Consumer Agency Research Articles

China as data coloniser? rethinking cultural production, cultural mediation, and consumer agency on Kenyan and Chinese e-commerce platforms

Has China become a neo-colonizer, exporting its cultural and economic power to the world based on its agenda of building soft power? Existing scholarship on neocolonialism and data colonialism largely focuses on how China's infrastructural expansion and increasingly platformised cultural sectors can achieve its ambitious platformised cultural sectors overseas. Yet, how China's cultural power is manifested, negotiated, or resisted in people's daily lives in a South–South setting remains under-researched and under-theorised. This article uses everyday fashion in Kenya as a case study to investigate China's cultural and economic power expansion in the Global South. We examined how cultural differences are negotiated and mediated on two Chinese(-invested) e-commerce platforms. Through focus groups and platform walkthrough method, our findings serve to enrich existing theories of cultural production–platform relationships applicable in the study of various cultural and creative sectors, to offer new understandings of how symbolic, sociopolitical and cultural meanings of fashion are constructed through divergent platform affordances, and to reveal the various forms of cultural negotiations and resistance in different contexts, multiplying our frames of reference.

How the Materials of Objects Shape Consumption: An Affordance Theory Perspective

Abstract Glasses and stones, metals and textiles, leathers and plastics…The materials of objects can shape consumption in a variety of ways. Drawing on affordance theory, the authors conceptualize materials as prominent drivers of object affordances, that is, action (im)possibilities with and around objects. First, the authors explain when, how, and what materials drive object affordances. Second, they explain how consumers actualize (or put to use) materials-driven object affordances. This research makes three contributions. First, we propose post-hylomorphism as a novel principle of understanding materiality that recognizes matter as a prominent driver of object affordances. Second, we explicate how the matter-ness of objects increases object agency and reduces consumer agency. Third, we introduce object affordance management as a novel way to understand how consumers manage object affordances by increasing action possibilities while reducing action impossibilities via a range of processes and micro-practices.

Backlash or victims? ‘Victimised Korean husbands’ of migrant wives and problematic norms on sexual relations in South Korea

Violence against marriage migrants became a critical social issue in South Korea in the late 2000s, and the government instituted various measures in response, partially adopting civil society organisations’ demands to protect migrant women. However, men’s rights groups also mobilised shortly after to advocate for the rights of citizen-husbands under the slogan of ‘male victims of international marriages’. Their campaigns targeted both the unscrupulous commercial matchmakers and their deceitful migrant wives. This article situates the victimised men discourse as a backlash against violence against women campaigns to reverse policy gains in the protection of women’s rights. The article argues that government policies have legitimised such discourse and used flawed ‘data’ to justify their policies. This article uses as data complaints submitted to the Korea Consumer Agency, a government regulator for consumer disputes, about international marriages and focuses on their mentioning of sexual relations, intimacy and sexuality. By doing so, this article demonstrates that men’s rights as consumers of marriage brokerage services are behind their claims of victimhood, and the victimhood discourse undermines the safety and human rights of migrant women. Moreover, a close look at the database about ‘male victimhood’ reveals severe human rights violations against migrant women.

‘We Really Thrive on Interactions’ – How Consumers Experience and React to Sudden Constraints of Sociality in Everyday Neighborhood Places

This research investigates how consumers experience and deal with the constrained sociality of everyday places in their neighborhood (shops, parks, etc.) in times of crisis, using the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic as a revelatory context. Everyday neighborhood places outside the home or workplace do not only satisfy functional needs; they also serve people’s social life and enhance well-being. However, a gap exists in the literature about the impact of sudden consumer agency constraints on the felt sociality of such places, which hinders knowledge and advice on how service managers can effectively address consumer needs in such times. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with consumers and service providers in French and German urban environments, we find that the enacted restrictions changed how people related to the self, to others, and to the environment. Using ‘sense of place’ as a theoretical lens, we show that constrained sociality modifies the dialectical relationships between people and places: while consumers attributed new meaning to natural environments and re-valued the social resources of their neighborhood, the public restrictions made them increasingly concerned about their own agency. Since consumers thrive on everyday sociality, we discuss different ways service managers can enhance the experience of everyday places during public crises.

Consumer vulnerability dynamics and marketing: Conceptual foundations and future research opportunities

Inspired by the goal of making marketplaces more inclusive, this research provides a deeper understanding of consumer vulnerability dynamics to develop strategies that help reduce these vulnerabilities. The proposed framework, first, conceptualizes vulnerability states as a function of the breadth and depth of consumers’ vulnerability; then, it sketches a set of vulnerability indicators that illustrate vulnerability breadth and depth. Second, because the breadth and depth of vulnerability vary over time, the framework goes beyond vulnerability states to identify distinct vulnerability-increasing and vulnerability-decreasing pathways, which describe how consumers move between vulnerability states. In a final step, the framework proposes that organizations can (and should) support consumers to mitigate vulnerability by helping consumers build resilience (e.g., via distinct types of resilience-fueling consumer agency). This framework offers novel conceptual insights into consumer vulnerability dynamics as well as resilience and provides avenues for future research on how organizations can better partner with consumers who experience vulnerabilities.

