Alladi Venkatesh

Marketing in a postmodern world

Begins with the premiss that we are living through an epochal change from the modern to the postmodern era and that marketing organizations have to reconsider their conceptions of the market, the consumer and marketing practice accordingly. Following a brief discussion of the themes of postmodernity, explores some of the key assumptions of modern marketing that are challenged by the transformation to postmodernity. Finally, presents the implications of postmodern culture for marketing, arguing that consumers are not driven by needs but have needs which are driven by external forces, that consumers have become customizers, that marketing organizations′ offerings will increasingly become processes rather than finished products, and that consumers who will increasingly become integrated into the production systems will have to be conceptualized as producers. Concludes by re‐emphasizing that marketing and post‐modernity are greatly intertwined, arguing that consumers are not driven by needs but have needs whi...

Beyond Adoption: Development and Application of a Use-Diffusion Model

The study tests a use-diffusion model in the context of home technology use. The authors combine two constructs, variety and rate of use, to yield four user segments. The results show that user segments vary on the basis of social context and technological makeup of the household as well as personal factors and external influences. Furthermore, user segments differ with regard to users’ satisfaction with technology and interest in acquiring future technologies.

Postmodernity: The age of marketing

Abstract This paper investigates the much discussed phenomenon of postmodernity as it relates to and influences marketing. The major conditions of postmodernity are discussed as hyperreality, fragmentation, reversal of consumption and production, decentering of the subject, and paradoxical juxtapositions (of opposites), with the caution that marketing may already be a postmodern institution.

Computers and other interactive technologies for the home

DESPITE THE RECENT DRAMATIC TRENDS IN THE DIFfusion of information technology, the significance of these developments is still not clear. Also lacking is a critical understanding of these developments and a sound theoretical and empirical base from which to observe and analyze them. Supporting such an analysis, this article raises both empirical and theoretical concerns in an attempt to capture the structure and dynamics of computer adoption and use in the home. Computers and Other Interactive Technologies for the Home A l l a d i V e n k a t e s h

Further evolving the new dominant logic of marketing: from services to the social construction of markets

This work calls for a paradigmatic shift from marketing techniques and concepts to markets as a social construction. Our argument is composed of six facets: (1) revisioning the creation of value in markets to include meanings; (2) reconsidering the efficacy and limits of working from the perspective of the marketer; (3) incorporating more conscientiously consumer subjectivity and agency; (4) reformulating the nature of relationships between consumers and marketers from individuals to social beings inhabiting communities; (5) addressing more explicitly cultural differences in the form of subcultures within nations and international differences between nations in level of development; and finally, (6) exhorting the importance of marketer reflexivity. In charting these key transitions and tracing them to particular academic communities over time, we work towards a more radically transformative marketing practice that is socio-historically situated, culturally sensitive, and organic, in accounting for and adapting to contemporary global, technological, and socio-cultural developments.

Has the Internet become indispensable

As was empirically demonstrated in [3], “the adoption rate of the Internet has exceeded that of earlier mass communication technologies by several magnitudes,” making it an “irreversible” innovation. Studies have also shown that for the generation of U.S.-based youth that grew up with the Internet, it is gradually displacing television as their main source of entertainment, communication, and education [6]. Here, we explore how the Internet has become indispensable to people in their daily lives and develop a conceptual model allowing us to address the associated research questions. The idea is that the Internet has become so embedded in the daily fabric of people’s lives that they simply cannot live without it. How is the Internet indispensable and in what ways? For which groups of people is it indispensable, for what tasks, and how has BY DONNA L. HOFFMAN, THOMAS P. NOVAK, AND ALLADI VENKATESH

Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands

Abstract The phrase “fast fashion” refers to low-cost clothing collections that mimic current luxury fashion trends. Fast fashion helps sate deeply held desires among young consumers in the industrialized world for luxury fashion, even as it embodies unsustainability. Trends run their course with lightning speed, with todays latest styles swiftly trumping yesterdays, which have already been consigned to the trash bin. This article addresses the inherent dissonance among fast fashion consumers, who often share a concern for environmental issues even as they indulge in consumer patterns antithetical to ecological best practices. Seemingly adept at compartmentalism, and free of conflicted guilt, such consumers see no contradiction in their Janus-faced desires. Can luxury fashion, with ostensibly an emphasis on authenticity, and its concomitant respect for artisans and the environment, foster values of both quality and sustainability? Since individual identity continually evolves, and requires a materially referential re-imagining of self to do so, we hypothesize that actual rather than faux luxury brands can, ironically, unite the ideals of fashion with those of environmental sustainability.

Computing in the home: shifts in the time allocation patterns of households

An empirical study of 282 users of home computers was conducted to explore the relationship between computer use and shifts in time allocation patterns in the household. Major changes in time allocated to various activities were detected. Prior experience with computers (i.e., prior to purchase of the home computer) was found to have a significant impact on the time allocation patterns in the household. The study provides evidence that significant behavior changes can occur when people adopt personal computers in their homes.

Arts and aesthetics: Marketing and cultural production

Cultural production concerns the creation, diffusion, and consumption of cultural products. In this article, we discuss cultural production as related to the marketing and consumption of aesthetics. The article addresses the following topics: the nature of cultural production, including the roles that producers, cultural intermediaries and consumers play in the process; emerging perspectives and ideas on cultural production; aesthetics and art in cultural production; new epistemologies concerning postmodernism and posthumanism as related to cultural production; and the implications of the cultural production processes for the marketing aspects of cultural industries. This article sets forth marketing as the context and framework for the functioning of the cultural production system.

The aesthetics of consumption and the consumer as an aesthetic subject

This paper examines aesthetics in everyday consumption practices and patterns. Combining aesthetic theory with prior work of consumer scholars to support our theoretical framework, we investigate empirically the following issues: the integration of aesthetics into everyday consumption, the distinction between everyday aesthetics and of the arts, and the relationship between aestheti cs and the construction of meaning and identity. In addition, we introduce the idea of the consumer as an aesthetic subject. The data also shed light on the following aspects of aesthetic consumption: intrinsic value versus instrumental value, emotions, sensory pleasure, beauty, context, and taste formation.