In Speculative Communities, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou examines the ways that speculation has moved beyond financial markets to shape fundamental aspects of our social and political lives. As ordinary people make exceptional decisions, such as the American election of a populist demagogue or the British vote to leave the European Union, they are moving from time-honored and -tested practices of governance, toward the speculative promise of a new, more uncertain future. This book shows how even our methods of building community have shifted to the speculative realm as social media platforms enable and amplify our volatile wagers. For Komporozos-Athanasiou, "to speculate" means increasingly "to connect," to endorse the unknown pre-emptively, and often daringly, as a means of social survival. Grappling with the question of how more uncertainty can lead to its full-throated embrace rather than dissent, Speculative Communities shows how finance has become the model for society writ large. As Komporozos-Athanasiou argues, virtual marketplaces, new social media, and dating apps bring finance's opaque infrastructures into the most intimate realms of our lives, leading to a new type of speculative imagination across economy, culture, and society.

As consumers increase their purchases from online retailers, businesses must find exceedingly innovative ways to increase customer engagement. While online gaming has become increasingly prevalent, motivating customers through the same means has gained greater importance for businesses. Utilizing Gamification in Servicescapes for Improved Consumer Engagement is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on employing various gamification mechanics to alter and enhance certain behaviors in marketing contexts. While highlighting topics such as online gaming, user engagement, and target marketing, this book is ideally designed for retailers, advertisers, marketers, promotion coordinators, industry professionals, business executives, managers, researchers, academicians, and students seeking current research on bridging servicescapes and marketing literature with gamification.

The UK has set a legal target of net-zero global warming emissions for 2050. The evidence concerning the devastating effects of climate change is witnessed all across the world, and yet ownership of emission-intensive Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) continues to grow at alarming rate: in 2019, about 42% of all new GB car registrations were SUVs or SUV crossovers. "SUV madness" explores this car-buying phenomenon in thorough statistical and anecdotal detail. Although written with sadness, and occasional anger, I have attempted to be honest, understanding, humane and even humorous. "A good read" I hope.

Today's lifestyles do not provide us with the foundations for true, long-term happiness. The causes of our problems are clearly identified, with achievable solutions proposed for us all. The Covid-19 Disaster globally halted 'Normal Life', the root causes of this Disaster are revealed. This book offers the reader the opportunity for reflection, self-reassessment and fresh analysis for the future pursuit of true Self-realisation and true Long-term Happiness. Easy to read, yet deals with the most critical issues of today. One of Wolfe-Xavier's 1.4M Internet reader's comments on him: 'High intellectual ability peppered with a profound spiritual intelligence is not a dish so common as one would hope. Lawrence Wolfe-Xavier has my respect.'

As developing nations increase their consumption rate, their relevance in the global marketplace grows. Existing assumptions and postulations about consumer consumption in various societies are being displaced largely due to the dynamic nature of the market. However, research has not been adequately devoted to explore the developments in consumer behavior in developing nations, which has resulted in numerous unanswered questions. Exploring the Dynamics of Consumerism in Developing Nations provides vital research on consumer behavior in developing countries and changes in the socio-cultural dimensions of marketing. While highlighting topics such as celebrity influence, marketing malpractices, and the adoption of e-government, this publication is ideally designed for researchers, advanced-level students, policymakers, and managers.

Balkan Blues explores how a state transitions from the collectivized production and distribution of socialism to the consumer-focused culture of capitalism. Yuson Jung considers the state as an economic agent in upholding rights and responsibilities in the shift to a global market. Taking Bulgaria as her focus, Jung shows how impoverished Bulgarians developed a consumer-oriented society and how the concept of "need" adapted in surprising ways to accommodate this new culture. Different legal frameworks arose to ensure the rights of vulnerable or deceived consumers. Consumer advocacy NGOs and government officers scrambled to navigate unfamiliar EU-imposed models for consumer affairs departments. All of these changes involved issues of responsibility, accountability, and civic engagement, which brought Bulgarians new ways of viewing both their identities and their sense of agency. Yet these opportunities also raised questions of inequality, injustice, and social stratification. Jung's study provides a compelling argument for reconsidering of the role of the state in the construction of 21st-century consumer cultures.

