Changing the marketplace one behavior at a time: Perceived marketplace influence and sustainable consumption

This study introduces the construct of Perceived Marketplace Influence (PMI) and investigates its role in mediating the relationship between environmental concern and sustainable consumption behavior. A nationwide survey shows that Perceived Marketplace Influence plays an important role in mediating the relationship between concern and behavior, providing an explanation for prior inconsistencies in this relationship. Accordingly, Perceived Marketplace Influence plays a purposeful role in transforming environmental concern into behavior. This project extends previous research on the relationship between values, beliefs, and behavior by showing that one's perception of influence on the marketplace behavior of others significantly influences one's own marketplace behavior. Improved understanding of this relationship provides updated guidance to firms and policymakers for projecting and encouraging sustainable consumption behavior.     

Bio-politicizing consumption: neo-liberal consumerism and disembodiment in the food marketplace

How consumerism proliferates in society is central to consumer culture studies, yet little research has examined the power of consumerist discourses in shaping consumption at the intersection of marketing with State regulation. Drawing on Foucault's notions of governmentality and bio-power, a discourse analysis is conducted of food date labeling regulation. The study problematizes how labeling actualizes a form of neo-liberal consumerism within manufacturing and retail in which consumption is enacted as a site of bio-political control. Labeling, it is argued, fosters unsustainable excess consumption in the name of life and health of people by temporalizing and standardizing consumption, as well as disembodying the marketplace as an area for knowledge creation in consumption. Accordingly, the study discusses two processes “bio-politicizing” consumption that seek to dispense responsibility and re-distribute embodied consumption competence. Finally, it highlights the potential in people to resist such consumerism by developing alternative subjectivities and embodiments in the marketplace.     

甲酸的生产工艺和市场分析

分述了甲酸生产的4种工艺路线甲酸钠法、甲酰胺法、丁烷(或轻油)液相氧化法和甲酸甲酯水解法;进行了世界和中国的甲酸市场分析,2008年全球甲酸产能约92万t/a,产量75万t,2008年中国甲酸产能约30万t/a,表观消费量约19.2万t.     

The marketplace management of illegal elixirs: illicit consumption of rhino horn

This article examines the consumption of illegally traded rhino horn. We conducted a survey on 608 males in Vietnam, a country that is identified as among the world's largest recipients of illicit rhino horn. We find that supposed health benefits, such as body detoxification and hangover treatment, were the most common reasons for rhino horn usage. Consumers also used rhino horn to display economic wealth, acquire social status, and initiate business and political relationships. We illuminate the shift in the perceived place of rhino horn from functional to symbolic: rhino horn is not only supposed to possess curative properties but through its circulation within social and professional networks is also considered part of the consumers’ search for a sense of “self,” a sense of “us,” and the delineation of the “other.” We discuss implications for strategies that serve to reduce or prevent further loss of the rhinoceros.     

Spirits in the marketplace

ABSTRACT

Good research demands that researchers are reflexive, understanding that all findings are socially constructed and susceptible to the unacknowledged interests of the researcher. When studying the consumption of religion and spirituality, how does a researcher mitigate a potential secularist worldview to consider consumers’ alternative metaphysical assumptions? And when these alternative worldviews posit divine and occult forces, how should the researcher study and theorise these forces? Based on our research of Pentecostalism in Ghana, we offer four suggestions. First, we demonstrate the importance of delineating the socio-historical context of our informants’ worldview. Second, we encourage exploring the potential of indigenous methods that may be more culturally sensitive; in this case, we show how religious testimony offers new insights as a way of knowing that is consistent with our informants’ worldview. Third, we advocate theorising within the frame of the indigenous metaphysical worldviews, such as understanding the religious testimonies as affective performances. Finally, we reflect on the benefits of moving beyond reflexivity to paths of action that seek rapprochement among differing worldviews.     

Segmentation and communication in the industrial marketplace

This article reports the results of a study undertaken in an intensely competitive industrial market in which the sponsoring company needed to identify those segments of the market that would lead to sales growth. The marketing planning and segmentation literature is used to provide conceptual guidance in developing a viable marketing strategy. Commercially available data were combined with data obtained from a telephone survey to identify potential new customers and to test a series of hypotheses. The results of the study suggest that 1) awareness of the company by potential buyers, 2) the size of the buyer's firms, and 3) the geographic location of the buyer's firms are all related to the buyers' interest in the company's products and their willingness to receive both impersonal and personal communications from the company.     

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.     

Sustainable consumption and plastic packaging: Relationships among product involvement,perceived marketplace influence and choice behavior

This study examines the relationships among human value connotations (instrumental and terminal), product involvement, perceived marketplace influence, and choice behavior in the context of sustainable consumption. Data was collected from 612 urban Indian residents who regularly consume sustainable products, e.g., non-plastic packaging bags. The study operationalizes the partial least square structural equation modeling method in consort with the covariance-based structural equation modeling. The research demonstrates the direct impact of instrumental and terminal values on product involvement and the direct influence of product involvement on perceived marketplace influence towards plastic packaging-related choice behavior. It is pertinent to focus on both instrumental and terminal connotations of human values to augment product involvement for plastic packaging. Limited studies have examined the possible relationships between two distinct yet interconnected connotations of human values on product involvement and perceived marketplace influence in the context of sustainable consumption related to plastic packaging.     

