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This study investigates the perceptions of medical staff - and specifically physicians - regarding new technologies in healthcare, with a specific focus on the metaverse. Indeed, the current allure of the metaverse lies in its profound potential to enhance societal well-being, particularly within the realm of healthcare, necessitating a rigorous and comprehensive investigation to discern and harness its multifaceted opportunities for transformative impact. By leveraging on a qualitative research design, the study employed semi-structured interviews featuring both open-ended questions and preliminary fairy tales, its sheds light key aspects: 1) the metaverse’s pivotal role in catalyzing the transformation of healthcare services, 2) barriers associated with the metaverse’s impact on doctor-patient relationships, and 3) the cultivation of novel digital skills and competences intertwined with metaverse integration. Findings thus clarify the transformative potential of the metaverse in reshaping healthcare paradigms, emphasizing the necessity for a balanced approach that addresses barriers to interpersonal relationships while navigating the evolving landscape of digital competencies. This research contributes insights to the discourse on technology’s role in healthcare, advocating for a comprehensive understanding of the metaverse’s implications on both service delivery and the interpersonal dynamics essential to effective healthcare provision.

This paper contributes to business ethics by focusing on consumption that is characterized by normative violence. By drawing on the work of Judith Butler this study of kajer lok-a female subaltern group of Indian domestic service providers-and their higher status clients shows how codes of status-based consumption shaped by markets, class, caste, and patriarchy create a social order that reduces kajer lok to "ungreivable" lives. Our study contributes to business ethics by focusing on exploitation and coercion in consumption rather than in production and of woman rather than of men. It adds to consumer research by revealing how social distinctions not only manifest in status contests in which symbolic power is at stake but also may produce violent exploitation and ungrievable lives.

Purpose: This chapter explores the practices underpinning the production of field-specific cultural capital at festivals, understood here as retail spaces that gather a plethora of distinct market actors. Methodology/Approach: This research presents evidence from an ethnographic study employing an interpretative paradigm and multiple data collection processes. The empirical research has been undertaken in the context of food festivals associated with the foodie taste regime. Findings: Three categories of practices that play a role in the production of field-specific cultural capital, namely representational, exchange, and experiential practices, are presented. Practical Implications: Our chapter provides recommendations for food festival organizers and participants who need to improve their practices when facing challenges such as increasing international competition and costs or declining sponsorship. Research Limitations/Implications: This chapter contributes to the growing body of field-level market analysis by showing how practices enabled by complex retail spaces contribute to the production of field-specific cultural capital. However, this chapter is limited by its focus on food festivals. Originality/Value of the Paper: This chapter theorizes how practices enable the acceleration and diversification of field-specific capital exchange, as well as its integration with other forms of capital.

Purpose: This chapter seeks to understand ethnic identification among second-generation consumers by drawing upon the lived experiences of British Indian migrants in England. Methodology/Approach: The authors analyze interviews with middle-class, Hindu, second-generation British Indian women through Bourdieu’s key concepts of capital, field, habitus, and distinction. Findings: Through resources such as Bollywood cinema, and Indian schools for language, music, and dance, second-generation consumers acquire, use and (re) produce situationally prized subcultural capital for distinction from other ethnic consumers and members of the white majority group. Ethnicity is central to second-generation consumers’ identity projects, and their everyday social interactions. Ethnicity is considered in uplifting and empowering terms, and first-generation consumers play a key role in reinforcing this belief. Research Limitations/Implications: Due to our small sample size, limited by class, religion, and gender, the findings of this chapter might not be gen-eralizable to the wider population. Instead, they can be used to develop new theoretical ways of understanding ethnicity in multicultural settings with long-established migrant populations. Social Implications: Ethnicity can play a central and positive role in the everyday lives of second-generation consumers. By investigating this further, we can improve our understanding of contemporary, multicultural societies. Originality/Value of Paper: Prior work in consumer research has focused on understanding first-generation migrant consumers through the lens of acculturation, and foregrounding experiences of stigma and tension. Instead, the authors foreground the positive and uplifting lived experiences of second-generation consumers in relation to their ethnicity. This chapter extends the literature on second-generation ethnic consumer identity work.

Purpose: This chapter aims to illuminate the cultural perceptions of illicit alcohol and to examine the role of cognitive polyphasia in changing the perceptions and legitimacy of market practices. Methodology/Approach: An ethnographic study of the Kenyan illicit alcohol market, which combined digital news media data analysis, with observation and interview data. Findings: Cognitive polyphasia serves to delegitimize illicit alcohol by portraying it as incongruent with existing cultural beliefs, values, and assumptions. Illicit alcohol is portrayed as a contaminated product, a cursed business, a practice that causes cultural breech, and a scheme of witchcraft/ sorcery used to enslave consumers. Findings also show that cognitive polyphasia involves drawing on traditional knowledge to explain misfortune and difficult social phenomena such as addiction. The delegitimation of illicit alcohol induces behavior and perception change. Consumers play an important role in this change process. Research Implications: This research proposes the incorporation of cultural language into alcohol policy and education. Social Implications: By illuminating social representations in the cultural-cognitive arena, a theory for applying these factors to change markets/ behavior is proposed. Originality/Value of Paper: The chapter highlights the delegitimation of market practices, unlike previous research that focuses on legitimation processes. This chapter also demonstrates how cognitive polyphasia, a scarcely researched concept in consumer research, can induce behavior change. This chapter also contributes to the literature on market/behavior change by revealing potential cultural-cognitive barriers to change. © 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited.