bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hydraulic fracturing and the Crooked Lake Sequences: Insights gleaned from regional seismic networks
Authors: Schultz Ryan , Stern Virginia , Novakovic Mark , Atkinson Gail , Gu Yu Jeffrey
Published: March 2015

Within central Alberta, Canada, a new sequence of earthquakes has been recognized as of 1 December 2013 in a region of previous seismic quiescence near Crooked Lake, ~30 km west of the town of Fox Creek. We utilize a cross‐correlation detection algorithm to detect more than 160 events to the end of 2014, which is temporally distinguished into five subsequences. This observation is corroborated by the uniqueness of waveforms clustered by subsequence. The Crooked Lake Sequences have come under scrutiny due to its strong temporal correlation (>99.99%) to the timing of hydraulic fracturing operations in the Duvernay Formation. We assert that individual subsequences are related to fracturing stimulation and, despite adverse initial station geometry, double‐difference techniques allow us to spatially relate each cluster back to a unique horizontal well. Overall, we find that seismicity in the Crooked Lake Sequences is consistent with first‐order observations of hydraulic fracturing induced seismicity.
Anti‐Consumption Tactics
Authors: Dassopoulos Andrea
Published: March 2015

The rise of mass consumerism through the twentieth century triggered numerous critiques and challenges that have positioned consumption practices as key areas of struggle. Anti‐consumption movements and subcultures have emerged to resist the declining quality of life created by consumer culture and to issue a moral critique of unsustainable consumption. They oppose the ideology of consumerism, which supports an inherently oppressive, global capitalist system by persuading people to consume more than they need. Anti‐consumption tactics such as dumpster diving and culture jamming help individuals resist and challenge oppressive consumerism.
Asian Americans and Consumption
Authors: Lee Stacey J. , Ham Sejung
Published: March 2015

Asian Americans are gaining attention as an important consumer group. Asian American consumption is a complicated phenomenon that reflects both the desires and the needs of this diverse population. Owing to the large number of Asian Americans from immigrant backgrounds, their consumption is influenced by connections with their countries of origin. Asian American youths are active consumers of transnational cultural products and their consumption leads to the blending of cultural forms.
B2B
Marketing
Authors: Ribeiro Raquel Barbosa , Soares Isabel
Published: March 2015

Business‐to‐business (
B2B
) marketing, formerly known as industrial marketing, concerns marketing activities between organizations: companies, governments, institutions, or
NGOs
.
B2B
marketing particularities mean fewer customers but more stakeholders, more complex decisions, larger quantities, and higher sums of money involved. Consumers are titled customers. The most important customers exert various forms of power over their providers, often determining prices, sales conditions, deadlines, and product customization details. Rationality and efficiency prevail in decision‐making, which is chiefly oriented to best price choices. Purchase procedures are usually formalized, routinized, multistage, and requiring advanced technical expertise from the parts involved. Traditional
B2B
marketing presumes a close customer/supplier relationship and the use of a sales force.
B2B
marketing already accounts for more than 80 percent of e‐commerce, with
CRM
and data analysis being important and increasingly developing research matters.
Beauty Industry
Authors: Whitmer Jennifer M.
Published: March 2015

Although methods for beautifying have existed throughout history, the multibillion dollar global beauty industry which exists today has its roots in the modern industrial consumer society, transforming what had been a craft into a capitalist industry. The beauty industry has been critiqued from a number of angles, including its role in promoting a homogenized, white, unattainable ideal of beauty. Feminist critiques examine the beauty industry's contribution to women's subordination, and the way women contend with beauty norms. With the expansion of consumer culture and the tendency toward the aestheticization of the body, there has been a push toward increasing men's use of beauty products, which complicates the relation between gender and beauty.
Big‐Box Stores
Authors: Schoolman Ethan D.
Published: March 2015

A big‐box store is a physically large retail establishment, often part of a chain, whose size allows for enormous quantities of goods to be sold under one roof. Big‐box stores are associated with a range of contemporary consumption phenomena: strong emphasis on low prices, outsourcing of manufacturing to countries with inexpensive, non‐unionized labor, consistent retail environments regardless of geographical location, suburban sprawl and automobile‐centered transportation, and the advent of “one‐stop shopping.” As their dominance has grown, big‐box stores have attracted both praise for making groceries and household goods cheaper and easier to buy, and criticism for their alleged role in the decline of small, independent businesses and traditional downtowns.
Body and Consumer Culture
Authors: Tyner Keila
Published: March 2015