Consumer agency in sustainable consumption behaviour and environmentally imposed constraints: A multi‐level approach

Consumer agency in sustainable consumption behaviour and environmentally imposed constraints: A multi‐level approach

GEORGIAN COMPETITION LAW IN THE DIGITAL AGE – GEORGIAN PRACTICE AND EXISTING CHALLENGES

The article identifies, systematizes the decisions taken by the Georgian Competition and Consumer Agency regarding digital markets/competition and reviews the practices established by the Agency based on the said decisions. The introduction of the article highlights the significant challenge of modern competition law, which implies that competition law does not exist independently of era and context, and it is important that competition law and its enforcement mechanisms function effectively in the conditions of the modern digital economy. The article then defines the digital economy and describes two of its key features, (big) data and digital platforms. A number of theoretical problems are then mentioned which may hinder the effective enforcement of competition law in relation to similar economic agents/markets. The main part of the article will concern the review of the decisions made by the Competition Agency in relation to online markets and digital platforms. Since there are currently no special legislative or by-law norms necessary for the effective enforcement of competition law in the digital age, the Competition Agency is guided by the general legislative framework regulating competition law to resolve similar issues. The analysis of the decisions revealed that the practice of the Agency develops in the direction of only two: (I) unfair competition (II) agreements restricting competition, and currently there is no, for example, a decision of the Competition Agency regarding the abuse of a dominant position by digital platforms.

After 50 Years, It Is Time to Talk about Value Hierarchy and Inequality

Abstract This research enriches the field’s perspective on value and argues that to seriously address inequality during the next 50 years, consumer research must explore processual aspects of value hierarchy and consider its relationship to inequality. Doing so recognizes the duality of structures as embodying outcomes and agency, as well as the need to view value not only as what it is but also as what it does. To begin to address limitations in the literature, we use empirical evidence from an investigation of the cancer care market from 1970 to 2021 to understand how value hierarchy shapes and manifests as inequality. This is conceptualized as: distribution of multilevel resources, consolidation of consumer power, stratification of consumer agency, and (de)credentialization of worthiness. Building on each of these, we discuss a research agenda for future JCR inquiries and introduce “value hierarchy as inequality” as a big-tent issue for consumer research.

한국제품 데이터기반의 소비자제품 정량적 리스크평가방법연구

The purpose of this study is to contribute to enhancing consumer safety by researching a quantitative product risk assessment method that allows for annual monitoring of product hazards. The study proposes a method for conducting rapid and straightforward evaluations annually using accident data from the Korea Consumer Agency, product usage survey data, and resident population data. Based on the number of accidents, usage rates, and population, probabilities of occurrences were derived, and severity was calculated based on injuries and affected body parts to perform quantitative evaluations. As a result of the research, 262 consumer products were evaluated using the proposed method, identifying 12 products with severe risk ratings, 6 products with increased risk, and 11 products with decreased risk annually. These evaluation results have the significant advantage of being able to observe changes in product hazards annually. They can be utilized not only for enhancing safety, easing regulations, and consumer education policy formulation but also as foundational data for various sectors including consumers, parents, children, and educators, thereby contributing to raising awareness and policy formulation regarding domestic consumer safety.

Legitimate Transaction? Regulating Commercial International Marriage Brokers in South Korea

Marriages between South Korean men and women from less affluent Asian countries have been popular since the 1990s, and commercial international marriage brokers have played an important role in the trend. This article argues that the laws and regulations governing marriage brokers, such as Marriage Brokers Business Management Act (MBBMA) and consumer protection mechanisms, have reinforced the rights of citizen-husbands and legitimized claims from the men’s movement. As a result, the state’s regulation of commercial matchmaking endorses a form of commodified intimacy and protects the rights of male client-cum-“head of the family,” despite the consequences of commodifying the personhood of migrant women and legitimizing the violence of denying their personal autonomy. Data include public documents and policies from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, Korea Institute for Healthy Family, Korea Consumer Agency, Fair Trade Commission, and MBBMA. Analysis of these public texts reveals the legal and policy language that sanitizes and disguises unequal gender roles and discrimination against foreigners.

