Purpose-To help shape a more cohesive research program in marketing and consumer research, this paper presents a systematic effort to integrate current research on consumer empowerment with highly influential theories of power. A conceptual overview of power consisting of three dominant theoretical models is developed onto which is mapped existing consumer empowerment research. Design/methodology/approach-A synthetic review focuses on three perspectives of consumer power: consumer sovereignty, cultural power and discursive power, drawing from sociological, philosophical and economic literature. These models are then applied to consumer research to illuminate research applications and insights. Findings-Research of consumer empowerment has grown significantly over the last decade. Yet, researchers drawing from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions have generated a multitude of heuristic simplifications and mid-level theories of power to inform their empirical and conceptual explorations. This review helps clarify consumer empowerment, and offers a useful map for future research. Research limitations/implications-Researchers in consumer empowerment need to understand the historical development of power, and to contextualize research within conflicting perspectives on empowerment. Originality/value-The paper makes several contributions: organizes a currently cluttered field of consumer empowerment research, connects consumer and marketing research to high-level theorizations of power, and outlines specific avenues for future research.

Despite the popularity of online spaces that simulate aspects of consumption-like experiences (online virtual worlds, video games and interactive functions on online retailers) conceptual tools that aim to comprehend such consumer practices are yet to emerge. In an effort to better understand them this paper puts forward a taxonomy that may help us capture emerging consumer behavior in the digital virtual terrain in relation to virtual and material consumption. This may be read as a fluid template that considers the movement between what resides in consumer imaginations as ideal or virtual, its actualization in material and now also digital virtual spaces. We then offer examples of the practices that are emerging, specifically the increase in imaginative resources that interactive media provide; practices that actualize probable, everyday commodities and experiences in the digital virtual and practices that actualize fantastic commodities and experiences in the digital virtual. Finally, we discuss the potential for these to produce new consumer subjectivities and new markets, and as a result we conclude with a discussion of the implications of such developments for consumer cultures, noting the potential for both liberatory/celebratory and critical discourse as well as avenues for future research.

This theoretical article highlights limitations in the current trend towards dichotomizing full ownership and access-based consumption by recognizing a broader, more complex array of 'fragmented' 10 ownership configurations in the context of digital virtual goods (DVGs). In challenging this dichotomy, we recognise that the relationship between ownership and possession becomes particularly significant. We therefore consider how prominent DVG ownership configurations may shape the way in which possession is 15 assembled, potentially reducing consumers' scope of action relative to DVGs and leaving possession susceptible to disruption. Conversely, we acknowledge ways in which consumers' continued attempts at possession may impinge upon the agency of ownership mechanisms within the market. Our analysis ultimately builds 20 upon existing understandings of both ownership and possession, theorizing their often overlooked relation in consumption.ARTICLE HISTORY

In this paper we document practices associated with selecting and selling previously owned goods through the online auction house and marketplace, eBay. More specifically, we discuss the processes through which the economic or exchange values of previously owned goods are re-activated and the role eBay plays in facilitating such practices. Drawing from phenomenological interviews with heavy eBay users from various backgrounds living in the South of England, we discuss key emerging themes on the ways in which eBay is used for the disposal of goods. We find that eBay fuels practices of disposal that may encourage the transformation of the humble pre-owned good into valuable stock. Besides those curative practices which have been captured in previous research into the divestment of possessions we find that work of another kind is required to move a used good back to a commodity phase in its career. We see this as turning used goods into stock. This transformation accelerates a good's biography as it enters the realm of the owned possession and then quickly returned to a sphere of exchange. In such process, goods become assets which are reinvested to fuel promiscuous consumer behaviours.

*This paper sets out to conceptually explore emerging communication patterns online and apparently deviant behaviours they can sustain within the scope of consumerproducer relationships as power struggles. In addition it seeks to advance a conceptualisation of the balancing of power between consumers and producers on the web through contesting discourses labelling deviance. Theories in computer-mediatedcommunications (CMC) and cyber-cultural studies are first covered to describe why consumers might engage in apparently deviant behaviour. Following this, definitions of power are provided and the work of Foucault is borrowed in order to evaluate how strategies of power can be based on deviant behaviour online. This paper concludes that given the yet to be normalised nature of the Internet, the current balance of power between producers and consumers could be determined by the establishment of a discourse outlining what is the norm and what is deviant. Implications for producers and consumers are discussed.

This paper aims to evaluate power relations between corporate elites and online music file‐sharers on the Web. By documenting changes in discourse occurring between 1998 and 2004 over the labeling of music file‐sharing as deviant, it seeks to unveil how power machinates in establishing the parameters between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors In doing so, Foucault's work on power is used as a starting point for investigating strategies employed by corporate elites and file‐sharers in order to shift the balance of power. The contest between discourses seeking to restrict or enhance the capacities of free agents in online environments is evidenced in the mutability of a legal discourse seeking to normalize online life. Until now, how the online “music pirates” should be disciplined is in a state of flux where certain developments appear to be favoring corporate interests and others, the interests of music file‐sharers. In this struggle, online discourses seeking to curtail freedoms and opportunities advanced by corporate elites and online discourses of freedom purported by music file‐sharers, are reversible. This reversibility suggests that online, some offline discourses would be a hindrance and as such, their agents could resist the dominant online discourse by engaging in creative behaviors. Likewise, traversing offline producer‐led discourses with innovative and creative actions online could lead to consumers' autonomy. This paper concludes that the significance of these online struggles is embedded not only in their outcomes but also in the processes leading to them. Thus, while attempts to curb these online practices and freedoms persist, changes to a discourse guiding trading conditions between the Recording Industry and end‐users have been noted, constituting a victory for the latter.

This paper extends prior critical discussions of digital prosumption by demonstrating that prosumer reliant online business models represent new ways to valorise consumer labour through the creation of multiple realities whereby digital consumption objects are simultaneously enacted as assests by companies, and as possessions by consumers. We argue that this ontological multiplicity means that consumers' 'possession work' no longer serves to separate these objects from the market sphere, as in prior work. This produces a new form of consumer lock-in, or actually ensnarement as it is consumers' own efforts to make objects meaningful that keep them in the market, similar to the psychological attachments seen in 'brand love', but also incorporating aspects of proprietary tie-ins, and access-based market systems. We further consider the implications of such a system. For companies we portray such ensnarement as an attractive, emerging mechanism for ongoing valorization of 'free labour'. Yet we also argue that this presents significant consequences for ensnared consumers who may be subject not only to the ongoing financial exploitation of their possession work, but also restrictions on possession. As a broader contribution we highlight how the examination of multiple, potentially conflicting, ontologies in markets may interact and shape one another.2

In this article, the authors consider emerging consumer practices in digital virtual spaces. Building on constructions of consumer behavior as both a sense-making activity and a resource for the construction of daydreams, as well as anthropological readings of performance, the authors speculate that many performances during digital play are products of consumer fantasy. The authors develop an interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual that is better equipped to understand the movement between consumer daydreams and those practices actualized in the material and now also in digital virtual reality. The authors argue that digital virtual performances present opportunities for liminoid transformations through inversions, speculations, and playfulness acted out in aesthetic dramas. To illustrate, the authors consider specific examples of the theatrical productions available to consumers in digital spaces, highlighting the consumer imagination that feeds them, the performances they produce, and the potential for transformation in consumer-players.