Business Commons^™

Being Critical In Marketing Studies: The Imperative Of Macro Perspectives, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

In this article, I argue that an elevated macro-level perspective is imperative for conducting critical studies in the fields of marketing and consumer research. There are epistemic barriers to operating in this manner, and I offer several suggestions for overcoming these barriers. Finally, I review the research spaces for critical studies of marketing in various global settings and conclude that United Kingdom and Nordic Europe have the best epistemic climate, and this region needs to take leadership in promoting greater range of macro and critical studies of marketing in the rest of the world.

Finanzkapital And Consumers: How Financialization Shaped Twentieth Century Marketing, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

Purpose – By tracing the history of the links of financialization to consumer behaviors and marketer actions in the twentieth century, this paper aims to show that consumer market phenomena are often shaped by the imperatives of finance.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs selective historical overviews, mainly focusing on the USA, of four tranches of the past century: the run up to the Great Depression; from post-Depression to the Second World War; the post-Second World War Bretton Woods system and its collapse in the 1970s; and the increasingly risk-charged last three post-Bretton Woods decades of the twentieth century.

Findings – …

Borderless Bits: Electronic Globalization And Its Social Consequences, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

Globalization of services with the aid of electronic technologies - popularly called outsourcing or offshoring - has been accelerating. In this paper, the factors that drive electronic globalization - as distinct from factors that drive the general process of globalization - are discussed briefly. A simple model of a 2-firm USA-India dyad engaged in outsourcing relationships is presented to outline the economic basis for electronic globalization. By introducing wider political and cultural forces, progressively more complex views of the electronic globalization phenomenon are presented. Finally, the interplays of the economic, political, and cultural forces are explored to arrive at a …

The Epistemic Consumption Object And Postsocial Consumption: Expanding Consumer‐Object Theory In Consumer Research, Detlev Zwick, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

We introduce the concept of the epistemic consumption object. Such consumption objects are characterized by two interrelated features. First, epistemic consumption objects reveal themselves progressively through interaction, observation, use, examination, and evaluation. Such layered revelation is accompanied by an increasing rather than a decline of the object’s complexity. Second, such objects demonstrate a propensity to change their “face‐in‐action” vis‐à‐vis consumers through the continuous addition or subtraction of properties. The epistemic consumption object is materially elusive and this lack of ontological stability turns the object into a continuous knowledge project for consumers. Via this ongoing cycle of revelation and discovery, consumers …

Bringing The Market To Life: Screen Aesthetics And The Epistemic Consumption Object, Detlev Zwick, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

This article argues that the new ‘visuality’ (Schroeder, 2002) of the Internet transforms the stock market into an epistemic consumption object. The aesthetics of the screen turn the market into an interactive and response-present surface representation. On the computer screen, the market becomes an object of constant movement and variation, changing direction and altering appearance at any time. Following Knorr Cetina (1997, 2002b) we argue that the visual logic of the screen ‘opens up’ the market ontologically. The ontological liquidity of the market-on-screen simulates the indefiniteness of other life forms. We suggest that the continuing fascination with online investing is …

Novos Serviços De Informação E Comunicação: Um Quadro De Referência Estratégico, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Norbert Mundorf, Ruby Roy Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

From the late 1960s onwards, the range of information and communication services available to residential consumers and business users in the technologically advanced nations has been growing. The future of information services will depend on the strategic and structural interactions of firms specializing in content, conduits and components.