Pedalling in Pahlavi Iran: Cycle mobility and competing masculinities

Using Persian memoirs, periodicals, and photographs, this essay examines how Iranians integrated the bicycle into their everyday lives in the rapidly changing socioeconomic contexts of the Pahlavi period (1925–1979). It seeks to achieve two goals. First, by drawing comparisons from different geographical contexts, it illustrates how Iran's comparatively belated encounter with bicycle technology shaped its use and social meanings, revealing the agency of consumers of small technologies in the global South. Second, by examining competing ideals of manhood associated with the bicycle, it expands Middle Eastern historiography on masculinity beyond the modern middle class. As growing Iranian working-class men developed peculiar aesthetics and practices around the bicycle that distinguished themselves from modern middle-class men, cycle mobility became highly contested along class and gender lines, raising aspirations and anxieties in the Iranian urban space.

Swamped in dinosaurs with LED lights: negotiating sustainability in a high-consumption society

Unsustainable patterns of consumption in affluent societies are at the heart of global climate and environmental challenges and seemingly highly resistant to change. While decades of research have revealed how consumption is deeply embedded in society, recently calls have been made for (re-)engaging with the systemic conditioning of consumption in studies of everyday practices. In this paper, we analyse the ways in which eco-conscious households in Norway (N=20) perform and negotiate sustainability in everyday life. With theories of practice as a point of departure, we combine Bente Halkier’s work on social interaction with Sherry B. Ortner’s conceptualisation of agency as power (dominance and resistance) and agency through ‘projects’ to study how sustainability is negotiated in the everyday. Through this framework we explore how consumers perform ‘sustainability projects’ and how these are defined through, constrained by and negotiated against everyday normativity and dominant socio-material arrangements. Our findings demonstrate the compromises, trade-offs and negotiations that participants engage in when balancing their sustainability projects against other social roles, expectations and goals, often carried out within socio-material arrangements that are scripted towards less sustainable options. Hence, they provide detailed insight into the boundedness of consumer agency, being both socially and materially negotiated and contextualised. While often undertaken as mundane actions, the challenges our participants experienced is ultimately part of negotiating consumer society, often experienced as a constant pressure towards more consumption as expansive consumption is embedded in, and embodied and habituated through, a wide range of social practices.

The Influence of Website Quality, Price Perception and Sales Promotion on Shopee Consumer Satisfaction in South Jakarta

This research aims to analyze how big the influence of variable website quality, price perception and sales promotion is towards consumer satisfaction of Shopee in South Jakarta. The research of using primary data obtained from the deployment of as many as 100 people questionnaire the Consumer Agency's logistics Feats Rides with multiple linear regression Methods are processed using the software SPSS version 23.0. The results showed that the quality of the website, the perception of price and sales promotion simultaneously had a positive and significant effect on customer satisfaction.

The Notice-and-Choice Privacy Gamble: Game Theory, Consumer Agency, and Implications for GDPR

The Notice-and-Choice Privacy Gamble: Game Theory, Consumer Agency, and Implications for GDPR

Informal economic activity and political consumption

Drawing upon findings from an ethnographic study conducted in crisis-ridden Greece, this article explores consumer participation in the informal economy and illustrates the diversity of political discourse embedded within this type of economic activity. The study focused on 24 consumers from three distinctive theoretical categories (termed ‘ethical consumers’, ‘active citizens’ and ‘disqualified consumers’) and involved a variety of data collection methods (including observation, kitchen tours, shop-along and interviews). Empirical evidence demonstrates that to fully appreciate consumer activity and consumer agency in the informal economy, it is imperative to recognise informal modes of acquisition and exchange that do not resemble formal market transactions.

PET 수축라벨 절취선 구조 비교분석

Global warming is causing worldwide climate issues such as droughts, heavy rainfalls, snowstorms, extreme heat, and cold temperatures, which are all threatening human life. Due to the increasing importance of environmental protection, Korea enacted the ‘Resource Circulation Basic Act’ in 2020. On December 25th, 2020, the ‘Transparent PET Bottle Separate Collection Act’ went into effect in Korea, requiring that clear PET bottles be separated and disposed of in separate recycling bins after the labels are removed. However, according to a consumer survey conducted by the Korea Consumer Agency in 2021 on the separate collection of transparent PET bottles, more than 70% of consumers expressed that the removal of labels was the most inconvenient aspect. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed and compared the structure and form of PET shrink label perforation lines with eco-friendly labels introduced in the middle of transparent PET bottle labels from five selected domestic brands in Korea. As a result, we confirmed that the perforation of PET shrink labels may vary according to the structure of the perforation lines, as we found that the perforation structures of each brand were different from each other.