Unprecedented changes in consumer shopping habits pose major challenges for retailers who need to consider the multidimensional nature of shopping in order to design and provide engaging consumer experiences. The intersection between in-store and online shopping is also fundamental to meet the fast-changing consumer behavior. Comprehending how environmental and sensory dimensions, leisure, entertainment, and social interactions influence shopper emotions may enhance the shopping experience. Emotional, Sensory, and Social Dimensions of Consumer Buying Behavior is an essential reference source that discusses methods for enhancing the shopping experience in an era of competition among shopping offline- and online-destinations, as well as predicting emerging changes in consumer behavior and shopping destinations and new technologies in retailing. Featuring research on topics such as consumer dynamics, experimental marketing, and retail technology, this book is ideally designed for retail managers, designers, advertisers, marketers, customer service representatives, merchandisers, industry professionals, academicians, researchers, students, and practitioners.

Consumer culture influences virtually all activities within modern societies and has become an important area of study for businesses. Logical analysis of consumer behavior is difficult as humans have different reasons for repeatedly buying products they need or want, and it is challenging to follow why they buy unneeded or unwanted products regularly. Without a comprehensive understanding of consumer culture as the basis, market discussions become empty and produce little insight into the power consumers hold in affecting other individuals and society. Multifaceted Explorations of Consumer Culture and Its Impact on Individuals and Society provides emerging research from different perspectives on the basis and ramifications of consumer culture, as well as how it affects all aspects of the lives of individuals. While providing a platform for exploring interpersonal interactions and issues related to ethics in marketing, readers will gain valuable insight into areas such as consumer vs. producer mentality, the effects of consumerism on developing countries, and the consequences of consumerism. This book is an important resource for marketing professionals, business managers, sociologists, students, academicians, researchers, and consumer professionals.

Shopper's Paradise: Retail Stores and American Consumer Culture deals with the cultural, social and economic impact of retail stores on American society. It has chapters on some of the most important retail genres, such as Internet stores (Amazon.com), department stores (Neiman Marcus), coffee shops (Starbucks), big-box stores (Walmart, Costco) and a number of other kinds of stores such as dollar stores, malls, and farmer's markets.

What we hear before and/or while we eat and drink often affects our tasting experiences. The focus of Auditory Contributions to Food Perception and Consume Behaviour is to provide a state-of-the-art summary on how such music and ambient inputs can influence our expectations, our purchasing behaviour, as well as our product experience. Much of the research collected together in this volume relates to 'sonic seasoning': This is where music/soundscapes are especially chosen, or else designed/composed, in order to correspond to, and hence hopefully to modify the associated taste/aroma/mouthfeel/flavour in food and beverages. The various chapters collected together in this volume provide a state-of-the-art summary of this intriguing and emerging field of research, as well as highlighting some of the key directions for future research. Contributors are Sue Bastian, Thadeus L. Beekman, Jo Burzynska, Andrew Childress, Ilja Croijmans, Silvana Dakduk , Alexandra Fiegel, Apratim Guha, Ryuta Kawashima, Bruno Mesz, Kosuke Motoki, Rui Nouchi, Felipe Reinoso-Carvalho, Pablo Riera, Marijn Peters Rit, Toshiki Saito, Han-Seok Seo, Mariano Sigman, Laura J. Speed, Charles Spence, Motoaki Sugiura, Marcos Trevisan, Carlos Velasco, Johan Wagemans, and Qian Janice Wang.

Global economic scenarios are increasing in complexity due to the recent global financial crisis, globalization, the evolution of ICT, and the changing behaviors of consumers. This has made it difficult to predict trends and build strategies within the retail industry. As a result, long-term forecasts and schedules are not possible, and more research is needed to explore today's consumer profile and set the frameworks for future recovery strategies. Predicting Trends and Building Strategies for Consumer Engagement in Retail Environments is a pivotal reference source that provides practical insights into improving the understanding of complex retail environments and consumer shopping behaviors in order to predict trends and develop strategies for retailers in times of economic crisis. While highlighting topics such as consumer engagement, industry models, and market globalization, this publication explores qualitative and quantitative methods of interest and the multidisciplinary approaches revolving around the industry. This book is ideally designed for marketers, managers, practitioners, retail professionals, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on relationship marketing, digital marketing, service management, and complexity theories.

