Ashlee Humphreys

Semiotic Structure and the Legitimation of Consumption Practices: The Case of Casino Gambling

How do changes in public discourse and regulatory structure affect the acceptance of a consumption practice? Previous research on legitimacy in consumer behavior has focused on the consumer reception of legitimizing discourse rather than on the historical process of legitimation itself. This study examines the influence of changes in the institutional environment over time on the meaning structures that influence consumer perception and practice. To study legitimation as a historical process, a discourse analysis of newspaper articles about casino gambling from 1980-2007 was conducted. Results show that the regulatory approval of gambling is accompanied by a shift in the semantic categories used to discuss casinos and that journalists play a role in shaping these categories. Further, journalists shape the meaning of a consumption practice in three ways: through selection, validation, and realization. Interpreted through the lens of institutional theory, these findings suggest that studies of legitimation should consider changes in public discourse and legal regulation in addition to consumer perceptions of legitimacy. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Framing the Game: Assessing the Impact of Cultural Representations on Consumer Perceptions of Legitimacy

The purpose of this article is to understand how media frames affect consumer judgments of legitimacy. Because frames exist on the sociocultural and individual level, our research takes a multimethod approach to this question. On the sociocultural level, we conduct a content analysis of operant media frames for discussing online gambling and perform an event analysis, finding that a shift in consumer judgments follows an abrupt shift in frame. Then, on the individual level, the causal mechanism for these shifts is investigated in an experimental setting using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). These experiments show that framing affects normative legitimacy judgments by changing implicit associations. Further, users and nonusers respond differently to frame elements, with users favoring an established frame and nonusers favoring a novel, legitimating frame. This suggests that media frames play a critical role in establishing legitimacy at the sociocultural level and that framing potentially bridges cognitive and normative legitimacy.

Consumer perceptions of service constellations: implications for service innovation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the service constellation perspective affects innovation strategies and potentially contributes to the innovation literature, proposing a research agenda.Design/methodology/approach – By analyzing the notion of a service constellation, the authors provide an overview of major implications for service innovation research and practice.Findings – Firms and service innovation researchers need to focus on the perceived consumer value of the constellation rather than on individual services. The authors illustrate how service innovation from the constellation perspective requires coordination and synchronization between projects and different approaches to portfolio management and screening.Originality/value – Adoption of the service constellation perspective creates new opportunities.

How is Sustainability Structured? The Discursive Life of Environmentalism

Promoting products and companies as both socially and environmentally sustainable is a core component in many contemporary marketing strategies and increasingly the concern of many consumers. While the effects of corporate social responsibility on consumer perception and firm performance have been widely investigated, research has yet to explore how and why these expectations themselves change over time. In this study, I use institutional theory and the theory of structuration from sociology to evaluate the shift in norms regarding environmental responsibility in the United States over a thirty-year period. A qualitative and quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles shows that environmental discourse has shifted from an emphasis on protection of the environment against toxic, modern encroachments, to a set of frames that emphasize the efficiency of technology and efficient use, if not improvement of, the environment. The stakeholders held responsible for protecting the environment have also changed from government actors to company and consumer stakeholders. These findings help to reveal the discursive underpinnings of CSR perceptions at a societal level and have implications for conceptualizing the legitimation of environmental corporate practice.

The relationship between self-report of depression and media usage

Depression is a debilitating condition that adversely affects many aspects of a persons life and general health. Earlier work has supported the idea that there may be a relationship between the use of certain media and depression. In this study, we tested if self-report of depression (SRD), which is not a clinically based diagnosis, was associated with increased internet, television, and social media usage by using data collected in the Media Behavior and Influence Study (MBIS) database (N = 19,776 subjects). We further assessed the relationship of demographic variables to this association. These analyses found that SRD rates were in the range of published rates of clinically diagnosed major depression. It found that those who tended to use more media also tended to be more depressed, and that segmentation of SRD subjects was weighted toward internet and television usage, which was not the case with non-SRD subjects, who were segmented along social media use. This study found that those who have suffered either economic or physical life setbacks are orders of magnitude more likely to be depressed, even without disproportionately high levels of media use. However, among those that have suffered major life setbacks, high media users—particularly television watchers—were even more likely to report experiencing depression, which suggests that these effects were not just due to individuals having more time for media consumption. These findings provide an example of how Big Data can be used for medical and mental health research, helping to elucidate issues not traditionally tested in the fields of psychiatry or experimental psychology.

Megamarketing expanded by neo-institutional theory

This work aims at extending the boundaries of marketing to address the process of emerging consumption practices. This point of view is in line with the concept of megamarketing introduced by Kotler (1986, Harvard Business Review, 64, 117–124) and with the assumption that consumption practices depend heavily on supra individual and institutional structures that can take a cognitive, normative and regulatory form. Drawing from the recent insights of institutional theory, we propose marketing strategies that companies can use to shape the institutional structure underlying new consumptions practices. We extend the concept of megamarketing by collating it with that of institutional work, and thus identify the cognitive, symbolic, cultural and legal levers used by firms to shape the institutional conditions needed for consumption.