Eileen Fischer

Despite increasing attention to alternative market systems, where consumers perform considerable voluntary labor, consumer researchers have a limited understanding of the nature or implications of the emotion work entailed in making such contributions. This paper addresses this gap, focusing on “committed consumers” defined as those who provide extensive volunteer labor to support alternative markets and their principles. It does so based on hermeneutic analysis of ethnographic and netnographic data collected from participants in local food markets (REKO markets) in Norway. The paper identifies four distinct types of institutional emotion work that contribute to perpetuating alternative markets and conceptualizes how committed consumers’ own emotions are affected when making such contributions. This paper extends our understanding of consumers’ roles in alternative market systems and of the socially constituted and constitutive emotions entailed in consumer volunteerism.

Prosumers in many markets are increasingly using platforms for their inter-related production and consumption pursuits. Using a practice theory lens, this paper examines how the connections between the bundle of marketing practices performed by entrepreneurial prosumers in the craft market are altered when they come to rely on platforms like Etsy. It identifies a new practice, labeled “platformance,” that these prosumers adopt in response to changes in their practices bundle. Platformance is a restless practice in that it aims to alter the market in which it is embedded. Findings reported here suggest that platformance may help prosumers deal with platformization by changing certain market elements, but ironically may also increase their platform dependence. Platformance may also contribute to altering aspects of the platform markets in which it is performed.

Brands that seek to serve stigmatized markets are frequently targeted with activism by stigmatizers who hold discrediting beliefs about the products, practices and/or people associated with such markets. Drawing on an inductive analysis of a large set of qualitative data in the halal food and beverage market, we identify three triggers that make activism by stigmatizers more likely to occur: stigma multiplicity, identity threat to stigmatizers, and ambiguity in targeting. Findings show that the nature of such activism is territorial as stigmatizers claim market ownership. We identify three forms of this territorial activism: patrolling the market boundaries, punishing the insurgents, and projecting identity threats beyond the market. Our study contributes to the market systems literature and to theories of identity threat, ownership, and territoriality. It further proposes a number of strategic options for companies that are being, or may expect to become, the targets of activist stigmatizers.

This paper introduces a series of questions inspired by diverse aspects of the market driving metaphor. In each, it highlights some relevant research already conducted, and suggests some as yet untapped opportunities.

When designing luxury retail experiences, luxury managers are often encouraged to focus on a single logic: the logic of distinction. Evidence suggests, however, that multiple logics influence the field of luxury retailing. In this paper, we explore the implications of such multiplicity, focusing particularly on logics coming into tension with one another. Our research questions are: 1) What are the logics that come into conflict in luxury retail settings and 2) How can luxury retail managers navigate conflicts between logics to facilitate positive customer experiences in luxury retail settings? Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the luxury field, we find conflicts mainly between three logics: distinction, pragmatism, and hedonism. We show that each logic is underpinned by different values, different linguistic practices, and different focal objects. We further find that conflicts between the logics tend to become acute during specific interactions during the customer journey. Our findings also suggest that since luxury boutiques are by and large designed to enforce the distinction logic, luxury retailers at times struggle to accommodate and navigate the conflicts that occur between these logics. We identify three interrelated sets of practices, collectively referred to as experiential hybridization, that effectively allow luxury retailers to address the challenge of logic complexity. Theoretically, our research helps illuminate institutional logics as a factor that informs customers’ experiences in contemporary retail fields such as luxury. Managerially, we suggest ways for luxury retailers to manage logic conflict and deliver superior customer experiences.

