Susan Dobscha

Sustainable Consumption: Opportunities for Consumer Research and Public Policy

This essay explores sustainable consumption and considers possible roles for marketing and consumer researchers and public policy makers in addressing the many sustainability challenges that pervade the planet. Future research approaches to this interdisciplinary topic must be comprehensive and systematic and would benefit from a variety of different perspectives. There are several opportunities for further research; the authors explore three areas in detail. First, they consider the inconsistency between the attitudes and behaviors of consumers with respect to sustainability. Second, they broaden the agenda to explore the role of individual citizens in society. Third, they propose a macroinstitutional approach to fostering sustainability. For each of these separate, but interrelated, opportunities, the authors examine the area in detail and consider possible research avenues and public policy initiatives.

Is Green the New Black? Reflections on a Green Commodity Discourse

This article examines the global sustainability movement through the lens of a green commodity discourse as introduced by Prothero and Fitchett. The current wave of sustainability efforts and initiatives is different from the previous incarnations in that it is more global and systems oriented. The authors submit that a green commodity discourse has begun to move the sustainability discourse away from the bonds of the dominant social paradigm (DSP) and toward a more holistic and global perspective. The authors conclude that a new typology that delineates consumption from citizenry will better encapsulate the values and behaviors of green consumers. This new typology allows for better representation of those consumers who are choosing to live a greener lifestyle on a grander scale. These new green citizens reflect more the sustainability ideas and efforts discussed here and seen worldwide.

Buying into motherhood? Problematic consumption and ambivalence in transitional phases

Current theory on transitional consumption seems to rest on the premises that (1) consumption facilitates role transitions; (2) consumers know how to consume their way through these transitions; (3) consumers are motivated to approach new roles; and (4) consumption solves liminality. This perspective, however, offers an incomplete picture of consumption’s role in the management of major life transitions. This article explores the ways in which ambivalence is woven through consumption experiences in times of liminality. It reviews prior research on consumption, role transitions, and ambivalence in the context of women’s transition into motherhood. Findings are presented from an international interpretive study of women’s consumption experiences during their transition to motherhood. This paper’s findings suggest that while consumption can indeed play a positive role during role transitions, it can also, at other times, make transition a complicated, complex and confusing process.Title Buying into motherhood? Problematic consumption and ambivalence in transitional phases Authors(s) VOICE Group; Davies, Andrea; Dobscha, Susan; Geiger, Susi; Prothero, Andrea; et al. Publication date 2010 Publication information Consumption, Markets and Culture, 13 (4): 373-397, Special Issue: Consumer Culture Theory 2008 Publisher Routledge (Taylor & Francis) Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4966 Publishers statement This is an electronic version of an article published in Consumption Markets & Culture, Volume 13, Issue 4, 2010. Consumption Markets & Culture is available online at: www.tandfonline.com//doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2010.502414 Publishers version (DOI) 10.1080/10253866.2010.502414

Moving beyond binary opposition: Exploring the tapestry of gender in consumer research and marketing:

The last two decades have seen an exponential growth in research pertaining to gender issues in marketing and consumer research. This special issue of Marketing Theory, together with the ongoing Association for Consumer Research Gender, Marketing and Consumer Research conference series, now approaching its tenth iteration, demonstrates the continued interest in gender issues in our disciplines. Introducing the special issue, this paper’s remit is threefold: it maps the substantive and theoretical developments of gender research within our discipline; it locates this work on gender within its broader context in humanities and social science; and it introduces the reader to the four papers in this special issue. The paper concludes that gender research has moved from the margins to become a strong body of work within marketing and consumer research. That said, there remains substantive opportunity for further development, where gender and feminist research can offer new insights, critiques, theories and approaches.

Reflections on collaboration in interpretive consumer research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of collaboration in interpretive consumer research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews literature on research teamwork, particularly on qualitative and international projects. It also provides an account of research collaboration on an interpretive research project across four countries, involving eight researchers. Findings – Despite the cult of individualism in academic life, most articles in leading marketing journals are now written by multi-author teams. The process and implications of research collaboration, particularly on qualitative and international projects, have received little attention within the marketing literature. Qualitative collaborations call for another layer of reflexivity and attention to the politics and emotions of teamwork. They also require the negotiation of a social contract acceptable to the group and conducive to the emergence of different perspectives throughout the research process. Originality/value – While issues surrounding the researcher-research participant relationship are well explored in the field, this paper tackles an issue that often remains tacit in the marketing literature, namely the impact of the relationships between researchers. The paper draws on accounts of other research collaborations as well as authors’ experiences, and discusses how interpersonal and cross-cultural dynamics influence the work of interpretive research teams.

Rethinking the Principles of Marketing Course: Focus on Exchange

Marketing educators agree that exchange is a core concept in marketing education. Nevertheless, exchange is virtually ignored in the principles of marketing course, while the 4 P’s and strategy model dominates the curriculum. This paper provides a new model for marketing education based on the established concept of exchange. The new model facilitates better integration of a broad variety of marketing phenomena in the course material and provides marketing educators with an outline for redesigning their introductory marketing classes to reflect the global marketplace.

Death consumes us – dispatches from the “death professors”

ABSTRACT This special issue on consumption and death marks another point on an upward trajectory of the mainstreaming of death and death-related consumption and marketing research. Death, like sex, is all around us; marketing and consumption is interwoven into the services we choose, the products we prefer, and the relationships we revere. This introduction provides a brief overview of consumption and death research, and summarizes the papers included in the special issue.

The Filene’s Basement Bridal Sale: A Content Analysis of Store-Authored and Media-Authored Communications about a Retail Special Event

This paper explores one retailer’s use of publicity for a long term goal, the promotion of a special sale. Content analysis demonstrates differences between store- and media-authored communications. The researchers propose an explanation for these rooted in the disparate objectives of the media and the retailer, and provide suggestions to retailers for managing media presence at store special events so as to use this type of marketing communication effectively.

Teaching Principles of Marketing from a Multicultural Perspective: A Proposed Exchange Framework

Most principles of marketing courses in the United States are structured around the marketing strategy concept Use of this conceptual framework implicitly and explicitly includes some topics and excludes others. We propose structuring the principlcs course around the concept of exchange. We outline how this framework will broaden course content and give instructors more flexibility in instituting a truly multicultural curriculum.

Romancing the wild: cultural dimensions of ecotourism

Tourism provides a fascinating intellectual landscape for scholars interested in the cultural and social beliefs that shape our experiences when interacting with the physical “other.” Engaging in tourist practices typically requires a movement from the banal to the sublime, the profane to the sacred, the real to the fantastic. Tourism studies intersect with so many other areas of inquiry from marketing, geography, history, gender and ethnicity studies, and urban planning, and provide myriad of research possibilities; scholars study everything from basic dimensions of tourism (Kim and Ritchie 2014) to “dark tourism” (Podoshen 2013). Fletcher chose to focus on a particular type of tourism, which he labelled “ecotourism,” in his new book, Romancing the wild: Cultural dimensions of ecotourism. This book is part of a series entitled, “New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century” whose mission is twofold: