Purpose
This paper aims to critically reflect on the growing systems orientation in marketing research and the approaches used to understand marketing systems. In response, the paper offers an integrative metatheory built on the ontic necessity and subsequently constitutive and causal efficacy of relations.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper is built on a logic of critique, identifying the generative absences that produce problems in the frameworks in use and attempting to rectify these problems by offering an alternative meta-theoretical structure. This paper draws from critical realism, systems thinking and relational sociology.
Findings
This paper advocates for an emergentist ontology for marketing systems built on the value of both substance and relation as co-principles of existence and the subsequent irreducible stratification derived from this. This position suggests the following propositions: the ontological premise of being is reliant on relations; the social world is constructed of stratified levels of organisation in which entities, their properties and powers emerge by virtue of these relations; these entities operate in complex and mutually modifying interrelations; stability and change is the result of this complex interplay of temporally/spatially stratified relations; and time and space are properties and potential powers of organisation.
Originality/value
This paper considers a number of inconsistencies in current approaches to the study of marketing systems arguing these arise based on the absence of a view of relations that supports an effective theory of emergence. In response, the paper develops a set of ontological presuppositions regarding the nature of marketing systems and a subsequent set of epistemic conditions as an integrative metatheoretical position, through which these systems are better understood and analysed. The paper argues that these improve our ability to theorise about the multi-dimensionality of these systems.
Purpose
This paper aims to offer fresh insight into attitudes towards casually used brands and the role of tie strength in the building of online non-brand-related network relationships amongst young consumers.
Design/methodology/approach
Thirteen consumers aged between 18 and 24 years took part in in-depth interviews. The interviewees were matched on gender, age, occupation, residency and social media usage.
Findings
Tie strength effects are evident in changes to brand attitudes, choice of social media platforms and in the casual use of brands to further consumer relationship building and identity creation goals.
Research limitations/implications
This paper answers calls for greater understanding of the way in which network structure influences consumers’ online motivations and attitudes towards the brand.
Practical implications
This paper explores the importance of managers viewing brands as embedded in broader social contexts and tailoring social media communications to those broader contexts.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to combine tie strength with casual brand use to examine non-brand-related network effects on brand attitudes, growing and maintaining consumer relationships and building online identity.
We address the influence of and constraints on actors, networks, structures and institutions within marketing systems. Using case study analysis we contribute to effectuation literature by discussing the loose coupling of Fairtrade ANZ to its market development partners. While creating certainty for producers by maintaining focus on its development aims, Fairtrade ANZ adopts an affordable loss approach to market development, arguably at the cost of communicating to its highly fragmented and contingent market place. Simmonds, Gazley, and Dallenbach’s (2018) morphogenetic cycle framework brings a theoretical and analytical lens to examining the Fairtrade marketing system by delayering the interconnections, interdependencies and interrelations existing within each layer. In untangling the embedded social, historical and institutional contexts within which Fairtrade ANZ exists we offer this paper as an initial exploration of effectuation, change and stability in a complex marketing system.
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