Diane M. Martin

Consumption-Driven Market Emergence

New market development is well theorized from a firm-centered perspective, but research has paid scant attention to the emergence of markets from consumption activity. The exceptions conceptualize market emergence as a product of consumer struggle against prevailing market logics. This study develops a model of consumption-driven market emergence in harmony with existing market offerings. Using ethnographic methods and actor-network theory the authors chronicle the emergence of a new market within the motorcycle industry that develops with neither active participation nor interference from mainstream industry players. Findings reveal a process of multiple translations wherein consumers mobilize human and nonhuman actors to co-constitute products, practices, and infrastructures. These drive the growth of interlinked communities of practice, which ultimately are translated into a fully functioning market. The study highlights the roles of distributed innovation and diffusion, embedded entrepreneurship, and market catalysts in processes of market change and development.

Claiming the Throttle: Multiple Femininities in a Hyper-Masculine Subculture

This feminist re‐examination of an ethnography of Harley‐Davidson motorcycle owners uncovers a world of motivations, behaviors, and experiences undiscovered in the original work. The structure and ethos of subculture are understood differently when examined through the lens of feminist theory. Through the voices of women riders in a hyper‐masculine consumption context we discover perspectives that cannot easily be explained by extant theory of gender and consumer behavior. We find women engaging, resisting, and co‐opting hyper‐masculinity as part of identity projects wherein they expand and redefine their own personal femininities. This study reveals invisible assumptions limiting the original ethnography and thus reiterates the problems of hegemonic masculinity in the social science project.

The marketization of religion: field, capital, and consumer identity

Certain institutions traditionally have had broad socializing influence over their members, providing templates for identity that comprehend all aspects of life from the existential and moral to the mundanely material. Marketization and detraditionalization undermine that socializing role. This study examines the consequences when, for some members, such an institution loses its authority to structure identity. With a hermeneutical method and a perspective grounded in Bourdieus theories of fields and capital, this research investigates the experiences of disaffected members of a religious institution and consumption field. Consumers face severe crises of identity and the need to rebuild their self-understandings in an unfamiliar marketplace of identity resources. Unable to remain comfortably in the field of their primary socialization, they are nevertheless bound to it by investments in field-specific capital. In negotiating this dilemma, they demonstrate the inseparability and co-constitutive nature of ideology and consumption.

Marketing and the New Materialism

Modern man’s unsustainable systems of production and consumption are symptoms of underlying problems in how we understand and relate to the material world. Socially constructed dualities between the social and natural sciences and between meaning and materiality have encouraged societies to indulge in magical thinking about the ability of material goods to deliver nonmaterial wellbeing, which in turn places marketing at the center of the destructive overconsumption of natural capital. This essay calls attention to a growing philosophical countertrend, neomaterialism, that is reshaping research in such a way as to collapse such false dualities. The new materialism, carried over to marketing practice, demands a meticulous, if not obsessive, attention to material things, their provenance, their agency and their downstream destinations, thus forming the basis of a more sustainable society.

The answer is sustainable marketing, when the question is: What can we do?

Criticizing marketing is easy, and its detractors are doing a good job of it. But going beyond and proposing an approach, tools and a vision for change is another matter altogether. Diane Martin and John Schouten have embraced the task. They explore the path of sustainable marketing with a view to transforming consumption practices and, more broadly, to achieving a new material culture supporting sustainable development principles.

Sustainable Marketing through the Natural Step

In recent years the ecological and humanitarian reasons for businesses to become environmentally and socially sustainable have become clearer than ever. With less fanfare, the business rationale for sustainable prac. tices has also begun to clarify. Many marketing companies, including some of the world’s largest and most successful (e.g., Walmart, Nike, and Interface Carpets), have undertaken the serious task of becoming more environmentally neutral and more socially responsible. In moving to more sustainable models, these companies have not compromised their economic futures. On the contrary, they are helping to usher in a new business paradigm that will ensure their economic viability in a world of increasingly scarce natural resources and rapidly growing consumer markets.

From evangelical roots to capitalist returns: Market formation from community beginnings

This research tests a theory of consumption-driven market emergence (CDME): a process wherein embedded entrepreneurs, multiple and dispersed actors from a particular habitus, innovate products outside of mainstream market logics leading to the distributed development of communities of practice around the innovations. A key feature of CDME is the introduction of a market catalyst, an actor that provides critical elements of infrastructure that, in turn, allows the emergence of a fully functioning, efficient and legitimized market. In this article we examine how the organic foods market emerged from a widespread collection of ideologically driven farmers and consumers into a high-growth and profitable commercial market. We test a model of CDME with secondary data reflecting the dynamics of the organic farming industry. Results from the fixed effects panel data estimation show strong support for the model.

Reducing the attitude-behavior gap in sustainable consumption: a theoretical proposition and the American electric vehicle market

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to re-evaluate the sustainable attitude-behavior gap by reconsidering the cognitive-rational aspects of consumer purchase behavior. We aim to show how companies can benefit from focusing on hedonic aspects of consumption in their marketing of sustainable products. We claim that consumer culture research needs to examine the link between hedonic, aesthetic, and cognitive-rational aspects of sustainable consumption. Methodology/approach We use the electric vehicle marketing strategy in the United States as an example of an approach to bridge the attitude-behavior gap. More specifically, we focus on the car manufacturer Tesla as an example of marketing a sustainable product. Findings We find that Tesla’s marketing strategy focuses on aesthetics and hedonics-ludic performance. Similarly to other luxury cars, Tesla markets itself with a full compliment of consumer benefits. Compared to economical electric vehicles, sustainability is not the primary focus of Tesla’s marketing communication strategy. Research limitations/implications Sustainable consumption theory benefits from examining the interlinking of hedonic, aesthetic and cognitive-rational aspects product purchasing and use. Future research in the development of sustainable consumption theory in additional complex product categories is needed. Practical implications Greater regard for consumer experience in sustainable consumption offers the potential for additional strategies to bridge the attitude-behavior gap and marketing of sustainable goods. Originality/value We move beyond the attitude-behavior gap by not only focusing on expressed attitudes of sustainability, but also focusing on the hedonic aspects at play in sustainable consumption.

From counterculture movement to mainstream market: Emergence of the U.S. organic food industry

This is an essential reading for both seasoned scholars and advanced students of markets, economies and social forms of consumption.

Myth-mediated branding

Abstract Purpose We aim to understand what happens when larger social and cultural myths become the incarnate understanding of consumers within the firm. This paper uncovers the varied myths at play in one Finnish company’s status as an inadvertent cultural icon. Methodology/approach Through a qualitative inquiry of Finland’s largest dairy producer and by employing the theoretical lens of myth, we conceptualize the entanglement of broad cultural, social, and organizational myths within the organization. Findings Macro-mythic structures merge with everyday employee practice giving consumer understanding flesh within the firm (Hallet, 2010). Mythological thinking leaves organizational members inevitably bound up in a form of consumer knowing that is un-reflective and inadvertently effects brand marketing management. Originality/value Working through a nuanced typology of myth (Tillotson & Martin, 2014) provided a deeper understanding of how managers may become increasingly un-reflexive in their marketing activities. This case also provides a cautionary tale for heterogeneous communities where ideological conflict underscores development and adoption of contemporary myths.