Cognitive predictors of satisfaction with hospital inpatient service encounters among the elderly: a matter of trust

Given the burgeoning growth of the elderly population, ensuring the satisfaction of senior consumers of health services is worthy of heightened attention by healthcare administrators both on economic and social grounds. By examining inpatient satisfaction among the elderly, we have focused our attention on an important and understudied segment of health consumers within a dominant service delivery context. Moreover, we have supplemented traditional hospital service satisfaction indicators by including a variety of rarely used psychological variables as cognitive predictors of service assessments. This study reinforces the empirical connection between trust in one's physician and elderly inpatient satisfaction at an increased level. The results suggest that increased levels of trust is positively associated with overall satisfaction of elderly inpatients as well as their satisfaction with several subdimensions of service that represent specific attributes of the hospital inpatient encounter.     

Value Co-Creation in Health Care: A Phenomenological Examination of the Doctor-Patient Encounter

Considering the increasing conceptualization of value co-creation, this study seeks to empirically understand the value co-creation process through a phenomenological approach to further understand the doctor-patient encounter process leading to value outcomes in a public healthcare context. Three key thematic areas of the co-creation process were identified: the encounter process, consumption experience, and value outcomes. The findings reveal the importance of trust, role clarity, and actor experiences in clinical encounters. Both actors placed emphasis on the emotional, cognitive, social, and behavioral responses in encounters that consequently affect their value outcomes that include receiving treatment, getting well, improved well-being, improved compliance, reduced visits to health facilities, and enhanced service engagement between the actors. This study contributes to these dyadic interactions to gain comprehensive knowledge of how these encounter processes and experiences are perceived by the actors to influence the effectiveness of public and professional services.     

The influence of a lockdown on consumption: An exploratory study on generation Z's consumers

The health crisis due to the recent pandemic influenced our lives and, consequently, our consumption. Despite prior investigations on exogenous crises and their effects on consumption, no studies to date have examined consumers' coping strategies to health crises that require social distancing and, more particularly, responses to such crises by focusing on Generation Z. The present study fills this gap by exploring how consumption evolved during a lockdown as a consequence of these consumers' attempts to cope with the crisis. Through a qualitative approach based on grounded theory and projective techniques, findings shed light on new meanings of resilience and nostalgia, which seem to characterize Generation Z's consumers' desires during a lockdown. Importantly, we introduce the concept of responsible hedonic consumption, which stems from Generation Z consumers' desire to search for experiences that are pleasant but also compatible with personal and societal wellbeing.     

The responsibilization of “development consumers” through cause-related marketing campaigns

Cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns that combine consumption in the Global North with international development causes in the Global South are an increasingly popular phenomenon, which link consumption by individuals to broader social issues. In this paper, we explore the use of development-focused CRM campaigns by social enterprises. We highlight the ways in which CRM represents a form of neoliberal consumerism and how the various strategies of social enterprises using CRM produce responsibilized consumers. We assert that individuals are transformed into responsible “development consumers” through the processes of personalization, authorization and capabilization. Throughout this paper, we focus on how these processes occur through the specific case of CRM. Ultimately, we examine the potential implications of the production of a “development consumer” by arguing that the responsibilization processes used in CRM campaigns are inherently problematic because of the types of development practices they support.     

Blowing smoke‐rings in the face of health … class counts1Acknowledgement: Wright (1996)

Forms of inequity and inequality continue to blight the project of Modernism. This paper provides a new perspective on health inequalities through investigating the meaning and practice creating structures of Capitalism with reference to the “circuit of culture”. Our aim is to demonstrate that “class counts” not just as measurable health outcomes but more significantly in terms of the differentiated production/consumption relations that determine health behaviours. Beginning with the experiences of a healthcare worker in deprived, post‐industrial communities, we pose a pivotal question on defiance in the production and consumption of health. We then review the epidemiological evidence that forms the basis of our concerns. In developing a dynamic picture of core capitalist processes, we emphasize how they generate the potential for variations in the commodification of health. The paper concludes by considering the structural limits to improving the health status of disadvantaged people.     