Predicting streaming audiences for a channel’s on-demand TV shows: Discerning the influences of choice architecture, consumer agency, and content attributes

Contemporary corporate discourse asserts that viewers have a high degree of control over what they watch on video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, echoing early academic assumptions about online users’ autonomy. Such beliefs are now being interrogated, an endeavour this study continues by analysing data on the consumption and characteristics of television programmes viewed on a channel’s VOD service and – for comparison – via its linear broadcast. Crucially, our analysis incorporates characteristics – like programmes’ prominence on the channel’s VOD interface – that represent how platforms seek to steer users’ attention. Our analysis also incorporates other programme characteristics, like genre – which serves as a proxy for the deliberate viewing choices users make. Our results lend empirical weight to ideas about the limits of online users’ agency. This study is also of relevance to television scholars and executives who are interested in the specific predictors of television programmes’ success, both on VOD platforms and on linear television.

Playing farmer: At the intersections of neo-liberal capitalism and ecocriticism in Stardew Valley

Eric Barone’s 2016 indie ‘country life simulator’ video gameStardew Valleyhas yet to be evaluated through the dual lenses of neo-liberal capitalism and ecocriticism. Given his intention for the game to have real-world messages, including the importance of community organization against corporate domination and of environmental conservation, there is a need to evaluate the intent and execution of his vision to determine if the resulting gameplay truly conveys those messages to his audience. This article draws on neo-liberal capitalist video game theory, or the simulation of capitalist circuits in video games as theorized by Kline and Golumbia, and ecocritical video game theory, or environmental modelling strategies in video games as discussed by Chang and Condis, to argue that video games are political texts, that the game mechanics within demonstrate the process-oriented ‘work as play’ mentality that simulates capitalist circuits and that the misrepresentation of environmentality through selective reproduction of real-world processes detrimentally impacts the agency and responsibility of consumers of video games. After engaging in an analysis of Barone’s representations of the in-game economy and environment via the player character’s origin story, methods of production, community organization and environmental interactions, this article concludes with a final discussion about the limitations of video game design, defence of Barone’s intent and execution and submission of suggestions for improvement and reflections on future study.

A qualitative look at perception and experience of sodium reduction strategies in the food industry through focus groups and individual interviews.

The high incidence of sodium overconsumption in the general population has led sodium reduction in commercial food products to become a topic of importance in the food industry. In order to bridge the gap between sodium reduction understanding in the food industry and academia, focus groups and individual interviews of food industry professionals were conducted. Sodium reduction and influence from external entities such as federal regulations and consumer insight were prominent in the nutritional concerns of food industry professionals. A large variety of sodium reduction strategies were introduced with discussion on the many factors that contribute to their potential for success. Flavor modification methods were most prevalent in the discussion, with particular focus on potassium chloride and incorporating umami taste. Factors that frequently positively contributed to a strategy's success include maintaining functionality and/or important sensory attributes, inexpensive to implement, and being perceived as clean label. Conversely, factors that negatively affect success include adversely impacting flavor, being considered not clean label, and high costs of implementation. Foods important for future sodium reduction varied widely, although those were largely products with high sodium density. Future efforts toward reducing sodium overconsumption and sodium content in the food supply fell into three categories: consumer-focused, industry-focused, and research-focused. Of particular importance for future efforts included greater regulatory pressure and more consumer nutritional education. Findings suggest that future efforts to reduce the incidence of sodium overconsumption should be carried out through multiple avenues rather than focusing on the agency of consumers, the food industry, or research alone.

Consumer attitudes and behaviors toward more sustainable diets: a scoping review.

There is an urgent need to move toward more sustainable diets. Although this will require radical and systemic changes across food systems, altering consumer ideologies and practices is essential to garner support for such actions. In this scoping review, the evidence on consumers' attitudes and behaviors toward more sustainable diets is synthesized and a range of factors, considerations, and proposed strategies are presented that can contribute to building the societal-level support for urgent and systems-level changes. The findings suggest that consumers, insofar as they are interested in sustainability and have the capacity to engage with the concept, primarily approach the concept of sustainable diet from a human health perspective. However, the interconnectedness of human health and well-being with environmental health is poorly understood and under-researched in the context of consumer behaviors and attitudes toward sustainable diets. This highlights the need for (1) sustained efforts from public health professionals to encourage a realignment of the term sustainable diet with its multidimensional meaning by championing an ecological public health approach in all efforts aimed at promoting more sustainable consumption, from awareness raising to policy development; (2) a broader research lens focused on the multidimensional concept of sustainability in the literature exploring consumer attitudes and behaviors; and (3) the development of multidisciplinary, clear, and evidence-based sustainable-eating messages, including holistic sustainable dietary guidance, to address knowledge gaps, minimize conflicting narratives, and build consumer agency. The findings contribute to understanding how support can be generated for the necessary structural and system-level changes required to support behavior change.