In recent decades, social scientists have placed much importance on understanding the body, particularly as a site whereby the individual connects to and interacts with the social world around them. Much of this theorizing on the body takes into account one of two distinct approaches, the first of which is the notion that “we have a body,” implying that the body is a separate entity from the true inner self. The second approach involves a more complex understanding of how the body is lived in or the experience of embodiment whereby the body is an integrated aspect of the true inner self (i.e., “we are a body.” Contemporary reflections on these seemingly divergent understandings of the body suggest that the possibility of an integrated approach is possible and called for in further theorizing on the body within the context of consumer culture.
Brand Mascots
Authors: Bishop Rebecca
Published: March 2015

A brand mascot is an embodied personification of the values and qualities of a particular brand identity. Presented as emblematic of the personality of a brand or product, brand mascots have long been used as a means of engaging consumers and of differentiating products in the marketplace. Featured in advertisements since the late nineteenth century, brand mascots have become an integral feature of consumer culture and are now beginning to develop an online presence in the world of social media.
Brand Loyalty
Authors: Gustafsson Clara
Published: March 2015

The traditional definition of brand loyalty is concerned with a consumer's repeat purchase of a certain branded product or service. As a rule, research on the concept argues that the repeat purchase needs to be combined with a favorable attitude toward the brand. Beyond this definition, further labeling of the brand loyalty research includes whether it is behavioral or attitudinal. Brand loyalty has gained an international reputation as a meaningful branding concept because of its prominent role in the highly influential brand equity construct, where brand loyalty is considered the most important of the four consumer‐based brand equity components. Generally, the role of the consumer's brand relationship, for instance as seen in a brand community, is focused in the analysis of qualitative consumer data, downplaying the role of the management of the brand's communication toward consumers in creating brand loyalty. In the brand trust literature, brand loyalty is generally considered an antecedent of brand trust. Recent research on brand loyalty online has often added the concept of brand trust to the brand equity construct to better address loyalty online. Noticeably, stores and brands make extensive use of so‐called loyalty programs or loyalty cards to retain consumers.
Coca‐Colonization
Authors: Casaqui Vander
Published: March 2015

Commodity fetishism refers to the Marxian concept of the decontextualization and mystification of the social relations of production in the process of commodification. In consumer culture, the concept often refers to characteristics of advertising and brand discourse to ignore the production of commodities – including the social and environmental costs of large‐scale production – and instead to construct additional meanings and symbolic agency around brands. The concept has influenced consumer culture scholars and key works, and has arguably become more relevant in an era of integrated marketing, licensing, and digital media.
Commodities
Authors: Visconti Luca M.
Published: March 2015

A commodity, in its wider sense, is any material (product) or immaterial (service, experience, and brand) artifact with a value (functional, symbolic, and/or hedonic) that is produced and eventually traded on the market and made consumable for either companies or end consumers. Over six centuries the term “commodity” has become a battlefield for multiple disciplines and rival ideologies. In particular, while economics and the cognitive sciences tend to interpret commodities as low‐involvement, standardized consumer goods, sociocultural studies interpret the concept more broadly to include any marketable object produced, exchanged, and consumed by today's materialistic consumer culture.
Consumer Behavior
Authors: Belk Russell
Published: March 2015

Consumer behavior is a pervasive and dominant facet of consumer life around the globe. It has been studied in a variety of disciplines, albeit with different research methods and differing theoretical perspectives. The major split is between experimental psychological studies and ethnographic sociological studies. The psychological perspective emphasizes individual consumer choices, while the sociological perspective focuses on the social and cultural aspects of consumption. These and other disciplinary frameworks may take the perspectives of consumers, marketers, governments, or human societies as their focus and may examine contemporary or historical consumption within a single culture or across the world's cultures. The fact that so many disciplines and researchers have come to focus on consumption reflects the major role that consumption has come to play in our lives and identities.
Consumer Culture, History of
Authors: Magaudda Paolo
Published: March 2015

The rise of an autonomous and self‐aware consumer culture was a long journey during which major changes, relating to the transition from the feudal world to modern societies, were accompanied by profound transformations in the set of cultural values associated with commodities and consumption. Although the notion of consumer culture did not emerge in Western culture until after World WarII, the historical rise of a recognizable set of cultural values and norms associated with consumption certainly goes back to earlier stages of the modern era and can be traced back to the Renaissance. The second half of the twentieth century – when the gravitational center of the evolution of consumption shifted from Europe to North America – is undoubtedly the age of the greatest recognition of consumer culture, both positively and in terms of critical reaction to its pervasive presence in contemporary society.
Consumer Socialization
Authors: Ekström Karin M.
Published: March 2015