What is the CSR’s Focus in Healthcare?

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been the subject of several academic contributions, but in the health sector the development of an interest in this subject is very recent. Although many practices in healthcare are already socially responsible, progressing from a series of socially responsible behaviours to a socially responsible organization entails a more consolidated awareness of the health sector’s mission and the needs of its participants. In this paper, we will review the different studies published that address the relationship between the healthcare sector’s corporate responsibility and society, with the aims of individuating the prevailing foci that are emerging and categorizing the proposed contributions according to these foci: social responsibility and organization; social responsibility and social impact; social responsibility and competitiveness. Finally, the paper finishes with a personal definition of CSR and its correlated ethical roots.     

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.     

新疆农村居民消费结构分析

随着新疆农村经济、社会结构的不断优化,广大农村居民的消费结构也发生了重大变化。以新疆农村居民的消费结构为研究对象,运用因子分析法和ELES模型对1997-2012年期间新疆农村居民的消费结构进行实证分析。研究结果表明尽管新疆农村居民消费结构不断改善,但整体上还处在传统的消费阶段。     

Social Capital and Consumer Value Co-Created Within an Online Health Community

Many health providers sponsor online communities that enable health consumers to connect and share experiences. This qualitative study draws upon both social capital and consumer behavior theories to demonstrate that consumers participating in the creation of social capital co-create value for themselves and each other. This netnographic study contributes and operationalizes theoretical frameworks for identifying social capital and consumer value within online communities. Results identify 14 social-capital-building practices and further reveal that these practices represent two distinct themes: practices that create a caring environment and practices that assist others. Findings indicate that members of online health communities gain affective, functional, social, and rational benefits such as empathy, self-esteem, status, connectedness, and efficiency. As a managerial and practical contribution, this study establishes online communities as an important component of patients’ healthcare networks not only for exchanging information and support but also as settings for accessing social capital.     

Place as a site and item of consumption: an exploratory study

While places are recognized as sites of consumption within the field of consumer behaviour, they have yet to be generally accepted as forms of consumption. This study investigates the idea of place as a consumption object by comparing conceptions of city and country within a cross‐cultural sample. Thirty‐six consumers living in the US, the UK and Australia were interviewed to explore their thoughts and feelings relating to the cities and countries in which they reside. The findings provide empirical support for key conceptualizations of place in the sociology literature and extend consumer behaviour theory to include considerations of the physical, social and cultural aspects of place that impact upon consumption. In addition, the findings portray places as entities that are assessed, selected and experienced in comparable ways to products.     

A conception of moral sensitivity and everyday consumption practices: insights from the moralizing discourses of pet owners

The marketing discipline is somewhat under‐theorized regarding the moral meanings that both shape and are shaped by the everyday consumption practices of consumers. Therefore, using the context of pet ownership, this paper aims to develop a conceptual understanding of the moral aspects of consumption by examining the social construction of morality in consumers’ day‐to‐day lives. Using phenomenological interviews and autodriving techniques, the study identifies a number of underlying polemics, linked to the ontology of animals as pets, strands of which weave through participants’ moralizing discourses. The study draws attention to the nuances and contradictory processes within which the moral meanings allied to pet ownership and the pet marketplace are constituted and enacted within consumers’ day‐to‐day lives. The paper concludes with a discussion on the value of adopting a sociological perspective of consumption morality and its implications for future studies of consumption.     

