Zeynep Arsel

Taste Regimes and Market-Mediated Practice

Taste has been conceptualized as a boundary-making mechanism, yet there is limited theory on how it enters into daily practice. In this article, the authors develop a practice-based framework of taste through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a popular home design blog, interviews with blog participants, and participant observation. First, a taste regime is defined as a discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates practice in an aesthetically oriented culture of consumption. Taste regimes are perpetuated by marketplace institutions such as magazines, websites, and transmedia brands. Second, the authors show how a taste regime regulates practice through continuous engagement. By integrating three dispersed practices--problematization, ritualization, and instrumentalization--a taste regime shapes preferences for objects, the doings performed with objects, and what meanings are associated with objects. This study demonstrates how aesthetics is linked to practical knowledge and becomes materialized through everyday consumption.

Place Attachment in Commercial Settings: A Gift Economy Perspective

Place attachment is ones strong emotional bond with a specific location. While there are numerous studies on the topic, the literature pays little attention to commercial settings. This is because they are seen as too insipid to rouse attachment. Consumer research, however, suggests otherwise. To address this disparity, the authors investigate how people develop, experience, and act on place attachment in commercial settings. Findings from consumer in-depth interviews and self-reports conducted in France reveal that place attachment develops through perceptions of familiarity, authenticity, and security and evolves into experiences of homeyness. Consumers find these encounters of homeyness extraordinary and respond by engaging in volunteering, over-reciprocation, and ambassadorship toward the place. The authors further theorize these findings through a gift economy perspective and identify a tripartite exchange between the consumer, the proprietor of the place, and selected people from the consumers social network.

Managing Communities of Co-creation around Consumer Engagement Styles

How does co-creation create value for the firm and consumers, and how can firms manage co-creation communities more effectively? This article utilizes interview and online data collected from two firm-managed co-creation communities with differing span, trajectory, and success to understand how value is created for the firm and the consumers. We first establish four types of engagement styles based on how participants differ in their skill and community orientations. Then we describe how each group derives value from their co-creation activities and how these practices benefit the firm. Finally, we suggest guidelines to effectively manage these communities and address member needs and motives so that the firm can maximize value for all community stakeholders. Our work also provides insights on why some co-creation projects thrive and others do not.

Introduction: theorising gender and gendering theory in marketing and consumer research

Gender permeates into the market in domains ranging from institutional practices to product design to advertising to mundane consumption patterns. It is also a challenging social and cultural category to inquire into, frequently reduced to a dichotomous variable such as male/female or masculine/feminine. In contemporary consumer culture, however, these dualist categorisations and essentialist conceptualisations often break down and become problematised (Holt & Thompson, 2004; Peñaloza, 1994; Zayer, Sredl, Parmentier, & Coleman, 2012). Moreover, from a feminist point of view, marketing strategies that unreflectively accept the dominant cultural distinctions between ‘male’ and ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’, and capitalise on social expectations and stereotypical sex roles, may be exploitative and thus ethically suspect: they perpetuate and reinforce the oppressive discourses and practices that are linked to social and gender inequality. In empirical research on marketing and consumer research, the concept of gender has been defined and used in a myriad of ways so as to contribute to a better and more self-reflective understanding of the gendered nature of consumer behaviour and of the role of marketing activities in the construction of gender (Bettany, Dobscha, O’Malley, & Prothero, 2010). Several scholars have explored and critically examined the gendered nature of not only consumer identity projects and cultural models (Eraranta & Moisander, 2011; Eräranta, Moisander, & Pesonen, 2009; Evans, Riley, & Shankar, 2010; Gentry & Harrison, 2010; Kjeldgaard & Nielsen, 2010; Littlefield, 2010; Maclaran & Catterall, 2000; Martin, Schouten, & McAlexander, 2006; Ourahmoune & Ozcaglar-Toulouse, 2012; Schroeder, 2003; Schroeder & Zwick, 2004; Thompson & Holt, 2004; Valtonen, 2012) but also marketing theory and practice (Beetles & Crane, 2005; Brace-Govan, 2010; Bristor & Fischer, 1993; Fischer & Bristor, 1994; Gentry & Harrison, 2010; Joy & Venkatesh, 1994; Meriläinen, Moisander, & Pesonen, 2000; Ostberg, 2010; Ourahmoune, Binninger, & Robert, 2014). While these works have significantly advanced our knowledge of the workings of gender in the marketplace, there is still room for further theoretical development in the field. For this special issue, therefore, we invited contributions that draw on gender as a theoretical concept and work towards theorising gender and gendering theory in the field of marketing and consumer research. We draw attention to the idea that gender is not a naïve category that merely reflects the social world. Gender is rather a cultural category that is underpinned by socially constructed and contested assumptions and norms about identity and sexuality. In contemporary society, these Journal of Marketing Management, 2015