Chris Hackley

Antecedents of luxury brand purchase intention

Purpose – There has been considerable research into the global phenomenon of luxury brand consumption, but relatively few studies have empirically explored key relationships influencing purchase intention. This research aims to consider the respective roles of social context, individual perception, and vanity, and to set these relationships within a broader theoretical context of the literature on possession and consumer identity. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical study consisted of a large-scale survey conducted among Chinese luxury brand consumers in Taiwan. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression. Findings – The findings support the influence of the social context on purchase intention for luxury brands. There was weaker support for the role of perception. The experiential and functional aspects of luxury brand purchase were positively correlated with purchase intention, but symbolic value was not. Physical and achievement vanity had a positive impact on purchase intention while only achievement vanity had a moderating effect on perception. Practical implications – This study offers new empirical support for the proposition that vanity has a role in luxury brand purchase intention and thereby shades both theoretical and managerial understanding of luxury brand consumption. It also suggests that symbolic value, which is highly influential in western conceptualizations of luxury brand meaning, needs to be re-evaluated in the context of Chinese consumers. Originality/value – This study offers new empirical findings which contribute to a re-conceptualization of the antecedents of purchase intention in the area of luxury brand consumption. In particular, the study provides evidence of the roles of social context, perception and vanity in a Chinese consumption context to inform the primarily western models of luxury brand purchase intention.

The trouble with creatives: negotiating creative identity in advertising agencies

Advertising creatives are often characterised in terms of stereotypes such as genius or maverick. Relatively few studies have focused on the complexities and contradictions that face creatives in their professional role. In this paper we draw on depth interviews conducted with a small sample of senior-level creatives working in a cross-section of New York agency settings to explore the ways in which they negotiate and resolve their senses of personal and professional identity. We find that ad agencies are a site of conflict and insecurity for these creatives, yet also of potential fulfilment. We suggest that these creatives may be complicit in the conflict because their sense of professional identity has a substantial investment in it. We suggest that the advertising industry has not evolved working practices that fully assimilate those creatives who experience such dilemmas of identity.

Entertainment Marketing and Experiential Consumption

The placement of brand references within mainstream entertainment (called here ‘entertainment marketing’) is a rapidly evolving marketing communications field in its scale and sophistication. Much previous research in the field has conceptualized entertainment marketing as promotion and focused on measuring consumer attitudes, purchase intentions and brand recall in response to brand exposure. This conceptual paper suggests that there is also a need for understanding the quality of consumer engagement with brands in the context of mediated entertainment. The paper draws on phenomenological/existential research traditions in order to begin to theorize the role that entertainment marketing techniques may play in facilitating consumer self‐concepts and identity formation through brand exposure within dramatic portrayals of characters and lifestyles. The authors presented an earlier version of this paper at the European Marketing Academy Annual Conference at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy in 2005.

'We Are All Customers Now ...' Rhetorical Strategy and Ideological Control in Marketing Management Texts

This paper critically appraises the rhetoric of marketing management texts. Its interpretive frame is informed respectively by critical management and discourse analytic theoretical traditions. Its main data set is drawn from popular textbooks written for taught university courses but it also draws attention to similar rhetorical strategies in leading academic marketing journals. In addition, parallels are drawn with other popular management and consulting fields. In this way the paper attempts to mark out an initial topology of the ideological influence that is enabled and mobilized by marketings rhetorical strategies. Marketing rhetoric often escapes critical attention precisely because it is platitudinous. Marketing management axioms have become slogans and the slogans have become cliches regularly employed in organizational, educational and political settings. But the prevalence of platitudinous rhetoric in management consulting schemes does not necessarily hinder their popularity or inhibit the deployment of their rhetorical/ideological strategies in other settings. Popular marketing management rhetoric is a special case because it positions itself not only as a prescriptive management-consulting framework but also as a legitimate academic field. It is in the latter guise that the success of managerial marketings rhetorical/ideological strategies has proved most striking. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.

Explicit, non-integrated product placement in British television programmes

The rapid increase in the volume and variety of product placement approaches has outpaced research in the field. There is a marked shortage of studies that address particular product placement (pp) techniques in specified situational contexts. This paper reports the category of pp known as explicit, non-integrated product placement in the context of British television programmes. The study used a small convenience sample of young, mixed-nationality TV viewers who were familiar with the British and non-British shows on British commercial TV. Their attitudes to and recognition of pp in this context were explored. The findings are set within a wider-ranging review of previous research, and suggest important implications for promotional practice and fu ture research.