Cognitive,Emotional, and Sociocultural Processes in Consumption

This article examines deliberative, emotional, and sociocultural processes in consumption. The authors draw upon basic processes from two leading theories in social psychology, the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the model of goal‐directed behavior (MGB), to develop a comprehensive approach to decision making more appropriate for many consumption decisions, and revise the representation and modeling of key variables to better reflect how social psychological processes relate to consumer behavior. A survey was conducted among real adult consumers of bacalhau in Portugal. Because it is most common for women to prepare bacalhau meals in Portugal, 153 female participants were recruited for this survey. The results show that the TPB, and especially the MGB, are found to explain food consumption decisions well but only after the approaches are modified in form and content to accommodate the complex emotional and social aspects of the consumption context. The results also show that the effects of key determinants of desire in the MGB are contingent on the traits of food involvement and cultural orientation (i.e., degree of vertical individualism). The approach taken herein overcomes limitations of existing theories by synthesizing relevant processes across two leading theories and by introducing new variables and processes, thereby showing that the organization of these processes and their contingency on cultural variables regulate consumption.     

Beyond drinking: the role of wine in the life of the UK consumer

Since the development of wine sales via supermarkets in the UK in the 1970s wine consumption has more than doubled so now the UK is the largest wine import market (by value) in the world. Wine is now consumed by approximately 61% of the UK adult population on a regular basis. For many social wine consumption has become part of their lifestyle. Given the international importance of the UK wine market, plus the increasing incorporation of wine into regular consumption behaviour, it is remarkable how few academic studies have been undertaken into the consumption behaviour of moderate, social UK wine consumers. This paper aims to start developing that knowledge, thus adding to our understanding of consumer behaviour in general. The results show that consumers use wine in very sophisticated ways via purchasing, gifting and consumption. The findings also show that social interaction with wine varies significantly, dependant upon occasion and environment. Behaviour also varies if the purchase, as gift and/or for consumption, is perceived as a private or public activity. This paper places UK wine consumer behaviour within a social context, and is able to show that all consumers display a range of behaviours in relation to wine which are situation and occasion dependant.     

Extending Holt's consuming typology to encompass subject–subject relations in consumption: lessons from pet ownership

This paper adapts Holt's typology of consumption practices to illuminate consumption practices within the context of British consumers and their household pets. The photo-elicitation technique, autodriving, is used to elicit stories from our participants concerning their cats and dogs. Holt's typology provides a strong foundation for illuminating the consumption practices described in these stories. However, in order to capture the cultural meanings and social dynamics that animate these consumption practices more fully, we propose extending Holt's framework so as to incorporate (1) the agency of the animal; (2) the incidence of literal play; and (3) the moral values underlying consuming as classification. This paper concludes with a discussion on the value of our proposed additions in relation to future cultural studies of human–animal relations and to future cultural studies of consumption in general.     

Beyond good and bad: Challenging the suggested role of emotions in customer experience (CX) research

Our paper challenges several notions regarding emotion's role and their influence on the customer experience (hereafter CX). Based on our analysis, we develop the following five propositions to advance our understanding of emotions' role in customer experience research. First, we argue that positive and negative emotions can coexist during the consumption experience. Second, positive emotions do not automatically lead to positive consumption outcomes, and negative emotions may not necessarily generate negative results. Third, positive or negative emotions toward a company employee might not automatically transfer to the company as a whole. Fourth, customers are not apathetic victims of their emotions with no capability to control their emotional experiences. Our last proposition is that consumption emotions are not a purely intrapersonal phenomenon, but that the social context matters and influences the consumption experience. We propose a related future research agenda highlighting opportunities for scholars and managers alike.     

Peer-to-Peer Value Through Social Capital in an Online Motor Neuron Disease Community

Millions of people affected by disability or chronic disease access social support and information through online health communities. These communities of common interest flourish on the Internet, with participants creating peer-to-peer value through social support and information exchange. This study observes a community of people affected by motor neuron disease creating value for themselves and each other within an online health community. The community is studied through the lens of social capital theory, a construct borrowed from the field of sociology that contributes to our understanding of why people gravitate towards these online communities for support and information. The results contribute increased awareness of how peer-to-peer value is created within online health communities and highlight the need for marketers to understand the implications of such communities on consumer behavior as it relates to health care.     