This paper assembles five comments on Janiszewski and van Osselaer’s (this issue) article that promotes abductive research as a way to generate new psychological theory. The review process began by asking those making comments to be part of collaborative communication between themselves and Janiszewski and van Osselaer. The five comments arising from that process provide well-honed insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the abductive research. The first commentary, by Frank Kardes, offers convincing evidence showing that the techniques of abductive thinking are similar to other explorative techniques currently being successfully used in deductive research. Eileen Fischer sees abductive thinking as integral to inductive and qualitative thinking as it facilitates the generation of new constructs and remaps established ones. Stephen Spiller explores the implication of starting from interesting and paradoxical data rather than from established theory. The research challenge then requires a focus on strategic sampling of methods, responses, and critical constructs that confirm or limit a provisional theory. Aparna Labroo articulates the benefits of abductive thinking to help resolve complex practical problems, but warns against the proliferation of multiple findings that may be difficult to validate. Finally, Bublitz and Peracchio celebrate the value of abductive research to help resolve social issues and enable the fruitful merger of publishable research with personal social action.

This paper makes the case that there is considerable untapped potential for qualitative research to make theoretical contributions that will advance our collective insights on consumer psychology. The paper explains some features that distinguish qualitative research from other approaches and addresses some common misperceptions about it. It explains why qualitative research—which is geared toward theory development and refinement—can be such as useful took in the kit of researchers seeking insights on consumer psychology. It then outlines a qualitative research process suitable for crafting conceptual contributions to consumer psychology and offers a set of criteria that are appropriate and inappropriate for adjudicating qualitative research of this kind. In all, we make the case that the conditions are in place for JCP to be a vibrant platform for publishing research based on qualitative methods.

We are grateful to Professors Rebecca Reuber and Eileen Fischer for contributing our 2022 annual review article. This insightful review explores an issue of great contemporary importance regarding the relationship between entrepreneurial activities and social media platforms. Whilst there is much popular and media commentary regarding the opportunities such platforms offer for entrepreneurship, we lack informed, academic reflection upon the role and influence of such platforms for both good and ill. Hence, this review article is timely in identifying current practices and raising important issues for future research. Our thanks to the authors for their valuable contribution to the ISBJ.

Entrepreneurs create digital platforms which, in turn, facilitate entrepreneurial behaviours of others, the platform users. An important start-up activity is developing the mechanisms to govern user participation. While prior literature has provided insights on the governance of innovation platforms and exchange platforms, it has shed little light on the governance of social media platforms. In this review, we synthesize the emerging literature on diverse social media platforms, focussing on four types of governance mechanisms: those that regulate user behaviour, those related to user identification and stature, those that structure relationships among users and those that direct user attention. We highlight the implications of this body of literature for entrepreneurship scholars.

Developing and evaluating scientific knowledge and its value requires a clear – or at least not too unclear – understanding of what ‘theory’ means. We argue that common definitions of theory are too restrictive, as they do not acknowledge the existence of multiple kinds of scientific knowledge, but largely recognize only one kind as ‘theory’, namely explanatory knowledge. We elaborate a typology that broadens and clarifies the meaning of ‘theory’. Consisting of five basic theory types – explaining, comprehending, ordering, enacting and provoking theories – the typology offers a framework that enables researchers to develop and assess knowledge in more varied ways and for a broader set of purposes than is typically recognized, as well as providing a more level playing field within the academic community.

“Enabled theorizing” is a common practice in marketing scholarship. Nevertheless, this practice has recently been criticized for constraining the creation of novel theory. To advance this conversation, we conduct a grounded analysis of papers that feature enabled theorizing with the aim of describing and analyzing how enabled theorizing is practiced. Our analysis suggests that enabled theorizing marries data with analytical tools and ontological perspectives in ways that advance ongoing conversations in marketing theory and practice, as well as informing policy and methods. Based on interviews with marketing and consumer research scholars who practice enabled theorizing, we explain how researchers use enabling theories to shape research projects, how researchers select enabling lenses, and how they negotiate the review process. We discuss the implications of our analyses for theory-building in our field, and we question the notion of originality in relation to theory more generally.