Consumer engagement is becoming crucial to the recall and survival of brands in intense competitive markets. Due to digital innovations, businesses have seen the emergence of the millennial population as a target audience, and many businesses are struggling with adopting methods to engage the generation to leverage an enriched brand experience. Optimizing Millennial Consumer Engagement With Mood Analysis is a critical scholarly resource that explores how companies ensure brand sustainability through influencing the minds and moods of consumers to create an interactive customer experience. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such product presentation, brand fandom, social media, lifestyle products, and buying behavior, this book is geared towards marketers, business managers, business practitioners, international business strategists, academicians, consumer researchers, and upper-level graduate students attempting to understand consumer engagement through mood analysis.

"Sherman's insightful ethnography sheds light on the interactional dimension of symbolic boundaries and class relations as they are lived by luxury hotel clients and the workers who serve them. We learn how both groups perform class through emotion work and deepen our understanding of the role played by "niceness" in constituting equality and reversing hierarchies. As such, "Class Acts" is a signal contribution to a growing literature on the place of the self concept in class boundaries. It will gain a significant place in a body of work that broadens our understanding of class by moving beyond structural determinants and taking into consideration the performative, emotional, cognitive, and expressive dimensions of inequality."--Michele Lamont, author of "The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration"
"Eye-opening, amusing, and appalling, Rachel Sherman's "Class Acts "explains how class inequality is normalized in the refined atmosphere of luxury hotels. This beautifully observed and engagingly written ethnography describes what kinds of deference and personal recognition money can buy. Moreover, it shows how workers who provide luxury service avoid seeing themselves as subordinate and how those whose whims are catered to are made comfortable with their privilege. "Class Acts" is a sobering and timely account of the legitimation of extreme inequality in a culture that prizes egalitarianism."--Robin Leidner, University of Pennsylvania
"Rachel Sherman provides a penetrating and engrossing study of workers and guests in luxury hotels. Do workers resent the guests? Do guests disdain the workers? Sherman argues neither is true-and explainswhy."--Julia Wrigley, author of "Other People's Children"

With a timely new foreword by Robert Frank, this groundbreaking book explores the very meaning of happiness and prosperity in America today. Although middle-income families don't earn much more than they did several decades ago, they are buying bigger cars, houses, and appliances. To pay for them, they spend more than they earn and carry record levels of debt. Robert Frank explains how increased concentrations of income and wealth at the top of the economic pyramid have set off "expenditure cascades" that raise the cost of achieving many basic goals for the middle class. Writing in lively prose for a general audience, Frank employs up-to-date economic data and examples drawn from everyday life to shed light on reigning models of consumer behavior. He also suggests reforms that could mitigate the costs of inequality. Falling Behind compels us to rethink how and why we live our economic lives the way we do.

For all the political branding and rebranding of healthcare in the United States, its fundamental unit of currency remains the doctor-patient relationship. This relationship has undergone seismic changes during the twenty-first century, including the introduction of new players (the so-called healthcare "team") and care delivery in settings like big-box stores and bureaucratic health systems. But are any of us better off? Next in Line is the first book to examine the doctor-patient relationship in the context of its new environs, in particular the impact of efficiency-driven innovation and retail-care models on physician mindsets and the patient experience. The overall picture is one of lowered expectations-a transactional, impersonal, and institutionally-limited incarnation of the medical bedside that leaves all parties underwhelmed and overstressed. By first conducting a macro-analysis of key industry trends (including the widespread use of performance metrics and retail principles), then measuring these trends' impacts through interviews with physicians and patients, Next in Line is both an examination and a critique of a care system at a crossroads. It is essential reading for understanding why relational care matters - and why it must be saved in a corporatized health system bent on using retail approaches to deliver care.

In the decades following World War II, the creation and expansion of massive domestic markets and relatively stable economies allowed for mass consumption on an unprecedented scale, giving rise to the consumer society that exists today. Many avant-garde artists explored the nexus between consumption and aesthetics, questioning how consumerism affects how we perceive the world, place ourselves in it, and make sense of it via perception and emotion. Delirious Consumption focuses on the two largest cultural economies in Latin America, Mexico and Brazil, and analyzes how their artists and writers both embraced and resisted the spirit of development and progress that defines the consumer moment in late capitalism. Sergio Delgado Moya looks specifically at the work of David Alfaro Siqueiros, the Brazilian concrete poets, Octavio Paz, and Lygia Clark to determine how each of them arrived at forms of aesthetic production balanced between high modernism and consumer culture. He finds in their works a provocative positioning vis-a-vis urban commodity capitalism, an ambivalent position that takes an assured but flexible stance against commodification, alienation, and the politics of domination and inequality that defines market economies. In Delgado Moya's view, these poets and artists appeal to uselessness, nonutility, and noncommunication-all markers of the aesthetic-while drawing on the terms proper to a world of consumption and consumer culture.

