which consumers and consumption are rendered intelligible and actionable in the market.     

Everyday dramas of conscience: navigating identity through creative neutralisations

ABSTRACT

The paper seeks to recuperate autonomy within debates around identity as the discursive construction of self through exploring the ‘greening’ of intensive mothering discourse and the emergence of new subject positions and practices of accountability. It argues that facets of ideologies of ethical and sustainable consumption are inscribed within this discourse, authorising identity work and furnishing everyday provisioning routines with significance and urgency; and that related social practices that are marked for ‘greening’ diligence or negligence are not merely situated and productive, but transformative of mothering identities, roles and norms. We report the findings of a study of a group of professional working mothers as they negotiate competing and conflictual spaces of doing ‘green’ mothering. This opens an analytical window on the diversity of signifying practices that characterise how informants play with boundaries and ambiguity in creative ways, using images of responsible consumption and sustainable living to negotiate appeals to social well-being while authorising claims to ‘greening’ competence. Our interviews capture discursive events that rearticulate social messages, mixing them with brand appeals and media content that situate the invention of ‘new’ mothering with regard to flows of ‘greening’ discourse. Inventive appeals and related subject positions speak of a repertoire of strategic messaging practices, themselves consistent with a heightened reflexivity shaping content and presentation through practices we understand as modes of neutralisation – forms of self-governance and accountability that seek to generate resources of resilience that help reinforce green mothering identity claims made to self and others. Through socialising ‘sustainability’ in this way, we contribute to our understanding of the social surrogacy of brands and its problematics.     

Consumer debt in Australia: why banks will not turn their backs on profit

Five years into the 21st century and consumer debt levels in Australia are still escalating. Simultaneously, there is concern that an increasing number of consumers may be unable to meet their future financial commitments and also mounting alarm at the relative ease with which the majority of consumers can access additional credit facilities. At the same time, credit providers are avidly seeking greater profits by enticing consumers to borrow more and more. Against this background, the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the Australian consumer credit industry is discussed. The application of strategic stakeholder management theory to the activities of a specific class of lender – banks – is then discussed. The aim is to better understand why the contemporary demands of CSR will not lead banks to undertake a more vigilant approach to consumer lending advocated by consumer groups who, witnessing the impact of the growing level of consumer indebtedness on a number of consumers, are calling for more responsible lending practices. The opportunity to contribute to debate aimed at alleviating the risk of growing consumer indebtedness is highlighted. The paper concludes with an acknowledgement that, without intervention, factors such as competition in the free market for consumer credit, the demands of shareholders for profits, and consumers’ own folly in demanding immediate gratification and readily accepting additional credit as a means of financing their consumption, ensure that consumer debt levels will continue to rise.     

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.     

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.