Consumer socialization is about learning to function as a consumer in the marketplace. It is believed to be particularly strong during childhood as children become consumers. However, consumer socialization is a lifelong process: primary socialization takes place during childhood and secondary socialization occurs subsequently. One crucial component of socialization is to conform to societal requirements or norms. Another important component of socialization is social interaction. A majority of research has focused on the family as the socialization agent or a few socialization agents such as family, friends, or mass media. Most studies on consumer socialization have focused on learning. The consumer socialization process has been described with cognitive developmental and social learning theories. Researchers have also advocated a combination of theories such as modeling, reinforcement and social interaction. Overall, there is too little research on the processes through which consumer socialization occurs.
Consumer Society
Authors: Miles Steven
Published: March 2015

A consumer society is a society in which the buying and selling of goods and services is its defining characteristic. The consumer society is ideological in nature. It is the product of global economic processes that are founded on an almost universal commitment to the free market. In a consumer society everyday life is the product of a society underpinned by the opportunities and limitations that consumerism provides. That system is ideologically powerful inasmuch as it appears to define the parameters within which citizens conduct their everyday lives. The consumer society purports to be democratic yet it is inherently divisive and self‐perpetuating.
Consumption in Africa
Authors: Hahn Hans Peter
Published: March 2015

In the past African societies have been studied by anthropologists, who were merely interested in local communities, where production, distribution, and consumption form an entity. As a consequence of the bias toward subsistence economy, the global entanglements of African markets have long been understudied. Even within the mainstream of the so‐called transatlantic studies, Africa was mostly considered as a provider of slaves. However, since Roman times, Africa has also participated in global markets as a consumer. In early modern times, European traders reported difficulties in selling the goods they had brought with them on their vessels, because they did not meet the tastes of consumers in Africa. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the varieties of cloth, jewelry, and ironware offered by European traders on West and East African shores changed frequently, following rapid changes in African ideas about fashion and style. As these practices indicate, the consumption of global goods has been part and parcel of African economies for a long time. It is therefore legitimate to speak about an almost forgotten “genealogy of consumerism,” which redefines the place of African societies in the context of emergent global markets.
Consumption in the United States
Authors: Stein Michael K.
Published: March 2015

Consumption in the United States refers to the material and symbolic importance of consuming goods and services for the economy and the identity of the United States. This contemporary meaning has two important features. The first is the central role that the consuming of goods, increasingly purchased with credit, plays in the American economy. The second feature is the ideology of consumerism and the cultivation of the consumer as a political, social, and economic category or subject. These two features have, significantly, developed in the postwar period and remain central to understandings of the American way of life today. The American dream reflects these features and projects a vision of the good life that is attainable by those who are willing to work hard in a land of opportunity. In addition, consumer choice is seen as an important dimension of personal freedom and political claims on the right and left of the political spectrum evoke consumer choice as an important value. Practices of consumption are therefore important sites for the production of social meaning and serve as markers of status and as venues for self‐creation.
Consumption and Identity
Authors: Munro Rolland
Published: March 2015

The subject of identity concerns the interpretation of our
relations
with each other and with the world. Critically, the topic revolves around ways in which significant others settle questions about who we are. Where we hang out, with whom we affiliate, what we do, and what we buy are all grist to the mill of others “placing” us within the widest possible range of membership categories. While, historically, the topic was oriented toward notions of unity and belonging, tying collectivities (or groups) to
place
, the contemporary turn is to deploy people's
consumption
to read off how we can be “figured” by others in our day‐to‐day conduct. Hence more modern meanings extend to cover a more individuating politics of identity that requires us to perform our relations in ways that make us “visible and available” to those with influence and power.
Coolhunting
Authors: Coulter Natalie
Published: March 2015

“Coolhunting” is a term coined within the circles of marketing which was brought to the attention of the public in 1997 by
New Yorker
journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Coolhunters are marketing professionals who “hunt” the streets to determine what is “cool” and then define it, interpret it, repackage it, and sell their knowledge of cool to corporations who try to leverage this knowledge in the marketplace. Coolhunting is different from traditional forms of market research, as its basis is to mine information only from those whom the coolhunter deems to be cool.
Debord, Guy
Authors: Redmon David
Published: March 2015

Situationist Internationale extended the French avant garde social movement by showing that the spectacle had replaced the commodity as the dominating mode of social life. Guy Debord (1931–94) was perhaps the foremost thinker in this group of French intellectuals. Dadaism, surrealism, and the writings of sociologist Henri Lefebvre all influenced Debord, although there is evidence of persistent tension between Lefebvre and Debord, who disagreed over the authorship of key concepts. Unlike Lefebvre, Debord barely graduated from high school, didn't finish college, never held a university teaching position, and lived as a writer and drifter for most of his life, roaming and wandering to and from various urban locations. Nevertheless, his work has been highly influential in academic circles, and innumerable sociologists have included citations of his manuscripts in their published work. Debord eventually settled down in a rural village, where he committed suicide at the age of 62.
Green Consumerism
Authors: Pape Madeleine , Bell Michael M.
Published: March 2015

