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.     

Determinants of how individuals choose,eat and waste: Providing common ground to enhance sustainable food consumption out‐of‐home

The transformation of food consumption in wealthy economies is regarded as an essential measure to reach global sustainability goals. However, existing policies and research activities to change food consumption in the increasingly relevant out‐of‐home sector relate to a wide set of options on how to influence behaviours and may be criticized to lack a general focus. Against this background, our study provides a structured review of the existing research body on the determinants of individuals’ food choices and food consumption out‐of‐home. It structures the various research approaches and findings for 110 selected papers according to a general ecological framework where personal, social and environmental determinants for food behaviours are considered. By providing a collective overview and linking results for different behavioural aspects and settings, this study supports a more general understanding of consumer food behaviour in out‐of‐home settings. Consequently, it also provides a means to identify research gaps and to suggest relevant aspects for future research to draw from the combination of findings and to enhance sustainability in food consumption.     

Young consumers’ innovativeness in apparel choices: A model including consumer self‐confidence

In industries with network effects, consumer innovators help to trigger the critical mass needed for a product innovation to be successful. Thus, firms can benefit from actions that increase consumer innovativeness in their target markets. Consumer innovativeness has been associated with variables such as hedonic shopping motivation, impulsiveness and status seeking. There is limited work on the impact on consumer innovativeness of consumer characteristics that reflect consumers’ self‐confident ability to choose. This study proposes and tests a model for consumer innovativeness that incorporates variables from previous research and uncovers the importance of consumer self‐confidence. We collect survey data from 534 Chilean girls, ages 10–15. After building constructs with the help of exploratory factor analysis, we analyze the data with linear regression estimation (via OLS). Our results reveal that consumer self‐confidence is positively and significantly related to consumer innovativeness. Our findings also add evidence ‐from a younger age group‐ regarding the significance of status seeking, impulsiveness and hedonic shopping motivation on consumer innovativeness. Results suggest that companies could leverage consumer innovativeness by taking actions to increase consumers’ self‐confidence. Innovative apparel choices in young consumers could possibly also be strengthened by communicating status achievement and by enhancing shopping enjoyment.     

Me,my family or the public good? Do inter‐role conflicts of consumer–citizens reduce their ethical consumption behaviour?

This article examines role stress, especially inter‐role conflicts (IRC), against the background of the consumer–citizen duality. It tests whether consumer–citizen conflicts impair the purchase of ethical food in terms of the ethical intention–behaviour gap. Furthermore, this study examines the potential of eustress arising from citizen–consumer conflicts to enhance actual ethical purchases. Additionally, determinants and moderating conditions of both IRC are tested. A combination of observations of actual purchase behaviour and survey data in a field setting is used to gain insights into role conflict formation and manifestation, arising from the desire to fulfil the demands of two opposing roles: consumer and citizen. The quantitative data are analysed with structural equation modelling to test the hypothesized coherencies simultaneously. Results indicate that stress arises similarly from both IRC. While a positive impact of eustress on purchase behaviour was absent, consumer–citizen role conflicts impede the actual purchase of ethical groceries. The data show that this role conflict derives, for example, from economic demands sent by the consumer role set when a person has ethical buying intentions. Additionally, the identification with the consumer role further amplifies this conflict. The data indicate that consumers instead of citizens should be empowered by marketing practitioners and policy makers, for example by reducing the perception of stress by communicating positive outcomes referring to relevant consumer role set members (e.g., added value for children from purchasing ethically) to stimulate problem–focused coping.     

Spend as I say,not as I do: Children,families and household consumption in different socio‐economic contexts

This article aims at contributing to a body of work about children and families by exploring the importance of socio‐economic context and social capital for understanding the ways in which money is perceived, obtained and used by children. Alleged contrasts in terms of money management, consumption priorities and postponement of gratification, especially among middle and working classes, have already been debated. It seems thus relevant to investigate if these presumable contrasts apply to children and why. Do children from different socio‐economic contexts reveal the traits that have been attributed to their households? To this end, a mixed methods research project was developed involving 245 children attending different primary schools in Portugal—one private school targeted at upper class children and one state‐sponsored school located in a working‐class area. The results revealed significant differences by school and household typology.     

A North–South model of outsourcing and growth

In this paper, I formulate a simple North–South R&D‐based growth model where final goods firms in the North endogenously determine the range of international outsourcing of intermediate goods to the South. I show that a fall in the trade cost (through trade liberalization) of intermediate goods in the North: (i) reduces the wage of the North relative to that of the South; (ii) increases the outsourced variety of intermediate goods in the North; and (iii) stimulates Northern R&D activity and economic growth in both countries. By conducting welfare analysis, I also show that a decline in the trade cost of intermediate goods in the North improves welfare in the South more than in the North.     

ARE COOPERATIVES MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN INVESTOR‐OWNED FIRMS? CROSS‐INDUSTRY EVIDENCE FROM PORTUGAL

We analyse empirically whether cooperatives and investor‐owned firms differ in terms of productive efficiency. Using rich Portuguese panel data covering a wide range of industries, we apply two different empirical approaches to estimate potential differences in productive efficiency. The results from our benchmark random‐effects model show that cooperatives are significantly less productive, on average, than investor‐owned firms, both at the aggregate level and for most of the industries considered. However, the results derived from a System‐GMM approach, which is our preferred empirical strategy, are much less conclusive, and we cannot conclude that cooperatives are generally less efficient that investor‐owned firms. With either approach, though, we find no evidence that cooperatives are more productive than investor‐owned firms in any industry.     

Means‐Tested Long‐Term Care and Family Transfers

One of the pervasive problems with means‐tested public long‐term care programs is their inability to prevent individuals who could afford private long‐term services from taking advantage of public care. They often manage to elude the means‐test net through ‘strategic impoverishment’. We show in a simple model how this problem comes about, how it affects welfare and how it can be mitigated.     

The Elasticity of Poverty with respect to Sectoral Growth in Africa

The African continent has grown by more than 4 percent yearly on average during the past decade. However, the link between this remarkable growth rate and poverty reduction is neither obvious nor simple. This paper focuses on the elasticity of poverty with respect to GDP growth at the sectoral level and takes into account the fact that economic growth may affect poverty directly as well as indirectly through sectoral labor share intensity. It develops a methodology that sheds light on the contribution of sectoral growth to poverty reduction country‐by‐country in Africa, guiding policy recommendations. As the composition of growth matters at least as much as its overall intensity, it is key to identify the sectors that have the strongest impact on poverty reduction and unleash their potential; if growth happens to concentrate in sectors with scarce pro‐poor potential, like commodity‐driven growth, redistributive strategies are necessary to compensate the weak effect on poverty.     

Household Satellite Account for France

We estimate in a household satellite account (HHSA) the value of French domestic production in 2010 and 1998, using the input method and following Eurostat's recommendations. In line with previous studies, we find that extending the system of national accounts (SNA) frontier of production to domestic activities (house chores, cooking, care …) has a sizeable effect on key macroeconomic indicators (+33 percent GDP, ?5 p.p. GDP growth, +50 percent disposable income, +58 percent consumption, and ?10 p.p. of purchasing power growth). We conduct a sensitivity analysis to various methodological issues which have not yet been settled by an international benchmark. Quantitatively, the two most important issues are the boundary of household production—we favor a relatively narrow definition—and the use of a gross or a net wage—we prefer gross wage‐. However, estimates are much less sensitive to otherwise greatly debated issues such as which substitute wage to use.