Examining the increasingly common dilemma experienced by consumers who face an overabundance of choices, Overchoice: Too Much to Choose From, Too Little Time provides a much-needed context for the quandary and offers tools to help cope with it. The book creates an unobstructed overchoice narrative. It examines overchoice as a psychological theme and establishes its sociological foundations. It explores the economic nature of overchoice and its impact on the marketplace. It provides an overview of consumer culture, consumer overload, and the resultant consumer disenchantment. Lastly, it addresses the informational complexity created by overchoice. Developed to help readers recognize that the most plentiful choice is not necessarily the best one, Overchoice shows them how to analyze and make discerning decisions about the abundance that is regularly offered to consumers today. This timely text is well-suited for courses in marketing, consumer behavior, social psychology, and economics.

With contributions from over 30 scholars, A Global History of Consumer Co-operation surveys the origins and development of the consumer co-operative movement from the mid-nineteenth century until the present day. The contributions, covering the history of co-operation in different national contexts in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australasia, illustrate the wide variety of forms that consumer co-operatives have taken; the different political, economic and social contexts in which they have operated; the ideological influences on their development; and the reasons for their expansion and decline at different times. The book also explores the connections between co-operatives in different parts of the world, challenging assumptions that the story of global co-operation can be traced exclusively to the 1844 Rochdale Co-operative Society. Contributors are: Amelie Artis, Nikola Balnave, Patrizia Battilani, Johann Brazda, Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Maria Eugenia Castelao Caruana, Kay-Wah Chan, Bernard Degen, Daniele Demoustier, Espen Ekberg, Dulce Freire, Katarina Friberg, Mary Hilson, Mary Ip, Florian Jagschitz, Pernilla Jonsson, Kim Hyung-mi, Akira Kurimoto, Simon Lambersens, Catherine C LeGrand, Ian MacPherson, Francisco Jose Medina-Albaladejo, Alain Melo, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Silke Neunsinger, Greg Patmore, Joana Dias Pereira, Michael Prinz, Siegfried Rom, Robert Schediwy, Corrado Secchi, Geert Van Goethem, Griselda Verbeke, Rachael Vorberg-Rugh, Mirta Vuotto, Anthony Webster and John Wilson.

Race has long shaped shopping experiences for many Americans. Retail exchanges and establishments have made headlines as flashpoints for conflict not only between blacks and whites, but also between whites, Mexicans, Asian Americans, and a wide variety of other ethnic groups, who have at times found themselves unwelcome at white-owned businesses. Race and Retail documents the extent to which retail establishments, both past and present, have often catered to specific ethnic and racial groups. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the original essays collected here explore selling and buying practices of nonwhite populations around the world and the barriers that shape these habits, such as racial discrimination, food deserts, and gentrification. The contributors highlight more contemporary issues by raising questions about how race informs business owners' ideas about consumer demand, resulting in substandard quality and higher prices for minorities than in predominantly white neighborhoods. In a wide-ranging exploration of the subject, they also address revitalization and gentrification in South Korean and Latino neighborhoods in California, Arab and Turkish coffeehouses and hookah lounges in South Paterson, New Jersey, and tourist capoeira consumption in Brazil. Race and Retail illuminates the complex play of forces at work in racialized retail markets and the everyday impact of those forces on minority consumers. The essays demonstrate how past practice remains in force in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Consumption in Russia and the former USSR has been lately studied as regards the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet period. The history of Soviet consumption and the Soviet variety of consumerism in the 1950s-1990s has hardly been studied at all. This book concentrates on the late Soviet period but it also considers pre-WWII and even pre-revolutionary times.The book consists of articles, which survey the longue duree of Russian and Soviet consumer attitudes, Soviet ideology of consumption as indicated in texts concerning fashion, the world of Soviet fashion planning and the survival strategies of the Soviet consumer complaining against sub-standard goods and services in a command economy. There's also a case study concerning the uses of concepts with anti-consumerist content. Contributors include: Lena Bogdanova, Olga Gurova, Timo Vihavainen and Larissa Zakharova.