Social scientists are engaged in debates over whether “green consumerism” offers a genuine pathway toward environmental sustainability, or whether instead it prevents widespread social and institutional change. This entry explores three broad positions assumed by social scientists within this debate: ecological modernization, demodernization, and political consumerism. Ecological modernization theory argues that consumer practices can evolve toward being aligned with environmental interests. Demodernists, on the other hand, call for consumerism to be abandoned as a means of achieving environmental sustainability. Somewhere in between these two positions, proponents of political consumerism see consumer practices as playing an important role within broader institutional and social change.
Experiential Consumption
Authors: Holbrook Morris B. , Hirschman Elizabeth C.
Published: March 2015

Departing from the once ubiquitous decision‐oriented view of consumer behavior, a perspective introduced in the early 1980s has focused on the nature of the consumption experience as embodying various aspects of fantasies, feelings, and fun. This viewpoint has called attention to the hedonic, aesthetic, and symbolic aspects of consumption while also encouraging the development of qualitative research methods suited to the investigation of these phenomena. More recently, practical applications have enriched managerial approaches to experiential marketing.
Farmers' Markets
Authors: Hinrichs Clare
Published: March 2015

The late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries have witnessed the resurgence and reconstitution of farmers' markets as alternative spaces for food consumers who may feel disenchanted or disenfranchised by the increasingly globalized and industrialized food and agricultural system. Promoted by national policies, extension services, local governments, food writers, bloggers, planners, and activists, farmers' markets have burgeoned as favored venues where eaters can find fresh, local and sustainably produced fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses, and specialty foods. Farmers' markets are presently crucial, if varied, settings for food politics. Dynamics of class and culture shape and reshape consumers' interests and experiences at farmers' markets. Farmers' markets are arenas where complex and contested ideals of “good food” become engaged and, through consumption practices and politics, link to other pressing social, economic, political, and environmental issues.
Finance/Financial Markets
Authors: Cetina Karin Knorr
Published: March 2015

Finance has evolved historically as a distinctive system of activities. If production, consumption, and distribution or exchange – the market interface between production and consumption – are three different spheres of economic activity, then finance is a fourth sphere. It fulfills a specialized function: that of supplying and controlling credit. In a capitalist economy, credit needs to be obtained before a production cycle can start; credit, Keynes argued, is prior to production. Only after production has been financed can it result in employment income, part of which could then be used to generate savings. Credit can be obtained through two channels: bank lending and financial markets. Manufacturing‐oriented economies – such as that of continental Europe, or more specifically Germany – historically developed a financial organization in which bank lending dominated. In Anglo‐Saxon countries such as the United States a different pattern emerged, one placing less emphasis on bank lending, while important credit channels were provided by money and securities markets.
Food
Authors: Williams Lauren T. , Germov John
Published: March 2015

While food may be defined in the biological sense as being safe or nutritious to consume, in any given culture all that is edible is not eaten. In considering food and food consumption beyond the biological perspective we are introduced to the social appetite – the social patterning of food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption. Examining the social appetite brings into focus the structure–agency debate in terms of the degree to which people's food choices are an outcome of their social environment versus personal choice. Food is a used as a marker of social identity, and food consumption patterns vary with gender, ethnicity, religion, and class. Food studies, the province of a broad range of disciplines, are increasingly exploring the complex question of why we eat the way we do.
Food Deserts
Authors: Rodney Alexandra
Published: March 2015

A “food desert” is a disadvantaged geographic area in which residents have restricted access to healthy, affordable, fresh food from a supermarket. Food deserts can be located in urban or rural areas. These communities may have little to no food access and be served only by fast food restaurants, gas stations or convenience stores in which prices are higher and fresh, nutritious food is scarce. Food deserts are an important food security issue because supermarkets generally offer lower prices and healthier choices. People who live in areas with supermarkets tend to purchase healthier foods. Compelling and unequivocal evidence shows food deserts exist in the United States and are commonly found in areas of economic deprivation and racial segregation.
Fordism/Post‐Fordism
Authors: Prechel Harland
Published: March 2015

This entry describes the central features of Fordism and post‐Fordism with special focus on consumerism. It summarizes how the organizational and political–legal arrangements during post‐Fordism made credit readily available, encouraged home ownership, and created opportunities for risk taking. The entry concludes by pointing out that the meltdown of financial markets in 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession raise important questions about the capacity of post‐Fordist consumer capitalism to sustain capitalist growth and development in the long term.
Free Trade Zones/Export Processing Zones
Authors: Henning Christoph
Published: March 2015

