Ahir Gopaldas

Companies often believe they should make their customers’ experiences as effortless and predictable as possible. But the authors’ research shows that this approach is overly simplistic—and can even backfire. While in some instances (say, watching movies on Netflix) customers want their journeys to be easy and familiar, in others (working out on a Peloton bike or playing World of Warcraft) they want to be challenged or surprised. This article outlines four kinds of journeys: Routines are effortless and predictable and are suited to utilitarian products. Joyrides are effortless and unpredictable and work with products that deliver an on-demand thrill. Treks are effortful and predictable and are associated with products that help people achieve challenging long-term goals. Odysseys are effortful and unpredictable and are perfect for products that facilitate customers’ passion projects. Each type of journey has its own design principles. Routines should offer consistent touchpoints in familiar sequences; joyrides, endlessly varied moments of delight. Treks require goal-posting (breaking big objectives down into small ones), and odysseys, substantive variation and journey tracking. (https://hbr.org/2022/07/what-youre-getting-wrong-about-customer-journeys)

Purpose – Dyadic services research has increasingly focused on helping providers facilitate transformative service conversations with consumers. Extant research has thoroughly documented the conversational skills that providers can use to facilitate consumer microtransformations (i.e. small changes in consumers’ thoughts, feelings and action plans toward their well-being goals). At the same time, extant research has largely neglected the role of servicescape design in transformative service conversations despite some evidence of its potential significance. To redress this oversight, this article aims to examine how servicescape design can be used to better facilitate consumer microtransformations in dyadic service conversations. Design/methodology/approach – This article is based on an interpretive study of mental health services (i.e. counseling, psychotherapy and coaching). Both providers and consumers were interviewed about their lived experiences of service encounters. Informants frequently described the spatial and temporal dimensions of their service encounters as crucial to their experiences of service encounters. These data are interpreted through the lens of servicescape design theory, which disentangles servicescape design effects into dimensions, strategies, tactics, experiences and outcomes. Findings – The data reveal two servicescape design strategies that help facilitate consumer microtransformations. “Service sequestration” is a suite of spatial design tactics (e.g., private offices) that creates strong consumer protections for emotional risk-taking. “Service serialization” is a suite of temporal design tactics (e.g., recurring appointments) that creates predictable rhythms for emotional risk-taking. The effects of service sequestration and service serialization on consumer microtransformations are mediated by psychological safety and psychological readiness, respectively. Practical implications – The article details concrete servicescape design tactics that providers can use to improve consumer experiences and outcomes in dyadic service contexts. These tactics can help promote consumer microtransformations in the short run and consumer well-being in the long run. Originality/value – This article develops a conceptual model of servicescape design strategies for transformative service conversations. This model explains how and why servicescape design can influence consumer microtransformations. The article also begins to transfer servicescape design tactics from mental health services to other dyadic services that seek to facilitate consumer microtransformations. Examples of such services include career counseling, divorce law, financial advising, geriatric social work, nutrition counseling, personal styling and professional organizing.

In this article, we explore why the bad boy is a popular archetype in advertising, erotica, fashion, journalism, movies, songs, television serials, and other forms of commercial culture. First, we interpret the bad boy as a combination of juvenile masculinities (aggression, rebellion, hypersexuality), appealing qualities (charisma, ruggedness, sensitivity), and moral ambiguities (via confusion, contradiction, and cumulation), which keep audiences engaged. Second, we trace the evolution of these meanings in over a century of American popular culture. Third, we reveal the many commercial faces of the bad boy in the contemporary marketplace, including as an archetypal brand positioning strategy, a transformative protagonist in erotic fiction, an unapologetic voice for macho fantasies, a beguiling object of irrational love, a journalistic frame for polarizing masculinities, and an inexhaustible source of dramatic tension. In the final analysis, the bad boy archetype is a contemporary marketplace icon because it has historically been good at channeling all kinds of bad.

Purpose – This paper aims to illuminate the characteristics of Analytic and Continental scholarship to generate a deeper appreciation for both writing styles in the consumer culture theory (CCT) community.

Design/methodology/approach – Two CCT researchers discuss the merits of Analytic and Continental scholarship in an accessible dialogical format.

Findings – Analytic ideals of scholarship, espoused by elite academic journals, include conceptual rigor, logical claims, theoretical coherence, researcher agnosticism and broad generalizability. Continental ideals of scholarship, more likely to be espoused by niche and/or critical journals, include creative writing, holistic interpretation, intellectual imagination, political provocation and deep contextualization.

Originality/value – This dialogue may build more understanding across variously oriented scholars, literatures, and journals in the CCT community.

Media diversity studies regularly invoke the notion of marketing images as mirrors of racism and sexism. This article develops a higher-order concept of marketing images as "mirrors of intersectionality." Drawing on a seven-dimensional study of coverperson diversity in a globalizing mediascape, the emergent concept highlights that marketing images reflect not just racism and sexism, but all categorical forms of marginalization, including ableism, ageism, colorism, fatism, and heterosexism, as well as intersectional forms of marginalization, such as sexist ageism and racist multiculturalism. Fueled by the legacies of history, aspirational marketing logics, and an industry-wide distribution of discriminatory work, marketing images help to perpetuate multiple, cumulative, and enduring advantages for privileged groups and disadvantages for marginalized groups. In this sense, marketing images, as mirrors of intersectionality, are complicit agents in the structuration of inequitable societies.