The Epistemic Consumption Object and Postsocial Consumption: Expanding Consumer‐Object Theory in Consumer Research

We introduce the concept of the epistemic consumption object. Such consumption objects are characterized by two interrelated features. First, epistemic consumption objects reveal themselves progressively through interaction, observation, use, examination, and evaluation. Such layered revelation is accompanied by an increasing rather than a decline of the object’s complexity. Second, such objects demonstrate a propensity to change their “face‐in‐action” vis‐à‐vis consumers through the continuous addition or subtraction of properties. The epistemic consumption object is materially elusive and this lack of ontological stability turns the object into a continuous knowledge project for consumers. Via this ongoing cycle of revelation and discovery, consumers become attached to the object in intimate and quasi‐social ways. Therefore, the concept of the epistemic consumption object brings the “object” directly into theorizations of consumer‐object relations, extending current theories of relationship, product involvement, and consumption communities. We draw from research with individual online investors to illustrate the theory of the epistemic consumption object.     

The impact of the implicit theories of social optimism and social pessimism on macro attitudes towards consumption

People have substantially differing attitudes towards consumption. Anti-consumers are negative towards consumption. In contrast, pro-consumers view consumption in a positive light. We posit that people's attitudes toward consumption at the societal (macro) level are impacted by the implicit theories they hold about whether society can solve the problems it faces. We identify two different implicit theories consumers hold regarding how solvable larger societal problems are. Social optimists believe that we will solve the problems that are emerging as we evolve at the societal level. In contrast, social pessimists believe that societal evolution is creating problems too large to be solved. We developed a macro attitudes model where social optimism and pessimism were posited to impact people's macro attitudes towards consumption. We present the results of a study that found that social optimists have more positive attitudes towards consumption and social pessimists have more negative attitudes towards consumption. We also found that this model provided a superior fit in comparison to three other plausible models relating implicit theories and attitudes towards consumption. These findings have implications for anti-consumption research, consumer research on implicit theories, and social marketing designed to address problems associated with overconsumption.     

基于门限分位数回归的网上商品销量影响因素探析

网上商品销售与线下商品销售存在较大不同,为探索其消费模式,需要研究各影响因素对网上商品销量的作用机制。文章基于心理抗拒、贝勃定律、卢因人类行为理论等,对网络消费行为进行系统分析;综合运用分位数回归和门限回归方法,建立了门限分位数回归模型,揭示商品价格、商家信誉评分、商家信誉等级、保障标记数量、商品收藏人气、口碑数量和口碑分数等对销量的非线性异质影响。以受众广泛的iPad air2网上销售为研究对象,实证结果表明：提高商家的信誉等级、增加口碑数量能使高销量商家的销量更高,而保障标记数量的增加对热销有阻碍作用;在非热门商品转向热销品的过程中,增加收藏人气、增加口碑数量和一定价格范围内的提价对低销量商家的销量有促进作用。     

Social interaction via new social media: (How) can interactions on Twitter affect effectual thinking and behavior?

Social interaction plays a central role in effectuation processes, yet we know little about the implications for effectuation when an entrepreneur interacts via particular channels such as social media. To address this gap, our paper uses an inductive, theory-building methodology to develop propositions regarding how effectuation processes are impacted when entrepreneurs adopt Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging platform that can facilitate a marked increase in interaction. We posit that Twitter-based interaction can trigger effectual cognitions, but that high levels of interaction via this medium can lead to effectual churn. We also posit that there is one factor, perceived time affordability, that predicts the level of social interaction in which an entrepreneur engages via Twitter. Further, we propose two factors that moderate the consequences of social interaction through Twitter. These factors are community orientation and community norm adherence. Implications for our understanding of effectuation, of social interaction, and of the impact of social media on entrepreneurial firms are discussed.