This entry describes the structure and background of export processing zones, also called free trade zones. These zones are oases of deregulation in an already deregulated global capitalism. They are meant to boost an export‐led growth in developing countries. However, there are also several concerns raised by unions, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), and ethical consumer groups.
Consumption, Landscapes of
Authors: Michael Ryan J.
Published: March 2015

George Ritzer has built upon his notion of cathedrals of consumption to describe what he terms “landscapes of consumption,” or “geographic areas that encompass two, or more, cathedrals of consumption.” This definition can be extended to define landscapes of consumption aslocales that encompass two or more cathedrals of consumption that allow, encourage, and even compel people to consume. The prototypical example of this would be the Las Vegas strip – an area where multiple cathedrals of consumption exist side by side in the same geographic setting and entice consumers not only through their individual appeal, but also through the techniques made possible by their synergistic proximity.
Gifts
Authors: Sirota Régine
Published: March 2015

Social ties are both expressed and symbolized through the exchange of gifts. Participating in the process of socialization and combining material with symbolism making, gifts are subject to constant social invention as a market society evolves. They allow the expression of rules of civility and the marking of social rank, collective identity, and individuality just as much as the expression of feelings. Exchanged during rituals such as those of the life or calendar cycle, gifts contribute to the construction of identity.
Globalization and Consumption
Authors: Chen Chih‐Chin , Ritzer George
Published: March 2015

Globalization has become an increasingly important academic concern. There are many academic definitions of globalization, but the one employed here defines it mainly as a process that involves “increasing liquidity and multi‐directional flows of objects, ideas, and people around the globe.” Beyond definitions, a wide range of images has been created to get a sense of this process, including a “global village” and the “global age.”
Glocalization/Grobalization
Authors: Michael Ryan J.
Published: March 2015

Grobalization is a term coined by sociologist George Ritzer. It is meant to serve as a companion to the widely employed concept of glocalization. While glocalization represents the unique combinations resulting from the interpenetration of the global and the local, grobalization represents “the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas.” Thus, glocalization would be most closely associated with postmodern, pluralistic ideas of heterogeneity and hybridity, whereas grobalization represents a modern, imperialistic, and homogenizing perspective more closely associated with cultural convergence.
Hyperconsumption
Authors: Esposti Piergiorgio Degli
Published: March 2015

The term “hyperconsumption” is linked with the concept of a “new modernity,” which can be defined as a “civilization of desire,” according to Lipovetsky. Its birth can be dated from the second half of the twentieth century. The features of this concept are clearly identifiable in a capitalist matrix, that is, the incessant creation of new needs, aggressive forms of marketing, and an empowerment of demand. This leads to a new age characterized by the emergence of consumer capitalism as replacement for an economy based on production. While on the one hand this process of change has brought significant benefits such as increased possibilities for consumption, a new concept of space and time, and in general more opportunities for individuals to increase their social well‐being, on the other hand, the new era is characterized by new pathologies, such as a bulimic approach to consumption, uncontrollable forms of entropy, and a constant search for satisfaction that seems out of reach and elusive.
Economy, Informal
Authors: Medina Octavio
Published: March 2015

The informal economy is, broadly speaking, the fraction of the economy not overseen by or not complying with the rules set by the relevant regulatory authority, namely the state. However, the exact definition remains under debate, despite decades of research and academic argument. As Peattie says, “the informal sector is still too broad to be meaningful; at one end is a pool of surplus labor, at the other a skilled high‐income earning entrepreneur; at one end a proliferation of residual enterprises involutionary in nature, at the other end of the spectrum dynamic evolutionary enterprises.” Generally speaking, the size of the informal economy has been linked to issues such as taxes, regulation, and the size of labor supply, among others.
Lifestyle
Authors: Featherstone Mark
Published: March 2015

The idea of lifestyle or
Lebensstil
originates in the work of the Austrian psychoanalyst Alfred Adler who discussed the idea in his 1929 work,
Problems of Neurosis
, and then later in texts such as
Individual Psychology
. Following its appearance in Adler's work, where lifestyle refers to the idea of leading life in sympathy with a plan, principle, or ethic, the term gradually found its way into American and British popular vernacular, and is now understood to mean a person's general approach to life, especially through their consumption choices. This version of the idea of lifestyle has been developed and discussed by a range of thinkers including Max Weber, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Pierre Bourdieu, and Anthony Giddens.
Marx, Karl
Authors: Beamish Rob
Published: March 2015

