Gretchen Larsen

Examining the Effect of Market Orientation on Innovativeness

For the past decade innovativeness, as opposed to innovation, has received considerable attention in the academic literature as well as the corporate arena because it is considered to promote a competitive advantage. This study examines the link between innovativeness and performance of SMEs in the Swiss watch industry, in terms of customer orientation, competition orientation and inter-functional coordination. It uses performance measures such as market share, percentage of new product sales to total sales and return on investment (ROI), and has developed a new research scale of innovativeness. The results show that customer orientation has a positive effect on performance as well as the level of innovativeness in each company. There are also strategic implications for CEOs and managers as far as the methodological limitations and future research directions are concerned.

The symbolic consumption of music

Abstract The relationship between music, the self/identity, and consumption is significant and widely acknowledged, yet it remains under-researched. To further our understanding of the symbolic consumption of music, this study evaluates the usefulness of Larsen, Lawson, and Todds (2009) conceptual framework of the consumption of music as self-representation, and presents a revised framework. Twenty-two individuals provided data, including in-depth interviews and participant diaries. The resulting framework details the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the symbolic consumption of music. It is based on an evaluation of the level and acceptability of congruency between the image of the music and the self-concept, both of which are socially situated. Identity is expressed through a variety of consumption rituals, which allow the individual to ‘own’ or ‘possess’ the associated meanings. The framework demonstrates that music is a rich and important site of symbolic consumption, and could also be used in contexts other than music to describe symbolic consumption.

Fame and fortune: a conceptual model of CEO brands

Purpose – This conceptual paper examines the notion of CEO brands and the problems that arise if they are misaligned with company brands. Previous research examines product, company and people brands and implications for senior executives and organizations, but there is no theoretical framework for CEO brand stewardship. This research aims to fill the gap.Design/methodology/approach – The marketing literature is examined to identify differences between products and people as brands, and the potential for CEO brands to enhance corporate brand equity. Based on an application of existing branding concepts to CEOs, a conceptual model of CEO brands is developed to include an analysis of the relationships between its constituent parts.Findings – CEO brands can be legitimately considered as brands, and existing brand conceptualisations can be applied to CEOs as long as some particularities are accounted for. CEO brands are influenced by their personality and their role as managers, and organisations need to cons...

Taming the tiger: key success factors for trade with China

With its large population and increasingly open approach to foreign business dealings, China has been heralded as a land of opportunity for Western business. “What are the keys to business success?” Addresses this issue by Investigating key success factors for trade with China. Presents results from a survey of New Zealand organisations trading with China. Top‐ranking issues reveal a micro‐business focus (e.g. negotiation strategy, business etiquette). Low‐ranking issues include the need to understand advertising in China, and to have an intensive knowledge of the Chinese language. Correlations between importance and knowledge scores suggest that cultural issues are perceived as less important by those with a high degree of knowledge concerning trade relation intermediaries. Larger firms are also found to rate an understanding of negotiation strategy as more important than small firms.

‘Gimme shelter’ Experiencing pleasurable escape through the musicalisation of running

This study examines the ubiquitous nature of music in the context of the running community. Data collected from an online running forum and a series of diary studies and interviews indicate that runners use mobile music technologies to create soundscapes in order to enhance their running experience. Our findings suggest that these soundscapes play an essential role in providing and supporting the experience of pleasurable escape when running. Through the musicalisation of running, people escape their humdrum existence, the Cartesian dualism of mind/body, the very act of running and the urban environment. This multifaceted manifestation of escape contributes to our understanding of hedonic and experiential consumption. These findings also challenge existing instrumental notions of performance-enhancing music consumption in sports activities and offer instead a complex, socially constructed musicalisation of running, which involves the remixing and reconfiguration of the aural landscape in an attempt to create the perfect running experience.

