PurposeThere has been considerable research into the global phenomenon of luxury brand consumption, but relatively few studies have empirically explored key relationships influencing purchase intention. This research aims to consider the respective roles of social context, individual perception, and vanity, and to set these relationships within a broader theoretical context of the literature on possession and consumer identity.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical study consisted of a large‐scale survey conducted among Chinese luxury brand consumers in Taiwan. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression.FindingsThe findings support the influence of the social context on purchase intention for luxury brands. There was weaker support for the role of perception. The experiential and functional aspects of luxury brand purchase were positively correlated with purchase intention, but symbolic value was not. Physical and achievement vanity had a positive impact on purchase intention while only achievement vanity had a moderating effect on perception.Practical implicationsThis study offers new empirical support for the proposition that vanity has a role in luxury brand purchase intention and thereby shades both theoretical and managerial understanding of luxury brand consumption. It also suggests that symbolic value, which is highly influential in western conceptualizations of luxury brand meaning, needs to be re‐evaluated in the context of Chinese consumers.Originality/valueThis study offers new empirical findings which contribute to a re‐conceptualization of the antecedents of purchase intention in the area of luxury brand consumption. In particular, the study provides evidence of the roles of social context, perception and vanity in a Chinese consumption context to inform the primarily western models of luxury brand purchase intention.

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Young people's alcohol consumption has been the focus of heightened concern over `binge drinking' in social policy, academic research and popular culture. A normalized culture of intoxication is now central to many young people's social lives, playing an important role in the night-time economy of towns and cities across the UK. In this article we draw on the findings of a study on the significance of alcohol consumption in the everyday lives of `ordinar y' young adult drinkers to explore the significance of loss of consciousness and loss of memory in their drinking stories. Through an analysis of focus group discussions with 89 young women and men aged 18 to 25, we explore the role of `passing out stories' in the classed and gendered domain of young people's alcohol consumption in the neo-liberal social order, focussing on the constitution of risk and pleasure in their accounts.

This paper contributes to debates on post-feminism and the constitution of contemporary femininity via an exploration of young women’s alcohol consumption and their involvement in normative drinking cultures. We view femininity as a profoundly contradictory and dilemmatic space which appears almost impossible for girls or young women to inhabit. The juxtaposition of hyper-sexual femininity and the culture of intoxication produces a particularly difficult set of dilemmas for young women. They are exhorted to be sassy and independent – but not feminist; to be ‘up for it’ and to drink and get drunk alongside young men – but not to ‘drink like men’. They are also called on to look and act as agentically sexy within a pornified night-time economy, but to distance themselves from the troubling figure of the ‘drunken slut’. Referring to recent research on young women’s alcohol consumption and our own study on young adults’ involvement in the culture of intoxication in the UK, we consider the ways in which young women manage to inhabit this terrain, and the implications for contemporary feminism and safer drinking initiatives.

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PurposeSocial marketing initiatives designed to address the UK's culture of unhealthy levels of drinking among young adults have achieved inconclusive results to date. The paper aims to investigate the gap between young people's perceptions of alcohol consumption and those of government agencies who seek to influence their behaviour set within a contextualist framework.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present empirical evidence from a major study that suggests that the emphasis of recent campaigns on individual responsibility may be unlikely to resonate with young drinkers. The research included a meaning‐based and visual rhetoric analysis of 261 ads shown on TV, in magazines, on billboards and on the internet between 2005 and 2006. This was followed by 16 informal group discussions with 89 young adults in three locations.FindingsThe research identified the importance of the social context of young people's drinking. The research reveals how a moral position has been culturally constructed around positioning heavy drinking as an individual issue with less regard to other stakeholders and how the marketing agents function in this environment. Calls to individual responsibility in drinking are unlikely to succeed in the current marketing environment.Research limitations/implicationsThe qualitative research was limited to three geographical locations with young adults between the ages of 18 and 25.Practical implicationsThe authors explore implications for social marketing theory and for UK alcohol policy. In particular, the authors suggest that the social norms surrounding young people's drinking need to be acknowledged and built into “sensible” social marketing campaigns. The authors suggest that shame, fear and guilt appeals should be replaced with more constructive methods of ensuring young people's safety when they drink.Originality/valueFrom the theoretical perspective of contextualism, the paper brings together empirical research with young adults and a critical analysis of recent social marketing campaigns within the commercial context of a “culture of intoxication”. It provides both a critique of social marketing in a neo‐liberal context and recognition of issues involved in excessive alcohol consumption.

This paper critically appraises the rhetoric of marketing management texts. Its interpretive frame is informed respectively by critical management and discourse analytic theoretical traditions. Its main data set is drawn from popular textbooks written for taught university courses but it also draws attention to similar rhetorical strategies in leading academic marketing journals. In addition, parallels are drawn with other popular management and consulting fields. In this way the paper attempts to mark out an initial topology of the ideological influence that is enabled and mobilized by marketing's rhetorical strategies. Marketing rhetoric often escapes critical attention precisely because it is platitudinous. Marketing management axioms have become slogans and the slogans have become cliches regularly employed in organizational, educational and political settings. But the prevalence of platitudinous rhetoric in management consulting schemes does not necessarily hinder their popularity or inhibit the deployment of their rhetorical/ideological strategies in other settings. Popular marketing management rhetoric is a special case because it positions itself not only as a prescriptive management-consulting framework but also as a legitimate academic fleld. It is in the latter guise that the success of managerial marketing's rhetorical/ideological strategies has proved most striking.