Born in Trier, Karl Marx (1818–83), grew up in an environment saturated with the spirit of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and a republican worldview. Beginning as a left‐Hegelian, Marx's editorship of the
Rheinische Zeitung
, Feuerbach's critique of religion, and his early exposure to political economy led him to develop his own materialist conception of history. The key, early developments were his critique of Hegel's
Philosophy of Right
, the draft manuscripts of 1844, and the 1845 draft manuscript
The German Ideology
. When Marx's ideas prevailed during two international conferences in 1847, he wrote the League of the Just's new manifesto – the
Manifesto of the Communist Party
. Marx struggled for almost 30 years with how to present his critique of political economy, ultimately beginning with commodity as the elementary form of capitalist production – 
Das Kapital
's most important chapter. Despite conscious attempts to forge a single Marxist doctrine, the posthumous publication of his literary estate indicates the complexity of his ideas. Rather than being a Holy Scripture, Marx's work is best viewed as an unfinished, dynamic, unstable, dialectical whole that contains many strengths and insights but also some lacunae. The most glaring is the absence of a theory of consciousness formation.
Mass Culture
Authors: Cormack Patricia
Published: March 2015

Mass culture is a foundational concept in the study of consumerism and consumer society. It is also one of the most widely defined and debated, rooted in the issues of who generates culture and who is the audience or consumer of cultural goods.
Metrosexual
Authors: Halligan Benjamin
Published: March 2015

Metrosexuality is understood in terms of the normalization of more extensive regimes of male grooming, and a heightened awareness of presentation, among an urban stratum of white‐collar workers. Such presentational strategies would seem to be understood to enhance the potential for heterosexual sexual encounters. The culture of metrosexuality can be read in class terms, in respect to recent forms of bourgeois lifestyles, and as a mainstay of advertising campaigns that target males.
Obsolescence: Planned, Progressive, Stylistic
Authors: Brändle Gaspar
Published: March 2015

Never before have we lived in such a materialistic environment as we do today. Our daily life takes place in the context of an abundance of commodities whose duration is limited artificially. In a short time the objects will lose value and become functionally or symbolically useless, to make way for a new range of refurbished items ready to restart the vertiginous cycle of birth–use–obsolescence–waste.
Open Source and Consumption
Authors: Lin Yu‐Wei
Published: March 2015

This entry illuminates the common concepts and widely observed practices concerning open sourcing. Positioning “open source” as a common practice and a viable methodology for collaborative participatory co‐production in today's knowledge society, the entry explains how open source co‐production participatory methods, now also seen in culture, food, and beverage production and consumption, have evolved from the Free/Libre Open Source Software (
FLOSS
) movement; what motivates people to participate; and how such widely observed open source practices are embedded in different sectors and different societies. It is argued that open source practices resemble amateur do‐it‐yourself (
DIY
) maker practices and can be considered as a lifestyle choice.
Politics and Consumer Culture
Authors: Wachs Faye Linda
Published: March 2015

This entry explores the relationship between consumer culture and politics. Special attention is paid to the role of the mass media.
Privacy
Authors: Marx Gary T. , Margulis Stephen T.
Published: March 2015

Privacy is a contentious, multidimensional concept. Its contours are fluid and often ill defined, contested, and negotiated, and these vary by the context and culture. There is little consensus on the framework within which to analyze it, on definitions within and across frameworks, on levels of analysis to which the concept is applicable (e.g., to transactions among individuals, the individual and the organization, or between organizations), and on how competing interests (e.g., transactional data involving buyers and sellers) and values in conflict (e.g., privacy versus freedom of expression) should be weighed or even measured.
Public Relations
Authors: Yamanoğlu Melike Aktaş
Published: March 2015

Public relations (PR) is one of the central activities of economic and cultural life in contemporary societies, along with other works in creative industries dealing with presentation and representation, and mediating between production and consumption. Public relations is practiced on behalf of individuals, formally or informally structured organizations, and groups by in‐house practitioners or consultants in order to promote particular discourses and interests. Public relations is an important force that structures society and culture. It is a form of “cultural intermediary” work that generates changes in publics' attitudes, values, and dispositions.
Recycling
Authors: Hadler Markus
Published: March 2015

Recycling can be characterized as an intended environmentally significant behavior – if done with the intention to influence the environment. But, even when conducted for other reasons, such as monetary reward, recycling is still environmentally significant because it influences the distribution and use of environmental goods. Recycling is carried out mostly in the private sphere, similar to behaviors such as buying and boycotting certain products or improving the energy efficiency of one's home. This private nature differentiates it from public environmental behaviors such as activism and protest, and less costly political behaviors such as signing a petition, contacting a politician, and donating money to environmental organizations.
Decluttering
Authors: Cherrier Hélne , Belk Russell
Published: March 2015