The Welch et al. (J Int Bus Stud 42(5):740–762, 2011) JIBS Decade Award-winning article highlights the importance of the contextualization of international business research that is based on qualitative research methods. In this commentary, we build on their foundation and develop further the role of contextualization, in terms of the international business phenomena under study, contemporaneous conversations about qualitative research methods, and the situatedness of individual papers within the broader research process. Our remarks are largely targeted to authors submitting international business papers based on qualitative research, and to the gatekeepers – editors and reviewers – assessing them, and we provide some guidance with respect to these three dimensions of context.

The authors address the challenges individuals face when managing their professional brands while working in “prestigious posts” (high-profile jobs in established organizations) and striving to maintain career mobility. Using a case study approach and drawing on sociological field theories, the authors identify two types of tensions (resource-based and identity-based) that are triggered by prestigious posts and four practices conducive to mitigating tensions and maintaining mobility. Beyond extending prior theory on person brands to include consideration of career mobility, this work has implications for better understanding the complexities of affiliations between professionals and the brands they work for. It suggests that individuals who are managing their professional brands while holding prestigious posts need to strike a balance between benefiting from the affiliation in the eyes of external stakeholders and at the same time maintaining their professional independence to maintain career mobility.

Individuals increasingly seek to establish person brands on digital platforms that create organized online attention economies, which bring together attention seekers and audiences. While prior research has taught us much about how individuals develop person brands, there is limited guidance on how they attract and retain engaged attention (that is, attention that includes interaction) on such platforms. Through an inductive analysis of qualitative data obtained from a digital platform on which more than 16,000 authors compete for the attention of more than 13 million audience members, we develop theory regarding the iterative process by which person brands attract engaged attention in such online attention economies. Our paper offers practical insights to those seeking to attract attention and increase audience engagement online, as well as guidance to marketers and platform managers interested in taking advantage of this phenomenon.

Firms often aim to develop markets as part of their long-term strategies. Conventionally, research in marketing has explained this complex process by stressing firms’ efforts to outdo their peers. While this emphasis is valuable, it overlooks the role of another major force in market evolution: collective action among peer firms. To address this oversight, this article conceptualizes “collaborative market driving,” defining it as the collective strategy in which peer firms consistently cooperate among themselves and with other actors to develop markets in ways that increase their overall competitiveness. This conceptualization includes the triggers that lead peer firms to mobilize for collective action and coalesce with other market actors; it also identifies how this coalition converts collective resources into market-driving power. These theoretical contributions, based on a multimethod analysis of the rise of U.S. craft breweries, offer an alternative course of action for firms interested in driving new markets when they lack adequate resources to do so individually.

This paper advocates for doing more research at the intersction of consumer culture theoretic and macromarketing perspectives. It provides an example of a project ideally suited for analysis of this kind, a study that would address how the features and marketing practices of social media platforms may be contributing to political polarization at the societal level.

Consumers’ perceptions of technology are less matters of product attributes and concrete statistical evidence and more of captivating stories and myths. Managers of IoT can instill consumer trust when they tell highly emotional stories about the technologically empowered self, home, family or society. The key benefit of this approach is that storytelling-based IoT marketing allows consumers to forge strong and enduring emotional bonds with IoT and, in many cases, to develop loyalty beyond belief. However, stories aren’t always positive. Negative stories and meanings about a technology that are circulated in popular culture can be dangerous and harmful to a brand or a new technology. Regardless of its source, marketers need to understand the nature of the doppelgänger images that may be circulating for their technologies. They can be regarded as diagnostic tools to better understand how consumers think about and experience their IoT solutions. Also, doppelgänger narratives are valuable raw ingredients from which marketers can cull new, more captivating IoT stories that nurture consumer adoption.

Interpretive consumer researchers frequently devote months, if not years, to writing a new paper. Despite their best efforts, the vast majority of these papers are rejected by top academic journals. This paper aims to explain some of the key reasons that scholarly articles are rejected and illuminate how to reduce the likelihood of rejection.

