Tagged / consumer behaviour

Food for Thought for Parliament: Presenting Consumer Insights to All Party Parliamentary Group

Knowledge Exchange

Professor in Consumer Behaviour Jeff Bray writes about his experiences presenting his research to an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)… 

Earlier this term I received an unsolicited invitation to attend Parliament and present my research to an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). It was the first time that I received such a request and immediately viewed it with suspicion, imagining that it could be some kind of predatory conference or publication using Parliament logos improperly. But after some online checking, it did appear genuine and interesting, so I accepted the invitation.

I was invited to share my thoughts on ‘Behaviour Change’ to the Food and Health APPG. The brief was as open as that and no further guidance was forthcoming regarding likely group size, expectations or requirements. So, it was with a degree of uncertainty that on Tuesday I travelled to London with my notes, hoping that I had judged the audience and expectations correctly. I share some reflections here in the hope that it could provide others with a little guidance and confidence in similarly delivering such briefings for the first time.

I arrived in good time having been warned that getting through the airport style security could take 45mins +.  I then seemingly had the run of the place and was able to wander freely. I found the public viewing gallery in the House of Lords to be a warm spot to sit for 30mins looking through my notes, but I was distracted by the debate – the second reading of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill, which given my research field was actually quite interesting!

Finding the committee room was straightforward given the number of security guards around to advise. It was quite easy to forget that the room was filled with MP’s, Lords and Baronesses since there was a real collegial tone (despite being cross party) and definitely the discussion was more friendly and less combative than I’ve observed at some academic conferences.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience but would have done so more, had I have known a bit better what to expect in advance. There are APPGs on a wide range of topics – the most recent register of groups is available here:  APPG register.  If there is a group that is closely linked to your expertise I believe it would be possible to contact the ‘Public enquiry point’ e-mail address and offer to present your work or just attend one of their sessions for interest.

#TalkBU presents… Let’s talk about HENRYs

Student Engagement

#TalkBU is a monthly lunchtime seminar on Talbot Campus, open to all students and staff at Bournemouth University and free to attend. Come along to learn, discuss and engage in a 20-30 minute presentation by an academic or guest speaker talking about their research and findings, with a short Q&A at the end. 

Let’s talk about the Henry’s…

When: Thursday 16 November at 1pm – 2pm

Where: Room FG04, Ground Floor in the Fusion Building

Social media has created a different dimension of consumers for luxury products in particular. That being, the aspirational consumer’s desires for luxury derive from content produced on social media. Often, despite their strong yearning for luxury goods, due to economic reasons, aspirational consumers are unable to frequently purchase luxury. Social media provides an avenue for aspirational consumers to conspicuously consume without the need to purchase, enabling them to use luxury brands to create value amongst themselves.

In this #TalkBU session, Dr Elvira Bolat will examine the influence that social media has on the consumption of luxury products by introducing the Henry family: Hailey, Harriet, Hollie, Hannah, and Hilary.

Please register here to attend!

If you have any queries, please contact Sacha Gardener.

You don’t want to miss out on #TalkBU!

Dr Elvira Bolat is awarded Academy of Marketing Research Fund 2017

Awarded & submitted bids, Festival of Learning

Dr Elvira Bolat from the Department of Marketing at the Faculty of Management has been awarded the prestigious Academy of Marketing Research Fund.

Her research titled ‘From Compassion to Defence: Exploring Service Brands’ Trust Repair Mechanisms across Traditional and Digital Media’ is the sub-project of the Faculty of Management’s QR-funded project on Trust Repair in the service sectors, led by Dr Julie Robson. 

Using integrative content analysis and emotional text analysis, Dr Bolat’s project will explore the trust repair process and trust repair mechanisms used in the context of traditional and digital media, within selected high profile trust erosion cases in the service sectors. Dr Robson (Department of Marketing, FM), Professor Juliet Memery (Department of Marketing, FM) and Dr Caroline Jackson (Department of Leisure and Events, FM) are acting as mentors for the project and advising on the contextual setting of the study.

Moreover, this project supports Dr Bolat in acquiring new skills in quantitative analysis of qualitative data and deepening understanding and use of language processing software.

Dr Bolat comments: “Academy of Marketing is one of the biggest international organisations to support marketing scholars and to be one of the few recipients of this prestigious funding scheme is an absolute honour. This also helps our QR project to extend its impact and reach.”