Decluttering aims at clearing out the mess, disorder, and complications that often accompany material accumulation and also nonmaterial accumulation on computer hard drives and corporate records. Prior to decluttering, individuals may not realize that others judge their environment as cluttered or overcrowded. After initial decluttering, the space – physical and/or mental – has been transformed from disordered and messy to ordered and tidy and a plan is set in place to keep it so. As a social practice, decluttering is deeply rooted in the social, cultural, and symbolic presentation of how one's life and home should be. In popular culture, television shows such asHoardersand The Learning Channel's website “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” combined with numerous decluttering makeover shows, reiterate the social imperative to declutter.
Servicescapes
Authors: Joy Annamma
Published: March 2015

This entry explores the concept of servicescapes, a term encompassing the social atmospherics and environmental contexts within which economic transactions occur. The various elements of a given servicescape, from a store's exterior and interior design to its lighting, temperature, ambient sound, music, ease of access, and the approachability of its sales staff, can all determine a customer's choice, however subconscious, to linger and therefore be more likely to make a purchase, or to quickly leave, perhaps never to return. An effective servicescape, whether physical or online, can broadcast a store's intended demographic target, and prime anticipatory expectations, even before a consumer sets foot within the store itself or enters the virtual space. The aesthetics and design of servicescapes can have a strong impact on customer emotions, levels of satisfaction, and decision making. A servicescape's role in creating trust is both undeniable and crucial to building brand loyalty.
Consumption, Spectacles of
Authors: Halton Eugene
Published: March 2015

The term “spectacles of consumption” may refer to specific events or places linked with consumption or to a more general sense of consumption as a pervasive visualizing ideology which presents life as a spectacle. Examples of the former include places such as theme parks, malls, Las Vegas, and spectator arenas; and events, such as the Super Bowl. The latter sense of consumption as a larger‐than‐life visual enactment expressive of the dynamics of capitalism is an outlook associated with a group of French Marxist intellectuals known as the “situationist international,” whose notable members included Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem.
Starbuckization
Authors: Wong Newman Chun Wai
Published: March 2015

Starbuckization refers to the homogenized cultural force and phenomenon of Starbucks dominating other aspects of society. Starbucks was first founded as a coffee bean roaster and retailer in Seattle, Washington, in 1971, and has expanded across the United States and the globe. The four major components of Starbuckization, shared with
McDonaldization
, are efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control by nonhuman technology. Unlike
McDonald
's, Starbucks emphasizes its quality brand image, coffee culture, personal connection with customers, and social responsibility. Starbuckization has made the high coffee culture a way of life globally. When Starbucks enters foreign countries, glocalization and cultural heterogenization occur.
Stealth Marketing
Authors: Grazian David
Published: March 2015

Stealth marketing refers to the surreptitious promotion of consumer goods, services, and experiences to unwitting potential customers. Its antecedents date back to the 1920s, when public relations firms attempted to promote their clients through creative event planning and targeted editorial placement in the popular press. Today, stealth marketing refers to a number of clandestine promotional tactics, including product placement, viral or buzz marketing, and reality marketing.
Sweatshops
Authors: Arnold Denis G.
Published: March 2015

Sweatshops provide jobs for the desperately poor in developing nations, but often exploit workers and treat them as disposable tools. Sweatshops exist because consumers tolerate their existence. Economist and management scholars have documented ways that firms can facilitate improved working conditions in global factories. However, most firms are likely to implement such processes only in response to consumer demand.
Teens
Authors: Coulter Natalie
Published: March 2015

The concept of the teen as a stage in the life course largely developed in the postwar era. During this time advertisers, retailers, and media companies began to define a youth market as they capitalized on the affluence of middle‐class families who could defer their children from entering the workforce. Teen is different from adolescent, which marks a stage of psychosocial development; teen references a stage in the life course of participating in a youth culture with particular patterns of consumption and tastes. The meaning of the term teen has changed in the past 60 years. In today's globalized marketplace the term refers more to specific forms of consumerism than to a connectedness of a cohort of young people.
Tweens
Authors: Wrdahl Randi
Published: March 2015

The term “tween” is used to describe the consumer‐savvy, brand‐conscious preadolescent age group (8–12) who are not children any more but not yet teenagers. The emergence of the tween has been ascribed to several social changes such as new family demographics, increased exposure to adult media, and children's extensive use of new media technology. The age is also characterized as a period where peer acceptance is crucial in the process of leaving childhood, without yet having developed the critical thinking that characterizes adolescents and young adults. Being targeted as a particularly receptive market segment reinforces the tween as a social age category. In the critical literature, the term is predominantly used to describe girls, as the clothing and style elements of the tween girl consumer can easily be interpreted as overly sexualized and raise concerns of girls being introduced to adulthood prematurely.
Warhol, Andy
Authors: Carducci Vince
Published: March 2015

