Category / Business & Management Studies

BUBS Consumer Insights Research Theme

Knowledge Exchange

BUBS Consumer Insights Research Theme based in the Department of Marketing Strategy and Innovation draws together a team of 13 researchers addressing how consumers think, feel, and behave.

We adopt a broad interpretation of the consumer, including Business to Business and Business to Consumers, and include foci from the consumption of products or services to understanding the way consumers think, their attitudes and behaviours. Consumer Insight bridges the gap between research and practice by providing relevant and actionable insight that resonates with business and delivers societal impact. Consumers are at the heart of all organisations and this gives the Theme a strong core purpose with wide and diverse application.

This theme bridges the gap between academic research and practitioner needs providing awareness to enable businesses to efficiently target their resources. In addition, we also provide a better understanding of how consumers think and behave and thereby enable organisations to respond more effectively to their needs. There is significant grant crafting and project management expertise and we find that a consumer perspective is often a useful addition to funding applications rooted in a range of disciplines.

The range and diversity of Consumer Insights are demonstrated by our involvement with projects that span, for example: Food waste reduction in the EU; The legalised Canadian cannabis retail market allowing online stores to advertise CBDDY: buy pure cbd oil; Online branding of charities; Food consumption patterns; Learning gain in marketing education; Religion and retail banking; Ethical consumption; Consumer identity; Fashion/luxury branding. Find out if insurance covers medical marijuana in Florida on DocMJ’s website.

The theme members include: Ediz Akcay; Samreen Ashraf; Sean Beer; Elvira Bolat; Julia Hibbert; Hiroko Oe; Kaouther Kooli; Danni Liang; Juliet Memery; Maria Musarskaya; Helen O’Sullivan;

The theme is convened by: Chris Chapleo (cchapleo@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Jeff Bray (jbray@bournemouth.ac.uk).

Please do get in touch if you are interested to hear more about the work of the theme or would like to discuss any potential collaborations.

Route to a prize is a prize itself – Melissa Carr at AoM

Melissa Carr, senior lecturer in leadership development in the Business School, has been nominated for best paper from a doctoral dissertation at this year’s conference of the Academy of Management. This nomination is as good as winning a lot of other prizes, I assured her. In business and management, the AoM conference is the largest – and nonetheless one of the most difficult to get into. Melissa has had two papers accepted this year.

One of those, “Moments of Discomfort: Poststructuralist Reflexivity and Researcher Subjectivity,” has been put forward for the 2021 William H. Newman Award. Each AoM division nominates one paper. The conference usually attracts more than 10,000 scholars. Participants will hear hundreds and perhaps thousands of papers based on doctoral work, and each division is likely to have dozens from which to pick. They picked hers.

Having read her thesis, which earned her a PhD from Cranfield University, I know it’s a good one. Congratulations!

Donald Nordberg, Associate Professor

Happy New Year 2078 (in Nepal)

international

Bournemouth University wishes all its Nepali students, staff and collaborators in both the UK and in Nepal a Healthy and Happy New Year 2078 today.

 

 

 

The curious start of an academic collaboration

international

The curious start of an academic collaboration

Two days ago a group of academic from Bournemouth University (BU) submitted a bid for a research grant to the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) to help prevent the drowning of toddlers in Bangladesh.  The proposed research is a collaboration with the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution), and an other UK university, the University of the West of England (UWE) and a research organisation called CIPRB (Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh).   Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there.  BU academics submit collaborative bid for research grants all the time, with colleagues at other universities, with large charities (like the RNLI), and with research institutes across the globe.  What I find intriguing is the round-about way this particular collaboration came about within BU.

The NIHR called for research proposals in reply to its Global Health Transformation (RIGHT) programme.  The RNLI approached CIPRB, an expert in accident prevention from UWE and BU experts in health economics and human-centred design to discuss putting in an intention to bid.  The RNLI has a history of working with both CIPRB in Bangladesh on drowning prevention and with BU in various design project (including improved ball bearings for launching lifeboats).  The team decided that it needed a sociologist to help study the social and cultural barriers to the introduction of interventions to prevent drowning in very young toddlers (12-14 months).  My name was mentioned by our UWE colleague whom I know from her work in Nepal.  For example, she and I had spoken at the same trauma conference in Nepal and the lead researcher on her most recent project is one of my former students.