In History of Korean Modern Retailing Jong-Hyun Yi shows how the Korean retail industry has developed since the 1970s, focusing on the relationship among government, consumers and retail companies, especially the department store. While generally it is said that underdevelopment of the Korean retail industry in the 1970s was attributed to economic immaturity, he argues it was artificially formed by strong consumption repression by the government. He also examines how consumption repression contributed to economic growth. Such initial condition in developmental period is a crucial factor to explain other distinctions like explosive growth and remarkably short heyday of the department store afterward. With this, Jong-Hyun Yi traces the correlation between economic growth and stratification of the consumption since the 1970s. He proves that equality or inequality of consumption is a more influential factor for economic growth than that of income.

Winner of the 2013 Thomas McGann Award from the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies

Winner of the LASA Mexico 2013 Humanities Book Award

In Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, a character articulates the fascination goods, technology, and modernity held for many Latin Americans in the early twentieth century when he declares that "incredible things are happening in this world." The modernity he marvels over is the new availability of cheap and useful goods. Steven Bunker's study shows how goods and consumption embodied modernity in the time of Porfirio Díaz, how they provided proof to Mexicans that "incredible things are happening in this world."

In urban areas, and especially Mexico City, being a consumer increasingly defined what it meant to be Mexican. In an effort to reconstruct everyday life in Porfirian Mexico, Bunker surveys the institutions and discourses of consumption and explores how individuals and groups used the goods, practices, and spaces of urban consumer culture to construct meaning and identities in the rapidly evolving social and physical landscape of the capital city and beyond. Through case studies of tobacco marketing, department stores, advertising, shoplifting, and a famous jewelry robbery and homicide, he provides a colorful walking tour of daily life in Porfirian Mexico City. Emphasizing the widespread participation in this consumer culture, Bunker's work overturns conventional wisdom that only the middle and upper classes participated in this culture.

Consumer capitalism dominates our economy, our politics and our culture. Yet there is a growing body of research from a range of disciplines that suggests that consumer capitalism may be past its sell-by date. Beyond Consumer Capitalism begins by showing how, for people in the developed world, consumer capitalism has become economically and environmentally unsustainable and is no longer able to deliver its abiding promise of enhancing quality of life . This cutting-edge book then asks why we devote so little time and effort to imagining other forms of human progress. The answer, Lewis suggests, is that our cultural and information industries limit rather than stimulate critical thinking, keeping us on the treadmill of consumption and narrowing our vision of what constitutes progress. If we are to find a way out of this cul de sac, Lewis argues, we must begin by analysing the role of media in consumer capitalism and changing the way we organize media and communications. We need a cultural environment that encourages rather than stifles new ideas about what guides our economy and our society. Timely and compelling, Beyond Consumer Capitalism will have strong appeal to students and scholars of media studies, cultural studies and consumer culture.

In recent years, American shoppers have become more conscious of their food choices and have increasingly turned to CSAs, farmers' markets, organic foods in supermarkets, and to joining and forming new food co-ops. In fact, food co-ops have been a viable food source, as well as a means of collective and democratic ownership, for nearly 180 years.

In Food Co-ops in America, Anne Meis Knupfer examines the economic and democratic ideals of food cooperatives. She shows readers what the histories of food co-ops can tell us about our rights as consumers, how we can practice democracy and community, and how we might do business differently. In the first history of food co-ops in the United States, Knupfer draws on newsletters, correspondence, newspaper coverage, and board meeting minutes, as well as visits to food co-ops around the country, where she listened to managers, board members, workers, and members.

What possibilities for change be they economic, political, environmental or social might food co-ops offer to their members, communities, and the globalized world? Food co-ops have long advocated for consumer legislation, accurate product labeling, and environmental protection. Food co-ops have many constituents members, workers, board members, local and even global producers making the process of collective decision-making complex and often difficult. Even so, food co-ops offer us a viable alternative to corporate capitalism. In recent years, committed co-ops have expanded their social vision to improve access to healthy food for all by helping to establish food co-ops in poorer communities."