Inhabiting the contradictions: Hypersexual femininity and the culture of intoxication among young women in the UK

This paper contributes to debates on post-feminism and the constitution of contemporary femininity via an exploration of young women’s alcohol consumption and their involvement in normative drinking cultures. We view femininity as a profoundly contradictory and dilemmatic space which appears almost impossible for girls or young women to inhabit. The juxtaposition of hyper-sexual femininity and the culture of intoxication produces a particularly difficult set of dilemmas for young women. They are exhorted to be sassy and independent – but not feminist; to be ‘up for it’ and to drink and get drunk alongside young men – but not to ‘drink like men’. They are also called on to look and act as agentically sexy within a pornified night-time economy, but to distance themselves from the troubling figure of the ‘drunken slut’. Referring to recent research on young women’s alcohol consumption and our own study on young adults’ involvement in the culture of intoxication in the UK, we consider the ways in which young women manage to inhabit this terrain, and the implications for contemporary feminism and safer drinking initiatives.

Social marketing, individual responsibility and the “culture of intoxication”

Purpose – Social marketing initiatives designed to address the UKs culture of unhealthy levels of drinking among young adults have achieved inconclusive results to date. The paper aims to investigate the gap between young peoples perceptions of alcohol consumption and those of government agencies who seek to influence their behaviour set within a contextualist framework.Design/methodology/approach – The authors present empirical evidence from a major study that suggests that the emphasis of recent campaigns on individual responsibility may be unlikely to resonate with young drinkers. The research included a meaning‐based and visual rhetoric analysis of 261 ads shown on TV, in magazines, on billboards and on the internet between 2005 and 2006. This was followed by 16 informal group discussions with 89 young adults in three locations.Findings – The research identified the importance of the social context of young peoples drinking. The research reveals how a moral position has been culturally constructed ...

Tacit knowledge and the epistemology of expertise in strategic marketing management

Discusses issues concerning the relationship between codified marketing theory and practical strategic marketing expertise, particularly with respect to the importance of “tacit” or unarticulated knowledge. The trajectory of argument draws attention to the role of words as symbolic modelling devices and explores implications of this position for theorising marketing expertise. Makes use of a multidisciplinary perspective and draws material from work in cognitive science, the psychology of expertise and the philosophy of science. Sets the problematisation of practical theory in marketing within a broader context of a possible epistemological “crisis” of rationality in practical disciplines. The conclusion suggests that an epistemology of expertise for marketing management demands both theoretical and linguistic sophistication and implies a pedagogic shift towards a model of philosophic enquiry in marketing.

Silent Running: Tacit, Discursive and Psychological Aspects of Management in a Top UK Advertising Agency

In old American World War II movies submarine commanders called for ‘silent running’ when the enemy were near. No orders were issued but anarchy did not ensue. Everyone knew what to do. This paper describes a research study of one of the top five UK advertising agencies, in which management appeared silent in the sense that explicit, overt, bureaucratic, sanction-backed directive corporate authority was not evident. But this agency is one of the most successful, serious, creative, effective, least showbizzy agencies in the industry. It is a good example of an organization which manages and sells knowledge: knowledge about advertising, about consumers and about creative craft. The research used critical discourse analysis to explore the ways in which power, authority and professional identity were discursively reproduced in the service of corporate instrumentality. As a real, concrete source of authority and direction, ‘management’ seemed silent, yet as a discursive construction its controlling presence was psychologically pervasive.

The Panoptic Role of Advertising Agencies in the Production of Consumer Culture

Advertisings role in promoting an ideology of marketed consumption has been widely commented upon by critical theorists yet the mechanisms through which this influence becomes manifest remain relatively under-examined. In particular there has been no explicit examination of the mediating role of cultural knowledge in the production of ideologically driven advertising. This paper invokes the panoptic metaphor to position the knowledge gathered by and on behalf of advertising agencies as a major dynamic in the production of consumer culture. The consumer of advertising is a known entity for advertising agencies: the subject is watched, filmed, questioned, recorded, and tracked. Indeed, consumer biography and subjectivity itself has become material that is both produced and consumed by advertising agencies in order to produce culturally constitutive advertising. The paper integrates disparate literatures to situate knowledge of consumer culture at the hub of advertisings constitutive ideological influence.