Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour

193 Pages·2017·17.454 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Parsons, Pauline Maclaran, Andreas Chatzidakis

Contemporary Issues in Marketing and
Consumer Behaviour
This second edition of Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer
Behaviour has been completely revised and updated to keep pace with the
latest developments, exploring fresh new themes in brand cultures, post-
modernism, gender, ethics and globalisation.
Topics new to this edition include:
* the moralised brandscape;
* the politics of consumption;
* the spaces and places of marketing; and
* the relationship between marketing and psychoanalysis.
Thispopulartextsuccessfullylinksmarketingtheorywithpractice,locating
marketing ideas and applications within wider global, social and economic
contexts.
Writtenbythreeexpertsinthefield,thistitlefillsagapinagrowingmarket
interested in these contemporary issues. Mapping neatly to a one-semester
module, it provides a complete off-the-shelf teaching package for masters,
MBA and advanced undergraduate modules in marketing and consumer
behaviour and a useful resource for dissertation study at both undergraduate
and postgraduate levels.
Elizabeth Parsons is Professor of Marketing at the University of Liverpool,
UK.
PaulineMaclaranisProfessorofMarketingandConsumerResearchatRoyal
Holloway, University of London, UK.
Andreas Chatzidakis is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Royal Holloway,
University of London, UK.
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Contemporary Issues in
Marketing and Consumer
Behaviour
Second edition
Elizabeth Parsons, Pauline Maclaran and
Andreas Chatzidakis
Secondeditionpublished2018
byRoutledge
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BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Names:Parsons,Elizabeth,author.|Maclaran,Pauline,author.|
Chatzidakis,Andreas,author.
Title:Contemporaryissuesinmarketingandconsumerbehaviour/
ElizabethParsons,PaulineMaclaranandAndreasChatzidakis.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2017.|Earlier
edition:2009.|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2017002758(print)|LCCN2017020207(ebook)|
ISBN9780203526040(eBook)|ISBN9780415826907(hardback:alk.
paper)|ISBN9780415826914(pbk.:alk.paper)
Subjects:LCSH:Marketing.|Consumerbehavior.
Classification:LCCHF5415(ebook)|LCCHF5415.P24932017(print)|
DDC658.8--dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2017002758
ISBN:978-0-415-82690-7(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-82691-4(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-52604-0(ebk)
TypesetinTimesNewRoman
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
Contents
List of illustrations vi
1 Introduction: how has marketing changed? 1
2 Postmodern marketing and beyond 14
3 Building brand cultures 32
4 Gender, feminism and consumer behaviour 48
5 Psychoanalysis in marketing theory and practice 67
6 Ethical debates in marketing management 85
7 Ethical consumers and the moralised brandscape 106
8 Politicising consumption: consumerising politics 126
9 Marketing spaces and places 143
10 The globalised marketplace 164
Index 181
Illustrations
Figures
6.1 General theoryof marketing ethics 91
7.1 A fruit garden in Exarcheia Park 121
7.2 Mosaic floor in Exarcheia Park 121
7.3 Exarcheia Park, 2016 122
9.1 Castilhos and Dolbec’s typologyof spaces 156
10.1 The food team at Gloucester Services Northbound 176
10.2 Inside Gloucester Services cafe 176
10.3 External Gloucester Services 177
Tables
1.1 The five axioms and eleven associated foundational principles
of service-dominant logic 4
6.1 Topical areas of marketing ethics 87
7.1 Differences between sustainability and marketing thinking 108
8.1 Logics of growth in consumption 131
1 Introduction
How has marketing changed?
In the introduction of the 2009 edition of thisbook weargued thatmarketing
was suffering from a perceived lack of relevance both within organisations
and also by consumers themselves. We also observed that this was due to an
inadequate conception of what marketing actually is. Over the past eight
yearswehaveseensomewhatofarevolutioninthinking,notonlyaboutwhat
marketing is, but also about consumers and their relationshipswith marketing.
We have also made great strides in thinking through the relationship between
marketing andwider society. Therefore we ask the following questions in this
introduction: how has our view of marketing changed? How have consumers
changed? And how should marketing relate to society?
How has our view of marketing changed?
The content and boundaries of marketing areboth blurredand frequently the
subjectfordebate.Marketingisdeeplyembeddedwithinoursocietyandculture
and therefore it must change with the times. Because of this the American
MarketingAssociation(AMA)revisittheirdefinitionofmarketingonaregular
basis. Their most recent agreed definition is as follows:
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating,
communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for
customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
(American Marketing Association website, 2013)
One might argue that this definition is now so broad that it fails to really say
anything at all other than that marketing isn’t only an activity but that it also
encompassesasetofinstitutionsandprocesses;andthatitisultimatelydirected
towards the creation of value. It is perhaps not surprising that many recent
developmentsinthewaywethinkaboutmarketingarefocusedondeepeningour
understanding of the institutions and (in particular) processes of markets and
marketingononehand,andontheconstructionofvalueontheother.Ofcourse
thesetworathergrandfeaturesofmarketingintertwineandcan’teasilybesepa-
rated.Assuchtheyinformdiscussionsofbothmarketingandconsumersbelow.
