Ekant Veer

The consumerist turn in higher education: Policy aspirations and outcomes

Abstract Insights from the marketing and education literature are combined to analyse government rationales and mechanisms related to the positioning of contemporary students as consumers and to assess the impact on the process and outcomes of education, on the professional practices of faculty and on widening participation. Pierre Bourdieus conceptual framework is applied to analyse how consumer mechanisms are mediated by the organisational cultures and practices within universities. These theoretical insights are combined with data from different national contexts to indicate positive outcomes. However, the organisational context of higher education, gamesmanship and outdated marketing relations have also led to the opposite of what policy makers have aspired to. We show how consumerism also promotes passive learning, threatens academic standards, and entrenches academic privilege. The paper contributes to scholarship on consumerism in sectors which are subject to changing relations between state regulation and market forces, and offers policy and management insights.

If Kate voted Conservative, would you?: The role of celebrity endorsements in political party advertising

Purpose – This research has been conducted with the aim of determining if celebrity endorsers in political party advertising have a significant impact on UK voter intentions. The use of celebrity endorsements is commonplace in the USA, but little is known about its effects in the UK. This research also aims to incorporate the use of celebrity endorsements in political party advertising with the political salience construct. Political salience represents how prominent politics and political issues are in the minds of the eligible voter.Design/methodology/approach – A 2 (endorser: celebrity; non‐celebrity)×2 (political salience: high; low) between‐subjects factorial design experiment was used. The results show that celebrity endorsements do play a significant role in attitudes towards the political advert, attitudes towards the endorser and voter intention. However, this effect is significantly moderated by political salience.Findings – The results show that low political salience respondents were significa...

Forgive me, Father, for I did not give full justification for my sins:how religious consumers justify the acquisition of material wealth

Abstract This research shows how high religiosity consumers justify the purchase of highly materialistic goods. By drawing on the Justification-Suppression Model (JSM), it is shown that high religiosity consumers favour advertisements that suppress the materialistic aspects of goods and offer adequate justification for the purchase. However, these same consumers dislike advertisements that explicitly focus on the materialistic nature of goods. The results from the research offer insight into how high religiosity consumers are able to acquire material wealth despite a strong aversion to such practices within their doctrine. Implications from this research include a greater understanding of how to advertise to high religiosity consumers, but also how the JSM can be used as a means of minimising cognitive dissonance during purchase decisions.

It's Time to Quit: Using Advertising to Encourage Smoking Cessation

This paper seeks to contribute to social advertising practice by examining the effectiveness of two different quit smoking ads. This research uses Prochaska and DiClementes (1983) transtheoretical model of addictive behaviour to understand which advertising messages work at different stages of change. Using an experimental design method two real ads were shown to smokers in different stages of change. The results of this experiment indicate that the self‐liberating ‘Get Unhooked’ ads led to more favourable attitudes towards quitting in smokers looking to quit soon, while the more consciousness‐raising British Heart Foundation ad was more effective for those smokers not looking to quit. This research highlights the need for more targeted advertising messages and provides key implications to theory and practice.

The golden ties that bind: boundary crossing in diasporic Hindu wedding ritual

The interpretive research in this article goes beyond considering how diasporic consumers cross borders between home and host cultures, to examine how they cross boundaries within their home culture. In keeping with ethno-consumerism, the authors utilize Hindu meaning categories of sacredness, purity, and auspiciousness to examine the wedding ritual among diasporic Hindus. The authors unpack the transformation of outsider fiancées into insider daughters to show how gold is employed to separate, link, and cross boundaries in extended families. This article demonstrates the agency of the relationships between the gold and its givers, in collectively co-creating an aesthetic subject who is a visual representation of a daughter embedded into the collective self of the extended family. In doing so, the authors demonstrate how diasporic Hindus utilize the cultural code of gold to shape and reaffirm collective identity.

How the tone and wording of advertisements interact

This research investigates how the tone and wording of advertisements interact. This previously neglected area of research is explored in the context of television advertisements for mobile phones. Reports on an experiment with two independent variables – affective tone and message framing – shows how these variables interact regarding attitudes towards the ad, and recall, for a New Zealand sample. Results suggest that incongruous matching works best, namely happy ads with negative frames, and sad ads with positive frames, providing new insights for advertising practitioners and academics. Theoretical and managerial implications and directions for future research are also discussed.

Assessing the Societal Impact of Research: The Relational Engagement Approach

Marketing and policy researchers aiming to increase the societal impact of their scholarship should engage directly with relevant stakeholders. For maximum societal effect, this engagement needs to occur both within the research process and throughout the complex process of knowledge transfer. The authors propose that a relational engagement approach to research impact complements and builds on traditional approaches. Traditional approaches to impact employ bibliometric measures and focus on the creation and use of journal articles by scholarly audiences, an important but incomplete part of the academic process. The authors recommend expanding the strategies and measures of impact to include process assessments for specific stakeholders across the entire course of impact, from the creation, awareness, and use of knowledge to societal impact. This relational engagement approach involves the cocreation of research with audiences beyond academia. The authors hope to begin a dialogue on the strategies researchers can use to increase the potential societal benefits of their research.

Staring: How Facebook Facilitates the Breaking of Social Norms

Purpose – To better understand how some users enjoy using Facebook as it breaks the tension between their desire to stare and the social norm dictating one should not stare. Methodology – An interpretivist methodology was employed to understand why staring behaviour was so attractive to some Facebook users. 11 Facebook users took part in the study and were observed using Facebook, interviewed about their time online and asked to discuss posts that they had stared at in the past. Findings – From the study it was shown that staring was commonplace on Facebook and ranged from harmless information searching to more extreme forms of Schadenfreude Staring. Regardless of the staring behaviour, the motivation remained constant. That is, Facebook allowed the users to engage in behaviour that is often stigmatised in offline settings. Implications – This research highlights the importance of online behaviour as a release from offline tension and constraint. The research also highlights how some users may be actively engaging in behaviour online that offline may be deemed unsuitable or deviant. Originality – Although much literature has looked at the role of online environments in identity formation, very little has looked at the role of online engagement as a means to specifically break with offline social norms. This research also highlights the growing trend of seeking information that elicits a sensation of Schadenfreude for the viewer. Further research should look to see how other forms of behaviour would elicit similar feelings of Schadenfreude and what implications this has on consumer culture.

Don’t feed the trolling: rethinking how online trolling is being defined and combated

ABSTRACT Trolling involves deliberate, deceptive and mischievous attempts to provoke reactions from other online users. Even though trolling causes problems for marketers and consumers, there has been little discussion about what trolling actually is and how marketers should respond to it. The present conceptual study addresses these gaps. First, we present a working, integrative definition of trolling behaviours, arguing that trolling is substantively different from cyberbullying. Next, we present the challenges of current trolling regulations, showing that trolling is sometimes the result of the regulations themselves. The paper concludes with a presentation of the conceptual model of the manifestation of trolling behaviours. The model informs and assists scholars and marketing practitioners concerned with understanding and addressing trolling.

Made with real crocodiles: The use of anthropomorphism to promote product kinship in our youngest consumers

Abstract This research looks to understand why anthropomorphic images are so overused by marketers to attract very young consumers. By drawing on theories from evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and social psychology, it is argued that anthropomorphism acts as a catalyst for kin recognition and encourages attachment and liking. A number of bonding concepts are discussed, such as association and phenotype matching, to show how anthropomorphic images encourage a young consumer to draw closer to the product and avoid destruction of the product. The manuscript concludes by calling for further research on understanding very young consumers’ relationships with brands and brand images.