Ekin Pehlivan

Storygiving as a co-creation tool for luxury brands in the age of the internet: a love story by Tiffany and thousands of lovers

Purpose This paper aims to introduce the concept of storygiving as a co-creation tool and provides a guideline for its successful use by luxury brand managers. Design/methodology/approach A study of Tiffany and Co.’s social media-based site and its use of stories as co-created marketing content provides us with managerial strategies applicable to luxury brands in general. The authors emphasize how luxury brands deal with co-created brand images compared to mainstream brands. Findings Storygiving enables consumers to share their personal experiences through narratives and provides contextualized connections among community members through shared experiences. One successful example of storygiving is Tiffany & Co.’s ‘What Makes Love True’ campaign. Research limitations/implications Only one luxury brand was used in this case study of online co-creation and storygiving. Further research, especially comparative case studies, would expand understanding of brand image management in the age of social media and consumer empowerment. Practical implications This paper presents a strategic guideline for luxury brand managers highlighting a customer-centric insight into ways luxury brands can develop marketing strategies incorporating co-creation. Originality/value To differentiate it from storytelling, the co-creation of brand stories through consumer-generated content is known as storygiving. The use of social media marketing in the process of storygiving is a powerful tool for luxury brands. The changed narrative from the brand’s point of view to that of the brand’s community is a major point made in this research.

Ad Bites: Toward a Theory of Ironic Advertising

ABSTRACT Irony is employed to add edge or bite to advertising—to make it stand out. Yet the irony of ironic advertising is that it is used but not thoroughly understood; practiced but not well researched. In this study, the authors set out to remedy this failing by laying the foundations of research into ironic advertising. Specifically, they define a construct and then develop a theory that explains how ironic advertising works. From this, they develop a series of propositions that specify how a message and its interpretation interact to determine the relative efficacy of an ironic communication. The article then outlines a research agenda and concludes by specifying the contribution of the theory to practitioners and researchers.ABSTRACT Irony is employed to add edge or bite to advertising—to make it stand out. Yet the irony of ironic advertising is that it is used but not thoroughly understood; practiced but not well researched. In this study, the authors set out to remedy this failing by laying the foundations of research into ironic advertising. Specifically, they define a construct and then develop a theory that explains how ironic advertising works. From this, they develop a series of propositions that specify how a message and its interpretation interact to determine the relative efficacy of an ironic communication. The article then outlines a research agenda and concludes by specifying the contribution of the theory to practitioners and researchers.

When outsourcing fragments: customer creativity and technological transmutations

One of the most fundamental decisions made in firms is about what functions or activities the firm should perform within its own hierarchy, and which of these it should rely on the market to perform. Outsourcing is ‘an agreement in which one company contracts out a part of their existing internal activity to another company’. However, this article contends that outsourcing has changed, and is changing in ways that make the application of neat, legal and technically correct definitions hard to use, and even harder to apply in strategy. Under the new outsourcing paradigm, technology is not a passive ‘substance’, rather it is an active ‘force’. We aim to look at the ways in which technologies are re-shaped and transmuted by consumers. Through this analysis, we add the consumer activity to the conventional definition of outsourcing. We focus on one of the most highly anticipated and influential new products of 2007 – the Apple iPhone.

Apps to Eat by: The Relationship Between Product Involvement and On-Demand Food Consumption Among Millennials: An Abstract

With 78 million members (Moore 2012), the purchasing power of the Millennial generation is not to be ignored. Food consumption trends among the Millennial generation has been a topic of discussion in various disciplines (c.f.: Detre et al. 2010; Pomarici and Vecchio 2014); however, very little has been explored in the marketing discipline. These tech-enthusiasts – born between 1982 and 2004 – are currently the largest generational cohort in the global market (Nielsen 2014). This study attempts to understand how generational characteristics attributed to Millennial consumers connect to their level of involvement related to their app usage frequency.

In-Forming the Iphone: Sequence and Frequency of Technological Transmutations as Reflected in the Collective Media

In the marketing and IT literature technology is studied in terms of how they change consumers: making their lives easier, more productive, more enjoyable – or otherwise. Rarely do these studies look at the other side of the human-technology interaction: how users change technologies. Moreover if consumers changed technologies in the past it was in the privacy of their own homes – now thanks to the internet this can be very public, and have major implications for other consumers and the producing company. In this paper we look at how consumers changed the iPhone – both in terms of its application and function. We apply Berthon et al.’s (2007) conceptual framework to trace the public transmutations of the iPhone – before and after its introduction to the market. Our source of data is YouTube, and specifically consumer generated videos. This paper is set out as follows. First we review the literatures on human-technology interaction and the rise of public usergenerated content. Second we outline our methodology to trace the sequence and frequency of consumer transmutations of the iPhone. Third we present our findings which suggest that the frequency of different types of transformation differ significantly before and after the product’s introduction. Finally we outline limitations and ideas for future research. Overall the paper contributes to both marketing and IS literatures by providing a case study on how users change technology in the public sphere.