2 Introduction
Markets as practised
One significant development in recent years has been a welcome focus on
markets, what theyare and how theyare constituted or shaped. Up until quite
recently the notion of the market was rather absent from marketing thinking,
being seenonlyasaninert backdroptothebusiness of marketing activity. One
of the problems with this is that marketing therefore implicitly accepts a
neoclassical view of the market where markets are thought of merely as
exchanges between buyers and sellers (Mele et al., 2015). Thisview has several
challengesbuiltintoit.Thefirstisthatitfocusessquarelyon aproduct-centred
viewofmarkets(i.e.whatisexchanged)takingthefocusawayfromtheconcept
of consumer value (i.e. what consumers make from these exchanges). Second,
the focus on exchange value (i.e. value created at the point of purchase) is at
the cost of a focus on use value (i.e. value created during use). On an orga-
nisational level this focus on exchange has also been criticised as failing to
fully embrace the relational engagement of organisations (Sheth and Uslay,
2007); it also misses out on the idea ofinteraction as opposed to exchange as
facilitating value creation (Gummesson and Mele, 2010). Third, the focus on
the two parties of seller and buyer is restrictive because it doesn’t take into
account the fact that value is most often created by a much larger networkof
actors. This networked view is particularly pertinent given the increased
importance of the internet environment in business transactions.
One particularly interesting recent view on markets is that they are per-
formed or practised into being. This practice approach to markets draws on
economicsociologyand thesociologyof science and technologyto examinea
series of key questions regarding markets:
(1) Howaremarketagencies(e.g.buyersandsellers)configured?(2)How
do some exchanges become ‘economic’? (3) How are objects of exchange
shaped and qualified? (4) How do ideas and theories about markets
contribute to shape the phenomena they seek to describe?
(Araujo and Kjellberg, 2009: 196)
Clearly this viewof markets is very different from the traditional neoclassical
viewofmarketsasexchangebetweentwoparties.Thisviewasksustotakeastep
backandquestionhowthevariouselementswithinmarketsareconstituted and
shaped, but also to reflect on the impact that the theories we use to think
aboutmarketshasonmarketsthemselves(Araujoetal.,2010).Proponentsof
this approach argue that it also has significant implications for the way we
should think about marketing. Rather thanviewing marketing as merelya set
of techniques that regulate exchanges it should be viewed as ‘something that
takes place within a market system and is therefore derivative of the main
focus’ (Venkatesh and Peñaloza, 2006: 136). This placing of marketing within
markets represents a move towards ‘market-ing’ to explore the various
‘practices that help perform markets’ of which marketing practices are only
Introduction 3
one subset (Araujo and Kjellberg, 2009: 197). In this spirit of examining
market-ing Zwick and Cayla (2011) ask us to look ‘Inside Marketing’ to
explore how it actually works, they view marketing as: ‘an amalgamation of
institutional, cultural, economic, and technical processes by which goods and
markets – and objects and categories – are determined, contested, and provi-
sionallygiven stable forms’ (2011: 9).
Note thedifferencebetweenthisunderstandingofmarketing andtheAMA
agreed version above. They contain some of the same elements i.e. the recog-
nition that marketing is about a set of processes which involve a series of
different actors, but note that the practice view of marketing opens up ques-
tions as to how goods and markets themselves are constituted. This is
important for a numberof reasons, not least of which it allows us to see with
much more clarity how marketing impacts on society, by asking what the
mechanisms of marketing are and how they operate.
A service dominant logic of marketing
A second relatively recent approach to understanding both markets and
marketing’s role within them has been titled Service Dominant Logic. Along
with the Markets as Practised view explored above, this school is concerned
with examining the logic of value creation. Here scholars argue that the tra-
ditional dominant logic underlying marketing comes from economic science,
which is based on an economic philosophy which developed during the
Industrial Revolution. This traditional dominant logic has been called goods-
dominant(G-D)logic(VargoandLusch,2004).‘Inshort,G-Dlogicsaysthat
thepurposeofthefirmistoproduce andsellvaluableunitsofoutputand,asa
corollary, the role of the customer is to purchase and consume these units and
then buy more’ (Vargo and Lusch, 2009: 220, emphasis in original). This
approach has also been called a neoclassical viewof the market (as discussed
above). A service dominant view of markets and marketing involves moving
from an output- or (goods)-centred focus to a process (service)-centred focus.
Hereserviceisconceptualisedas‘theprocessofdoingsomethingforandwith
another party and is thus always dynamic and collaborative’ (2009: 221). It is
worth quoting Vargo and Lusch’s explanation of S-D logic at length:
According to S-D logic, economic exchange is about providing service in
order to receive reciprocal service – that is, service is exchanged for service.
Whereas goods are sometimes involved in this process, they are appliances
forserviceprovision;theyareconveyorsofcompetences.Regardlessofwhe-
ther service is provided directly or indirectly through a good, it is the
knowledgeandskills(competences–operantresources)oftheprovidersand
beneficiariesthatrepresenttheessentialsourceofvaluecreation,notgoods.
(2009: 221–2, emphasis in original)
Vargo and Lusch (2004) initially identified eight foundational principles of
S-D Logic. Discussions with scholars over the years have resulted in