Consumer rights: a co‐optation of the contemporary consumer movement

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the relationship between the development of consumer rights and the emergence of the contemporary consumer movement. Rethinking the contemporary consumer movement as a new social movement (NSM) enables a closer examination of the actors, opponents and goals of the movement, and how governments and other political institutions responded by conceptualising and developing a set of “consumer rights”.Design/methodology/approach – The lens of NSM theory is used to examine the historical development of, and relationship between, consumer rights and the contemporary consumer movement.Findings – As a NSM, the goal of the contemporary consumer movement is to bring about ideological change. However, this paper argues that the development of “consumer rights” can be read as an attempt by oppositional forces to co‐opt the goals of the movement, thereby neutralising the threat of the movement and negating the opportunity for radical ideological change. Identifying that co‐optation c...

Editorial: terraforming Arts Marketing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the inaugural edition of Arts Marketing: An International Journal and highlight its vision for arts marketing and establish its research agenda.Design/methodology/approach – Relevant articles are discussed through the prism of current academic thinking and the latest policy developments affecting the arts.Findings – It is found that arts marketing promotes significant academic debate, and practical insights are offered into the ways in which the arts (broadly understood) can grow in a commercial world.Research limitations/implications – Creative solutions are needed not only to offset, but to enable arts marketing itself to grow as a discipline: marketers need to embrace the arts equally as much as artists need to embrace the market.Practical implications – The “creative insights” section will bring practitioner expertise into the field of the arts from a variety of different perspectives.Social implications – The arts, in their varying forms impact on a...

Special issue on creative methods of inquiry in arts marketing

Purpose – The purpose of this Editorial is to introduce the reader to the changing environment of arts marketing, which poses challenges to researchers and necessitates creative methods of inquiry.Design/methodology/approach – The Editorial introduces the papers in this special issue.Findings – It was found that creative inquiry in arts marketing includes the use of both established and innovative interpretive methods.Originality/value – The Editorial explains how the application of creative methods of inquiry can aid our understanding of the relationship between art and the market.

‘It’s a man’s man’s man’s world’: Music groupies and the othering of women in the world of rock:

Groupies are understood as a particular type of fan that are most commonly associated with rock music. The ‘groupie’ identity is almost exclusively applied to female fans but sometimes also to female music producers and is largely used in a derogatory manner both by the popular media and by fans themselves. This article argues that the ‘groupie’ identity is used to ‘other’ and exclude women from creative production in rock music. This study draws on a rhetorical analysis of five published biographical accounts of groupies to examine how the labeling of certain people as ‘groupies’ works as an othering practice that serves to support and maintain the gendered norms of rock and identifies three underlying discursive processes. First, popular and music media played a significant role in stereotyping groupie as female right from the emergence of the label. Second, the notions of ‘credibility’ and ‘authenticity’, which are central to serious music journalism, are constructed in such a way as to stigmatize and therefore exclude women from rock, primarily by reframing ‘groupies’ as inauthentic consumers rather than proper fans. Finally, the intertwining of femininity with fandom, as occurs in groupiedom, serves to magnify cultural assumptions about women as sex objects and as passive consumers of mass culture. In elucidating both the gender and marketplace role politics at play in the ‘groupie’ identity and the mechanisms involved in othering women, space is opened in which alternative possibilities for understanding and enacting the role of women in rock can be imagined.

Terraforming Arts Marketing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the inaugural edition of Arts Marketing: An International Journal and highlight its vision for arts marketing and establish its research agenda.Design/methodology/approach – Relevant articles are discussed through the prism of current academic thinking and the latest policy developments affecting the arts.Findings – It is found that arts marketing promotes significant academic debate, and practical insights are offered into the ways in which the arts (broadly understood) can grow in a commercial world.Research limitations/implications – Creative solutions are needed not only to offset, but to enable arts marketing itself to grow as a discipline: marketers need to embrace the arts equally as much as artists need to embrace the market.Practical implications – The “creative insights” section will bring practitioner expertise into the field of the arts from a variety of different perspectives.Social implications – The arts, in their varying forms impact on a...