Andy Warhol (1928–87) was an American artist and filmmaker and a founder of pop art. He is known for his iconic representations of Campbell Soup cans, Coca‐Cola bottles, Brillo boxes, portraits of celebrities such as Elvis Presley, Jackie Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe, and other images taken from everyday American life. He is generally recognized as one of the most influential artists of the latter twentieth century and a progenitor of postmodernism. His significance for consumption and consumer studies relates to his breaking down of the ostensible distinctions between high and low culture, heralding the advent of cultural omnivorism.
World's Fairs and International Expositions
Authors: Rydell Robert W.
Published: March 2015

The world's fairs that swept the planet between London's Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851) and Shanghai's World Expo (2010) attest to the globalization of consumerism. The hundreds of expositions that swept, in roughly chronological order, Europe, the United States, and Asia have been overstuffed theaters of agricultural and technological commodities intended to promote the definition of the good life as being synonymous with the accumulation of consumer goods. Through towering displays of surplus fruits and vegetables, fashion shows and “pest‐free” gardens, television sets and dishwashers, automobiles and model homes, world expositions have served as primary vehicles for the rapid modernization of the world from the Victorian era through the present.
Youth culture(s)
Authors: Milner Murray
Published: March 2015

Youth cultures have had an important influence on shaping the consumption patterns of both youth and adults. A crucial stimulant to distinct youth cultures are extended years schooling, with young people spending most of their time interacting with age peers. While youth cultures have had their most obvious affect in developed countries this has spread to most societies. Because of their sheer numbers, youth in less developed countries are likely to have the most important impact on future levels and forms of consumption, and hence on the world's economy and environment.
Consumer Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Riefler Petra
Published: March 2015

In a rapidly globalizing world, cosmopolitan consumers are a growing consumer group with distinct tastes. Viewing themselves as world citizens, they show an open‐minded orientation toward other countries, their lifestyles, and market offerings. They value the diversity brought by culture‐bound, regional products. Coupled with a willingness to accept purchase risk of the unknown, they use the consumption of authentic, exotic, and unfamiliar products to authenticate themselves.
Consumers, Flawed
Authors: Pugh Allison J. , Miller Candace N.
Published: March 2015

“Flawed consumers” is a term coined by Zygmunt Bauman to capture how ideas about the poor have changed as societies in the contemporary West transform from production to consumer economies. This entry defines and explains the concept, and explores its implications for scholarship on family consumption, inequality and consumer politics. It concludes by suggesting ways in which the term can be refined and extended, and identifying areas of profitable future research.
Consumer Movements, Contemporary
Authors: Wiedenhoft‐Murphy Wendy A.
Published: March 2015

Unlike the focus of earlier forms of consumer activism, which tended to stress how the purchasing decisions of consumers affected the wages or working conditions of laborers, the contemporary consumer movement positions the interests of consumers as its predominant concern. These consumer interests include objective product information regarding quality, standards, and price. A diverse constituency, independence from business and political parties, a decentralized organizational structure, and single‐issue campaigns are some of the reasons why the consumer movement has survived for almost a century. While product testing may be the foundation of the contemporary consumer movement, currently one can argue that the consumer movement is rediscovering the tactics of earlier forms of consumer activism, particularly boycotts and buycotts, and legitimizing these tactics with scientific research.
Consumption, Postmodern
Authors: Venkatesh Alladi
Published: March 2015

The origins of postmodernism cannot be traced to a single source or set of circumstances. At first glance, the different trails may appear diffused, disparate, and disconnected. A closer look might reveal a common pattern woven by those different threads. Postmodernism is generally viewed as a reaction against, or rejection of, modernist tendencies in philosophy, social and cultural theory, literature, and politics. Postmodernism is closely related to poststructuralism, whose origins are slightly different but whose arguments are very similar – so much so that in the eyes of many, postmodernism subsumes poststructuralism and therefore they are treated interchangeably. The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed the most intense excursions into postmodern ideas.
Sexualities and Consumption
Authors: Taylor Yvette
Published: March 2015

Sexuality and consumption are interlinked in powerful and significant ways, perhaps even more so in contemporary, even postmodern, times, shaping various material and subjective possibilities and impossibilities, as sexuality is displayed and regulated via consumption. Consumption refers to a wide variety of spending patterns and behaviors and is typically equated with choice: what we choose to buy, where and when, and how we choose to use purchasable commodities, ranging from mundane everyday goods and services to extravagant one‐off specials, which seemingly reinforce the uniqueness of our own individual consumer choice.