Thus, I was introduced to my BU colleagues in different departments (and faculties) by an outsider from a university miles away.  I think it is also interesting that after twelve years at BU I am introduced to fellow researchers at the RNLI, especially since I only need to step out of my house and walk less than five minutes to see the RNLI headquarters in Poole.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)

 

Dr Oliver’s webinar to US Major League sports executives

Business Engagement

Dr John Oliver recently delivered a webinar entitled After the shock: business innovation in a post pandemic world to major league executives from the NBA and MLS. The session was based on Dr Oliver’s British Academy funded research and the webinar was hosted by sports management consultants ‘Sportsology’. Barry McNeill, CEO at Sportsology, commented that the webinar provided a “thought provoking view” on how crisis events affected organisational culture and attitudes to business innovation and performance.

Dr Oliver’s research can be accessed at: Oliver, J.J. (2020). Corporate turnaround failure: is the proper diagnosis transgenerational response? Strategy & Leadership. Vol. 48 No. 4, pp. 37-43.

Cutting-edge research has assessed the carbon footprint of BU during the COVID-19 lockdown

Publishing

As we have now all become accustomed to working and studying from home, research has started looking at various implications of remote work/study. These implications include the impact on our subjective being, but also on the environment. There are speculations that work/study from home may reduce our carbon footprint, for example. This is because commute and/or business travel are no longer required. These two activities have long been recognised as the main drivers of carbon emissions in Universities, alongside on-site energy use and procurement.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a unique opportunity to compare the carbon intensity of working/studying at home and on campus. That is why Dr Viachaslau Filimonau from the Business School; Dave Archer, Laura Bellamy, Neil Smith, and Richard Wintrip from the Sustainability Team have undertaken a study of the carbon footprint of Bournemouth University during the COVID-19 lockdown. This is the first investigation of its kind and only the third attempt to assess the carbon emissions of UK institutions of higher education.

The study has found that working/studying from home may be less beneficial from the carbon perspective than originally thought. The carbon emissions produced by staff, but particularly students, at home are almost equal to the carbon footprint of commute. The complete closure of University campuses does not result in low carbon emissions.

This has important implications for the future of (higher) education in the UK and beyond. For instance, the study’s findings indicate that the model of blended teaching and learning may have low carbon efficiency and should, therefore, be applied by Universities with caution. This is because institutions of higher education should promote sustainability which involves ‘leading by example’ when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint.

The study has been peer-reviewed and published in Science of the Total Environment, a leading international journal in the field of sustainability and environmental management (impact factor 6.6). The full paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720374957. The team aims to advance this project by assessing the carbon footprint of Bournemouth University over the winter period. This is when heating will be put on, thus creating extra carbon emissions on campus but, particularly, at home given that we will continue working/studying remotely in semester two.

New corporate governance book by BU scholar published

Associate Professor Donald Nordberg has published a new book, The Cadbury Code and Recurrent Crisis: A Model for Corporate Governance? (Palgrave Macmillan). It’s a critical examination of the origins of the UK code of corporate governance and how the code developed – and failed to develop – through repeated crises in corporate governance.

The 1992 Cadbury Code was a watershed in corporate governance, and not just in the UK. It influenced practice in many countries around the world, as well as the practices of many types of organisation outside the sphere of corporations listed on stock markets.

Reviewing the book, Andrew Johnstone, professor of company law at the University of Warwick, said: “This is a fascinating book, tracing the development of the UK Corporate Governance Code and highlighting its continuity through successive crises. At the same time, it identifies areas of controversy and challenge, intriguingly suggesting that ‘defeated logics’ are merely suspended, perhaps poised to return. Essential interdisciplinary reading for all those interested in the UK’s corporate governance system.”

Business school student-staff co-creation paper to be published in IJDG

student research

Rebecca Booth (MSc, BU) and Associate Professor Donald Nordberg have produced another publication from work arising from Booth’s dissertation from the corporate governance programme taught on Guernsey. The International Journal of Disclosure and Governance (Palgrave) has accepted their qualitative study “Self or other: Directors’ attitudes towards policy initiatives for external board evaluation”, doi: 10.1057/s41310-020-00094-x. This is the second journal article to emerge from the study. In addition, the pair wrote a technical report last year for the New York-based think-tank The Conference Board Inc. and contributed to a consultation run by the UK Financial Reporting Council about the corporate governance code. The study’s insights also featured in a report published in 2019 by Minerva Analytics, a firm specialising in proxy voting research across Europe.