Much prior work illuminates how fans of a brand can contribute to the value enjoyed by other members of its audience, but little is known about any processes by which fans contribute to the dissipation of that audience. Using longitudinal data on America’s Next Top Model, a serial brand, and conceptualizing brands as assemblages of heterogeneous components, this article examines how fans can contribute to the destabilization of a brand’s identity and fuel the dissipation of audiences of which they have been members. This work suggests that explanations focusing on satiation, psychology, or semiotics are inadequate to account for dissipation in the audience for serial brands. Moreover, the perspective advanced here highlights how fans can create doppelgänger brand images and contribute to the co-destruction of serial brands they have avidly followed.

Many services, particularly those related to health care, can be considered high-risk in that despite service providers’ best efforts, consumers may not attain the outcomes they hope to achieve. Recent research highlights how cultural models regarding service providers influence the ways consumers experience and respond to failure. What bears investigating is how these cultural models and consumers’ related framings of failure shape consumer experience in high-risk contexts. Analyzing data from informants engaged with various types of infertility services, we develop a typology of four consumer experiential framings of failure that explore their experiences across three dimensions. These are as follows: the implicit cultural model that shapes relationships with service providers, the implicit cultural model regarding goal pursuit, and consumers’ tacit understandings regarding their appropriate courses of action in response to failure. We link each distinct type of experiential framing to consumers’ distinct set of expectations related to service recovery. And we offer insights for service providers on how to manage their relationships with consumers and (in the tradition of transformative services research) how to enhance consumer well-being.

We investigate the participation of engaged consumers in the fashion market through the lens of institutional theory. We develop theoretical insights on the unintended market-level changes that ensue when consumers who are avidly interested in a field connect to share ideas with one another. We find that consumers take on some of the institutional work previously done primarily by paid actors and introduce new forms of institutional work supportive of the field. We show that engaged consumers can precipitate the formation of new categories of actors in the field and the contestation of boundaries between established and emergent actor categories. Further, we propose that new consumer-focused institutional logics gain momentum, even while consumers support and promote preexisting logics through their practices. We compare cases where discontented market actors have brought about market changes with our investigation of one where contented consumers unintentionally precipitated market-level dynamics, and we show that the accumulation of consumers’ micro-level practices can have pervasive and profound impacts.

This article examines whether and how publicly sponsored advisory services can encourage small and medium-sized firms to increase their degree of internationalization. We argue that professional advisors have an impact upon the knowledge and skills firms develop to enhance internationalization. The data examined are drawn from a publicly funded organization providing advisory services to entrepreneurial firms; they show a significant relationship between receipt of advice and the development of internationalization-related knowledge and competences. Knowledge, competences, and advice are all significant predictors that firms will adopt strategies conducive to initiating or expanding internationalization. Moreover, the results suggest that various forms of advisory services should be explicitly considered in assessing the factors which contribute to dynamic capabilities. However, pertinent public policy initiatives should incorporate performance metrics that capture the impact of such advisory services in enhancing the internationalization capabilities of entrepreneurial firms.

Research shows that some narratives and symbolic actions produced by entrepreneurial firms can help to reduce audience uncertainty about their quality and differentiate them from rivals. But can communications via online social media channels – which we characterize as “communicative streams” – be used to reduce uncertainty and enhance differentiation? This seems debatable, given that such streams comprise multiple, brief messages (a) that encode signals lacking narrative cohesion; (b) are only fleetingly accessible; and (c) are minimally customized. We address this puzzle using qualitative methods to compare the communications enacted by eight firms that are using Twitter in order to pursue growth. Our theoretical contribution rests in positing links between specific types of communicative streams and audience responses that reflect reduced uncertainty or enhanced differentiation. Our analysis suggests that firms enacting a “Multi-dimensional” communicative stream (which entails a high volume of posts, a high proportion of which signal quality, relational orientation, distinctiveness, and positive affect) are most likely to elicit audience affirmation of firms’ quality and/or distinctiveness. Implications for theory, research methods and practice are discussed.