Corporate social responsibility and the marketplace

Most work to date seeking to link CSR level and performance has treated CSR as a strictly firm level variable. It is the argument of this author that any investigation of CSR that fails to incorporate industry level realities, particularly of an economic nature, will be fatally deficient. Hypotheses are proposed, building off the work of James Post, the gravamen of which is that CSR level depends significantly on industrial and economic status. The hypotheses are tested against a currently popular database and receive moderate support.Mr. Cottrill is a graduate student at the University of Connecticut generally doing research in strategic management. He is also an attorney, a member of various state and federal bars.     

Framework for regulation of the consumer marketplace

Recent critiques of the costs, effectiveness, and potential inequities in consumer protection measures have drawn attention to the need for a coherent normative framework for consumer protection. This paper sketches therefore a framework for government intervention in the marketplace to protect consumers' economic interests.After outlining the overarching objectives of consumer protection, namely the improvement of economic efficiency and equity, it documents the two main failures in consumer markets, information and high enforcement costs. Discussion is then focused on the relevance of the recent economics of information literature and its implications in consumer protection. Finally, there is a brief discussion of equity rationales. The article concludes by drawing out the general policy implications of the approach adopted in the paper.

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Zur Regulierung von Konsumgütermärkten

Zusammenfassung Die neuere Kritik an den Kosten, an der Wirksamkeit und an den potentiellen Ungerechtigkeiten verbraucherpolitischer Instrumente macht deutlich, daß ein systematischer normativ-theoretischer Hintergrund für die Verbraucherpolitik nötig ist. Allgemeine Hinweise auf unausgewogene Marktmacht reichen im nach-regulatorischen Stadium nicht mehr aus.Der vorliegende Beitrag umreißt daher einen Rahmen für staatliche Intervention auf M:arkten zum Schutz des Verbraucherinteresses. Zunächst werden die Verbesserung sowohl der ökonomischen Effizienz als auch der Gleichrangigkeit als die beiden Hauptziele der Verbraucherpolitik und ihre Beziehungen untereinander angesprochen. Es folgt eine Behandlung der Interventionsbegründungen unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Effizienz mit einer Diskussion der neueren Literatur zur Informationsökonomie in ihrer Bedeutung für die Identifizierung von Informationsunzulänglichkeiten zuf Konsumgütermärkten und eine Behandlung der Interventionsbegründungen unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Gleichrangigkeit.Als Schlußfolgerung ergibt sich, daß Interventionen in höherem Maße markt- und produkt-spezifisch sein sollten; dies muß mit der Forderung nach längerfristiger Klarheit und Vorhersagbarkeit von Regelungen und Standards in Einklang gebracht werden. Abschließend wird darauf hingewiesen, daß trotz aller rationaler Rechtfertigungen, die der Beitrag liefert, die Entscheidung zur Intervention im Kern politischer Natur ist.

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Iain Ramsay is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 22–24 Windsor Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, England. This article is a summary of ideas which are developed at greater length in I. Ramsay: Rationales for intervention in the consumer marketplace, Occasional Paper, Office of Fair Trading, London. Copies of this study may be obtained from the Office of Fair Trading.     

Personal taste and family face: Luxury consumption in Confucian and western societies

East Asia is currently the biggest market for luxury and prestige brands from the West. This article examines the cultural factors that lie behind this phenomenon and, based on distinctions between Southeast Asian and Western cultures, explores how the practice of luxury consumption differs in these cultures. As part of this examination, self-concept theory is reviewed and integrated in a cross-cultural consumption model. Conceptual linkages between existing theories of materialism and conspicuous consumption are noted. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Socializing consumers in a global marketplace

Abstract: People now make consumption decisions in a global marketplace. Slowly, society is collectively gaining painful awareness of the impact of these decisions. Contemporary consumerism is the product of long-term historical changes and, by implication, can be further changed. This paper develops the position that enriching our conventional understanding of consumer socialization from a global perspective is one way that family and consumer scientists can impact the future direction of modern consumption in a global market. By adopting this role within civil society, members of the profession can contribute to the process of resocializing the existing generation, and socializing entire new generations, of consumers to be globally conscious. By implication, business and governments’ trade, production and foreign policies will be challenged as well, leading to an even more profound change in consumption patterns around the world.     

城市农贸市场何去何从

据农业部统计,截至2000年底,全国大型农贸市场已经发展到5000多家,已形成包括蔬菜、海产品、肉类、果品等经营品种齐全的网络体系,成为城市农产品流通的主导力量.