Gianpaolo Basile

The increasing dynamics between consumers, social groups and brands

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a contribution to advancing knowledge on the more recent phenomenon of social brand community.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on an extensive interdisciplinary literature review in areas such as sociology, management, and marketing. Three interrelated and consecutively developed conceptualizations resulting from a co‐operation of the researchers over the last three years are presented to explain the influence of the evolution of current social trends on the relationship between consumers and brands in different contexts (socio‐demographic aspects and culture). The conceptualizations have been applied to a qualitative case study on Cypriot consumers, which conducted in‐depth expert interviews and focus groups. The research project has been designed in three stages: the first stage elicited thenature of relationships between consumer, brands and social groups; the second stage was concerned with differentiating consumer behaviour and segment...

Viable Systems Approach and Consumer Culture Theory: A Conceptual Framework

The aim of this study is to depict the relational dynamics between the firm/brand and the individual/consumer or communities of consumers. To this aim we propose a conceptual framework, integrating the viable systems approach (VSA) with consumer culture theory (CCT), which considers the individual as an active co-maker of the product/brand (‘prosumer’). The VSA view of the firm overcomes the limitations of CCT research, which is mainly focused on the individual, giving little consideration to the other actors in the context. Among the different approaches under the umbrella of viable systems we chose the VSA because of its emphasis on the analysis of the systemic external relations with the agents in the context, helping to underscore the marketing and social perspectives of CCT. Using a viable systemic perspective, the firm/brand and the individual/consumer can be conceived as viable systems embedded in a social-business context. Therefore, the consumption system can be considered as the momentum for the creation and maintenance of symbolic and cultural relationships between the firm/brand and the individual/consumer or communities of consumers (i.e. brand communities or subculture of consumption). These relationships are finalized to establish a common and consonant language in order to achieve a desired consonance level capable of enabling both the consumer and the firm/brand to co-evolve, maintain, and enhance their systemic viability.

A Complex Adaptive System Framework for Management and Marketing Studies

This theoretical work aims to analyze the choice of strategic management activities, taking into account a complex systems perspective. Following this approach, we represent the firm as a complex adaptive system, in which the management must be able to develop and implement different behaviors in order to dynamically ensure the viability of the firm or system. This implies that the management governing the firm or system is capable of choosing, from among a number of heterogeneous entities, the relevant stakeholders within the competitive context and of creating and maintaining significant relationships with them, which are considered to be relevant in a turbulent environment.

Theories and Challenges for Systems Thinking in Practice

The content of this Special Issue arises from the debate promoted by the Business Systems Laboratory Symposia about the contribution of Systems Thinking in managerial and organizational dynamics and they have been selected among the ideas presented during the 4th Business Systems Laboratory International Symposium, Vilnius 2016. As underlined in the last 5 years by the scientific community involved in the Business Systems Laboratory, we are living in an Era in which several radical transformations are emerging with reference to social, economic and territorial configurations (Basile and Dominici 2015; Basile, Dominici, and Tani 2016; Del Giudice, Caputo, and Evangelista 2016; Di Fatta et al. 2016; Di Nauta et al. 2015; Dominici and Levanti 2011; Caputo 2016). Traditional managerial approaches based on the application of reductionist and mechanistic view are not able to explain organizational transformations and social changes and new perspectives are needed to improve our capability in understanding and managing social and economic dynamics (Dominici 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015; Dominici and Palumbo 2014; Caputo 2016; Caputo, Evangelista, and Russo 2016). With the aim to enrich previous managerial and organizational literature, this Special Issue aims to underline the relevant interpretative and managerial contributions offered by the research streams rooted on the trans and multi-disciplinary framework proposed by the System Thinking (Beer 1979; Checkland 1981; Dominici 2012; Espejo 1994; Jackson 2003; Yolles 1999, 2006; Golinelli 2010; Barile et al. 2016). In such a line, it hosts some papers direct to underline the multiple opportunities offered by the interpretative lens proposed by the systems thinking in investigating and explaining different social and economic configurations. According to this, the order of contributions has been defined with the aim to replicate the basic logic of scientific pathways. The contributions proposed in this issue start with the description of possible applications and contributions of Systems Thinking in Social Sciences with specific reference to the ways in which organizations interact in shared networks thanks to the contribution offered by technological innovations as summarized in the first article wrote by Bernardino Quattrociocchi, Mario Calabrese, Xhimi Hysa, and Ewa Wankowicz. After this, Francesco Caputo, Federica Evangelista, Giuseppe Russo, and Barbora Buhnova point the attention on the impact of voluntary communication on systems’ ability to build efficient, effective, and sustainable conditions for survival over the time. In this contribution, the authors propose an innovative approach to voluntary communication underling its contributions in facing the challenges imposed by the information asymmetry in the digital era. In the third paper Thomas Grisold and Alexander Kaiser investigate the cognitive and behavioural patterns with the aim to build a new interpretative framework to explain the ‘unlearning’ processes. By building upon the key concepts of systems thinking, the authors define a possible alternative explanation useful to better understand both individual and social organizations.

Marketing and management: a complex adaptive system view

This present work aims to analyse the choice of strategic management activities taking into account a systemic and complexity perspective, applied by analogy to the business. The approach represents the firm as a complex adaptive system, where management must develop different behaviours in order to achieve survival/dynamic order through the creation and/or maintenance of relationships with numerous and heterogeneous stakeholders that the management considered to be relevant in a turbulent environment. As an expression of the relational dynamics between the direct and indirect stakeholders, the firm exchanges energy and information with the reference contexts in order to survive. As part of these exchanges and adaptations both the firm and the stakeholders disperse energy, causing a dissipative phenomenon defined, by analogy with the second law of thermodynamics and the complexity theory, as entropy. Therefore, the objectives of this work are to ask: can the complexity theory to fill the needs of theories by the side of marketers and scholars helping them to deal the dynamism of organisations/brand in turbulent environments? Does learning about organisations and networks as adaptive systems help scholars and managers in their processes as decision-makers?

THE ROLE PLAYED BY COMMUNITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP FIRM-CUSTOMER: THE ONLINE EXPERT INVESTMENT COMMUNITIES

The present study starts from several evolutionary dynamics of post-modern society developed in the sociological and psychosociological literature, concerning the role of individual as a part of social groups. The paper aims at analyzing the investor online community, a particular kind of community in which investors/members communicate and build relationships between them and with the firm. From a literature review, it emerges that these relationships could have as main purpose the exchange (such as the consumer and the firm are business partners) or show a communal goal (such as that between family members and friends). The expert investment communities are analysed thanks to a theoretical framework that shows different categories of community members. The role of communities seems particularly significant as regards as “attractiveness”, which is about mutual compatibility between the company and the consumer/investor. Companies need to know how to communicate with these communities in order to get valuable feedback. For this reason, the paper focuses on the main implications of the investment relations management, considering the fact that they are strongly influenced by the increasing importance of interpersonal communication in web 2.0. Moreover, the paper suggests that firms could manage investor empowerment thanks to social web and communities. Consequently, they have to understand: how these online worlds work, how the investors use them, and how their employment could help them to put financial decision into practice. Besides, thanks to social web, firms could manage a financial communication more targeted and efficient. Actually, firm exploitation of communities not only have to result in changing communication channel, but it could create contents for a new kind of users.