To find out what other projects are recipients of this year’s Academy of Marketing Research funding scheme, access: https://www.academyofmarketing.org/research/amrc-research-funding/

Trust Repair team has delivered a successful Festival of Learning 2017 event on 11 July titled ‘Lies and Scandals: Whatever happened to Trust?’ and received an overwhelmingly positive feedback from the audience. Once of things that came out of this interactive event is a powerful impact media has on stakeholders’ interpretation of organisational transgressions and, therefore, on ability of brands to repair trust damage. Hence, this sub-project will help in extending scholar’s and practitioners’ understanding on role of both traditional and digital media play in repairing trust towards brands.

This grant is a very positive recognition of BU’s standing internationally and nationally within marketing and consumer behaviour research and contributes towards a growing impact generated by Influences on Consumer Behaviour research centre.

To connect with Dr Bolat, email at ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk or tweet at @Elvira_MLady

To follow Trust Repair project, tweet at @TrustRepairBU

 

 

Keynote Speaker at BAM Marketing and Retail SIG Event on Sustainability and Ethical Consumption

Research themes

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Professor Juliet Memery was a keynote speaker last week at a British Academy of Management Event held at the Surrey Business School, University of Surrey. The event on Sustainability and Ethical Consumption was hosted by the BAM Marketing and Retail Special Interest Group and brought together academics and practitioners to discuss research in the area. The event aimed to make an assessment of sustainability and ethical consumption research by looking back at its original purpose, how it has developed, where it is now, and what it could or should develop into, so providing food for thought for future research in the area. The day was well attended with over 30 presentations being made and a lot of insightful discussions were held.

The event is tied to a special issue of ‘Management Decision’, a peer reviewed journal published by Emerald, on Sustainability and Ethical Consumption which will be edited by the co-organisers and keynote speakers. Details of the special issue will be advertised in the near future, and submissions are invited from researchers in the area.

Consumer behaviour in virtual worlds

A prestigious journal has awarded two Bournemouth University (BU) academics the ‘Best Paper’ accolade for their work in the largely unstudied domain of consumer behaviour in digital virtual spaces, including video games, virtual communities and the web.

‘Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption’, by BU’s Dr Janice Denegri-Knottand Dr Mike Molesworth, was among the most downloaded work published by Consumption Markets and Culture last year.

The paper examines digital virtual consumption (such as owning luxury cars in a video game), the relationship it has within the real material world and the appeal of consumption that is deprived of a material, physically tangible form.

Flying planes in a computer gameDenegri-Knott and Molesworth think of consumption on spaces like eBay, Amazon and World of Warcraft as somewhere between the consumers’ imagination and material consumption, and believe it is charged with transformative potential for its users.

Consumers can fulfil all sorts of daydreams, such as finding a designer dress on eBay, or performing the fantasy of being a powerful wizard. They don’t just look and ask ‘what might it be like’, but may ‘try on’ being an entrepreneur, someone with wealth, a collector, a trader, an advertiser, a criminal, a hero, a warrior, or many other ways of being.

Their roles are enhanced as the scripts available to them expand and can be tested within relatively small timescales. The digital virtual individual may be an avid collector one year, a warrior hero the next, and a successful entrepreneur the year after that. The video game player may be a successful criminal one week and a racing driver the next.

Denegri-Knott and Molesworth believe more emphasis is needed on the relationship between the virtual realm and the real-world and, as digital virtual consumption is largely unstudied, they propose an integrative view for further research.

“The paper was written in the spirit of mapping out potential avenues for research, and also to give us some kind of conceptual frame to make sense of consumption in emerging digital virtual spaces,” said Dr Denegri-Knott.  “We now have a body of work that looks at the way in which users consume through eBay, from which we have been able to draw some insights on the acceleration of consumer desire and the problems this creates. We now would like to develop the theme of transformative potential in digital virtual consumption; that is to see how consumers make sense of their experiences and how they integrate these into their everyday lives.”

The pair are also now researching the experience of owning digital virtual goods, in particular the ways in which consumers become attached to certain goods, and how they maintain their preferential stature.

Dr Denegri-Knott concluded: “We were both delighted and surprised to hear that our paper was so well received by the readers of the journal and by the judging panel.  This is a real achievement for the Emerging Consumer Cultures Group (ECCG).”