Marketing Theory

Triads examine the associations among three actors, involving, at a minimum, the analysis of two dyadic ties among three interrelated actors. By making apparent the indirect ties bearing on actors, the triad is the smallest unit of analysis for a network. Despite extensive conceptual and empirical work, little systematic attention is given to the triad in the marketing literature. This article reviews literature spanning multiple academic disciplines and makes three contributions. First, it provides an overview of the triad concept combining sociological insights with more recent work emerging in operations management and marketing. Second, the article identifies three distinct forms of triadic relationships in existing literature: (1) brokerage, focused on the action of the third between two others; (2) mediation, describing different mechanisms by which a dyadic relationship affects and is affected by a relationship with a third party; and (3) coalition, capturing the configuration and evolution of ties in the three-actor system as a whole. Finally, this article develops an initial research agenda for triadic marketing research.

This article seeks to develop an empirically grounded theorization of care. Current care theory tends to be conceived along philosophical, psychological and labour dimensions, with much of the literature focusing on caring labour and, therefore, invoking a productionist orientation. By contrast, our focus on consumption suggests a reorientation in conceptualizing care to more fully apprehend the nuances of care neglected in a consumption context. We draw from Tronto’s phases of care in arguing that caregiving is not necessarily only an activity involving one’s labour. Through interviews, we examine how and what we consume manifests care and caring. We theorize care in consumption as a circular and dynamic process involving the combination of awareness, responsibility and action. This enhanced understanding of care could facilitate improved market exchanges and relationships between different stakeholders.

This article draws from two conceptual lenses – the sociology of expectations and market studies – to investigate the relationship between technology hype and market investments: which promises and expectations surround hype and how they come together to shape actors’ investments in an emerging market. We address this question through analysing a contemporary hype in a technology marketing context: digital healthcare. Our aim is to trace how market actors create, support and evaluate a market hype; how hype and market investments are related; and whether hype contributes to irreversibilities in shaping emerging market forms and categories. Our study indicates that hypes contribute tangibly to producing the market, not least by channelling financial, symbolic and material market investments. Furthermore, by highlighting how socio-economic, technological and policy promises become affectively loaded through circulation, we add a novel dimension to existing insights into the socio-cognitive construction of markets. We caution technology marketers, policymakers and investors against blindly following technology hype, especially when it encourages companies to engage in market investment that is unhinged from broader systems and societal, ethical or economic concerns.

In this article, we draw upon Weber’s concept of charismatic authority to unpack the appeal that YouTube video bloggers have galvanized among their fan communities. We explore how followers interact to articulate the appeal of British YouTube personalities and consequently, how they contribute to the nature of these ‘new cults of personality’. By observing the content of seven of Britain’s most popular ‘YouTubers’ and engaging in a sustained non-participant netnography of responses to these videos, we argue new cults of personality differ from their traditional counterparts through collaborative, co-constructive and communal interdependence between culted figure and follower. While Weber maintained charismatic authority has its source in the innate and exceptional qualities of an individual’s personality, we submit that in consumer culture’s current era of consent, the ‘culting’ of social actors becomes a participatory venture. We shed light on the fading and routinization of charisma and the dissipation of the relationship between the culted figure and followers.

This study discusses netnographic findings involving 472 YouTube postings categorized to identify themes regarding consumers’ experience of music in advertisements. Key themes relate to musical taste, musical indexicality, musical repetition and musical authenticity. Postings reveal how music conveys individual taste and is linked to personal memories and Heidegger’s coincidental time where moments of authenticity may be triggered in a melee of emotions, memories and projections. Identity protection is enabled as consumers frequently resist advertisers’ attempts to use musical repetition to impose normative identity. Critiques of repetition in the music produce Heideggerian anxiety leading to critically reflective resistance. Similarly, where advertising devalues the authenticity of iconic pieces of music, consumers often resist such authenticity transgressions as a threat to their own identity. The Heideggerian search for meaning in life emphasizes the significance of philosophically driven ideological authenticity in consumers’ responses to music in advertisements.

Inconspicuous consumption – whereby brand signals are subtle, or not easily visible, to most consumers and the overt display of social status is sidestepped – is on the rise, even in China, which has typically favoured conspicuous brand signalling. Research on luxury brands tends to focus on conspicuous consumption, and few studies have explored the ways in which Chinese consumers use Chinese luxury brands in inconspicuous ways. This study examines how Chinese luxury consumers are redefining their identity projects, as well as their conceptions of luxury, in relation to inconspicuous consumption. We suggest that inconspicuous consumption encompasses consuming luxury products without overtly displaying wealth and social status. Thus, certain luxury brands enable inconspicuous consumption. Turning to a group of Chinese luxury brands offers insights into how luxury brands may fill this role for newly emerging forms of inconspicuous consumption. We distinguish four forms of inconspicuous consumption, illustrated by consumers (1) with wished-for identities or fantasy lifestyles, (2) who appreciate aesthetics and function, (3) who are wealthy and prefer not to provoke envy and/or anger in times of economic austerity and (4) who desire to differentiate themselves and employ subtle signals that are only observable to people with the requisite knowledge to decode their meaning. These forms of inconspicuous consumption facilitate the construction and display of one’s reflective identities, including privately fantasized identity, privately held identity and partially public reflective identities. Thus, we contribute to identity construction theory by explicating aspects of reflective identity and linking them to forms of inconspicuous consumption. Finally, we expand upon recent research on inconspicuous consumption by demonstrating how inconspicuous consumption is manifested in China – the largest luxury market. The results help redefine constructs in the paradoxical situation of inconspicuous consumption of luxury brands, adding a layer of complexity to the inconspicuous consumption concept.

The article builds a framework for interactive value formation (IVF) in interorganizational relationships. The framework describes IVF as interplay between resource integration and a multilevel service system, which manifests in interaction episodes accumulating into a relationship. The interplay generates outcomes in which the actors are better off (co-creation), worse off (co-destruction), or indifferent (no-creation) to value gained. The framework is demonstrated in an empirical case of a cultural sponsorship relationship where the co-destructive and no-creative interaction episodes dominated co-creative instances, finally accumulating into a relationship outcome of value no-creation for both parties. The framework and the launched novel conceptualization of value no-creation contribute to the research on service systems, resource integration for value, and failure in value co-creation. The research on failure in value co-creation, that is, value co-destruction, is scant. This article further elaborates this research stream and bridges to the research on co-creation.

Contemporary marketers build online brand communities to communicate with the organization’s social surroundings, yet there is a lack of understanding of how brand legitimization unfolds in these platforms. To understand how legitimacy is constructed and contested every day, the current study adopts a practice-theoretical lens and discourse analysis to investigate two online communities. The contribution of the study is twofold: First, the insights from the discursive praxis, online community posts, comments and reactions illustrate the connections between multiple levels of legitimization discourse. Second, this study builds a theoretical framework for legitimization practice. Individual perceptions, judgements of the texts and actions on them in the online community intertwine with the organizational and societal context shaping the legitimacy of the brand in the community and beyond. This practice supports or challenges the brand as an institution and may legitimize or delegitimize the brand.

Although the extended self-construct has been widely investigated in consumer research, it has inspired relatively few critiques. Moreover, there has been little research which directly assesses consumers’ own emic perspectives on the extended self. Here, an empirical investigation is reported which explicitly solicits consumers’ own ideas and hermeneutically considers them in relation to etic researcher theory. The findings indicate a major theoretical blind spot: not only do consumers differ in the polysemy, that is, the various meanings and discourses they apply to the extended self but also that marketing theory should be revised to reflect this lack of universal understanding.