Aptly known as the “talking cure,” therapy typically involves a client reflecting on their personal challenges and a provider guiding the conversation with feedback, questions, and non-verbal cues. How did this rare medical treatment of the early 20th century evolve into a pervasive cultural trope and marketplace icon—and why? To answer these questions, this article offers three different histories of therapy: (1) an academic history of the schools of therapy, from psychoanalysis to positive psychology, (2) an economic history of the growth of therapy, from rare treatment to mainstream healthcare, and (3) a cultural history of the diffusion of therapy, from healthcare service to Hollywood movies, television serials, news programs, talk shows, reality TV, pop music, and everyday conversation.

Purpose: This paper offers junior scholars a front-to-back guide to writing an academic, theoretically positioned, qualitative research article in the social sciences.

Approach: The paper draws on formal (published) advice from books and articles as well as informal (word-of-mouth) advice from senior scholars.

Findings: Most qualitative research articles can be divided into four major parts: the frontend, the methods, the findings, and the backend. This paper offers step-by-step instructions for writing each of these four parts.

Value: Much of the advice in this paper is taken-for-granted wisdom among senior scholars. This article makes such wisdom available to junior scholars in a concise guide.

This article makes three conceptual advances toward a theory of positive marketing. First, the article distinguishes what constitutes positive marketing in contrast to other pro-social marketing concepts: cause, green, and social marketing. Positive marketing is defined as any marketing activity that creates value for the firm, its customers, and society. Second, the article elaborates on how positive marketing works using contemporary examples and practice theory. Positive marketing is shown to have two dominant forms from a practice theory perspective: material-meaning innovations and practice innovations. Third, the article explains why positive marketing occurs. Augmenting the multilevel pressure theory of corporate social innovation, two additional antecedents of positive marketing are theorized: activist executives and networked customers. The concluding discussion identifies strategies for organizational success, limitations of positive marketing, and avenues for future research.

From outrage at corporations to excitement about innovations, marketplace sentiments are powerful forces in consumer culture that transform markets. This article develops a preliminary theory of marketplace sentiments. Defined as collectively shared emotional dispositions, sentiments can be grouped into three function-based categories: contempt for villains, concern for victims, and celebration of heroes. Marketplace actors such as activists, brands, and consumers have a variety of motives and methods for producing and reproducing sentiments. Activists plant, amplify, and hyper-perform sentiments to recruit consumers and discipline institutions. Brands carefully select, calibrate, and broadcast sentiments to entertain consumers and promote products. Consumers learn, experience, and communicate sentiments to commune and individuate in society. The emergent theory of marketplace sentiments (1) advances a sociocultural perspective on consumer emotion, (2) elevates the theoretical significance of emotional observations in cultural studies, (3) offers a sentiment-based understanding of the power of ideology, (4) indicates how activist sentiments can paradoxically benefit from brand cooptation, and (5) calls for human input in big data sentiment analysis. More broadly, the article proposes that cultures are systems of discourses, sentiments, and practices wherein discourses legitimize sentiments and practices, sentiments energize discourses and practices, and practices materialize discourses and sentiments.

The concept of “intersectionality” refers to the interactivity of social identity structures such as race, class, and gender in fostering life experiences, especially experiences of privilege and oppression. This essay maps out the origins, evolution, and many contemporary meanings of intersectionality to make a notoriously ambiguous idea more concrete. In addition, the author clarifies the tenets of the intersectionality literature by contrasting traditional and intersectional research on marketplace diversity along three dimensions: ontology, methodology, and axiology. The essay concludes with implications for radicalizing diversity research, marketing, and advocacy.

The goal of this chapter is to imagine more humanistic marketing practices within the confines of existing capitalist structures. Anthropological consumption theories are well-suited to this task because they offer a people-centric view of markets and address universal human themes such as the search for meaning, the pursuit of pleasure, the construction of identity, and the maintenance of community. This chapter translates four theories – consumption as meaning making, consumption as emotional experience, consumption as self-extension, and consumption as community participation – into concrete managerial recommendations. Each theory illuminates a distinct pathway for empathically understanding, motivating, and satisfying consumers in profitable as well as humanistic ways.

In this chapter, we show that consumer researchers interested in studying gender, culture, and consumer behavior may benefit from going beyond gender to consider intersectionality. At base, intersectionality is the idea that each and every person is positioned in society at the intersection of multiple social axes, such as race, class, and, of course, gender. Consequently, every person is subject to advantages and disadvantages particular to his or her intersectional position. This chapter presents the key tenets of the intersectionality literature, highlights intersectionality-oriented work in consumer culture theory, and outlines promising avenues for future research on intersectionality and consumption.