John Schouten

The dominant social paradigm (DSP) defines the basic belief structures and practices of marketplace actors and is manifested in existing exchange structures. Sustainability – a so-called megatrend – challenges the DSP by questioning its underlying assumptions, resulting in tensions or conflicts for different marketplace actors. This study examines a specific case of an alternative market arrangement that bridges tensions between the DSP and environmental concerns. Ethnography in the context of retail food waste disposition reveals tensions experienced by several marketplace actors – namely consumers, retail firms and regulators – and investigates an alternative market arrangement that alleviates those tensions by connecting the actors and their practices in a creative new way. We identify complementarity as the underlying mechanism of connection and resolution. Compared to previously identified alternative market arrangements that are either oppositional or parallel to the DSP, complementarity opens another path toward greater environmental sustainability through market-level solutions.

New market development is well theorized from a firm-centered perspective, but research has paid scant attention to the emergence of markets from consumption activity. The exceptions conceptualize market emergence as a product of consumer struggle against prevailing market logics. This study develops a model of consumption-driven market emergence in harmony with existing market offerings. Using ethnographic methods and actor-network theory the authors chronicle the emergence of a new market within the motorcycle industry that develops with neither active participation nor interference from mainstream industry players. Findings reveal a process of multiple translations wherein consumers mobilize human and nonhuman actors to co-constitute products, practices, and infrastructures. These drive the growth of interlinked communities of practice, which ultimately are translated into a fully functioning market. The study highlights the roles of distributed innovation and diffusion, embedded entrepreneurship, and market catalysts in processes of market change and development.

Transcendent customer experiences (TCEs), which have aspects of flow and/or peak experience, can generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes, including subjective self-transformation. With data from a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental field experiment we examine the impact of TCEs on customers' integration in a brand community. Because TCEs are highly desirable and valued for their own sake, customers value marketing activities they perceive as instrumental to them. This study demonstrates that a TCE in the context of a marketer-facilitated consumption activity can strengthen a person's ties to a brand community, delivering a particularly strong form of brand loyalty.

This feminist re?examination of an ethnography of Harley?Davidson motorcycle owners uncovers a world of motivations, behaviors, and experiences undiscovered in the original work. The structure and ethos of subculture are understood differently when examined through the lens of feminist theory. Through the voices of women riders in a hyper?masculine consumption context we discover perspectives that cannot easily be explained by extant theory of gender and consumer behavior. We find women engaging, resisting, and co?opting hyper?masculinity as part of identity projects wherein they expand and redefine their own personal femininities. This study reveals invisible assumptions limiting the original ethnography and thus reiterates the problems of hegemonic masculinity in the social science project.

Relationship marketing has made its way into the practices of university administrations. With it have also arrived many problems associated with the aggressive use of CRM technologies. One particularly effective and healthy approach to relationship marketing in higher education is to treat the university, with all of its stakeholders, as a brand community, and to pursue policies and programs to strengthen the relationships that define the community. With this paper, we examine an important class of relationship often neglected in the CRM literature, i.e., the relationships among the customers who support the brand and who ultimately give it its meaning and vitality. Specifically, we explore how the nature of relationships among students affects their long-term loyalty to a university. The results of a telephone survey of university alumni demonstrate the importance of certain types of university experiences on student relationships and, thereafter, on loyalty to their alma mater and their intentions to support the university in the future.