This paper inductively develops an extension to brand positioning theory to understand how individuals seeking work in established organizational fields can effectively position themselves. It does so by analyzing qualitative data on the practices of people in one job category (fashion models) in an established organizational field (fashion), examining them through the lens of concepts adapted from work by Pierre Bourdieu. Four brand positioning practices are identified as relevant for models vying for work in the fashion field: crafting a portfolio, cultivating and demonstrating upward affiliations, complying with occupation-specific behavioral expectations, and conveying field-conforming tastes. Drawing on Bourdieu, we argue more generally that person brand positioning within established organizational fields happens through processes that help to portray a person as having field-specific social and cultural capital that allows them to “stand out,” while acquiring the habitus that allows them to comply with field- and occupation-specific expectations in order to “fit in.” Standing out and fitting in have parallels with—but are not identical to—the processes of establishing and reinforcing points of differentiation and points of parity for product brands. Our study implies that scholars interested in person branding should further develop theories that illuminate variations in brand positioning practices between products and persons. It also suggests that people building person brands should be sensitized to the valued forms of capital and normative expectations in their field that enable them to stand out while fitting in.

Why and how do marginalized consumers mobilize to seek greater inclusion in and more choice from mainstream markets? We develop answers to these questions drawing on institutional theory and a qualitative investigation of Fatshionistas, plus-sized consumers who want more options from mainstream fashion marketers. Three triggers for mobilization are posited: development of a collective identity, identification of inspiring institutional entrepreneurs, and access to mobilizing institutional logics from adjacent fields. Several change strategies that reinforce institutional logics while unsettling specific institutionalized practices are identified. Our discussion highlights diverse market change dynamics that are likely when consumers are more versus less legitimate in the eyes of mainstream marketers and in instances where the changes consumers seek are more versus less consistent with prevailing institutions and logics.

Given the mixed evidence for the impact of various publicly funded initiatives that aim to foster entrepreneurial activity, this paper empirically examines the efficacy of publicly funded business advisory services in relation to entrepreneurial outcomes. Based on a sample of 228 early-stage firms, of which 101 used business advisory services focused on helping companies secure 1st rounds of financing and start generating revenues, we examine the firm-level impact such services can have on sales growth, innovation, finance and alliances. We find services are positively associated with firms’ sales growth, patents, finance and alliances. We assess statistical and economic significance, and assess robustness to controls for the non-randomness of the firm’s using business advisory service program, as well as endogeneity of advisors’ hours spent with firms. Other robustness checks are also included. We find significant robustness of hours spent on sales and finance, but sensitivity of the effect of hours on patents and alliances after controlling for endogeneity.

This paper examines the dynamic processes of person branding by conducting an inductive analysis of two case studies of acclaimed athletes: David Beckham and Ryan Giggs. Although their careers have notable similarities and both athletes are regarded as outstanding soccer players, they have contrasting profiles as person brands. An analysis of their on- and off-field brand-building practices helps us understand how people in sporting professions build brand equity. We offer novel conceptual insights on two elements that characterise athletes’ brands: professional image and mainstream media persona. We provide insights into practices that yield a better professional image and a more valuable mainstream media persona, and posit connections between these constructs and person brand equity. Finally, we discuss implications for athletes and those managing their brands.

This study tests hypotheses regarding differences in brand-related user-generated content (UGC) between Twitter (a microblogging site), Facebook (a social network) and YouTube (a content community). It tests them using data from a content analysis of 600 UGC posts for two retail-apparel brands (Lululemon and American Apparel), which differ in the extent to which they manage social media proactively. Comparisons are drawn across six dimensions of UGC; the dimensions were drawn from a priori reading and an inductive analysis of brand-related UGC. This research provides a general framework for comparing brand-related UGC, and helps us to better understand how particular social media channels and marketing strategies may influence consumer-produced brand communications.