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While outstanding in observing the contemporary experience of being a "consumer" to become a "canonical article" in consumer research, as Thompson deftly analyzes, Belk's "Possessions and the Extended Self" is subject to varied traps of remaining within the "mainstream marketing's ideological boat." This commentary attempts to highlight these ideological traps as we hopefully escape contemporary capitalism's system of production of consumer subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing organizations should adapt to the changes in consumer attitudes brought by the social, political and economic conditions in postmodern age. Postmodern era consumers are influenced by external forces and basic needs, thus marketing practices should be aimed at enhancing consumer loyalty. Furthermore, organizations should view products as processes and consumers as producers since the selection of products and services has become a tool to project their individual image.

Postmodernism has emerged as a new analytic tool in which relationships between subjects and objects are decribed. Postmodernism seeks to situate individuals in society by characterizing as being uncontrolled by tradition and subsequently subject to a plurality of beliefs and desires. A number of marketing analysts have begun to incorporate postmodern analysis into their practice by questioning the discourse existing in economic phenomena.

The article presents several arguments and evidence that the globalization process, which has become of great interest to many scholars, is not a uniform and universalizing process, but a fragmented one. The characteristics of this globalization of fragmentation are discussed and some reasons for its development are provided. Four major reasons discussed are: (1) the nature of the modern market, (2) the transforming consumers, (3)global communications, and (4)increasing multilayeredness of cultures. Implications of these factors for globalization of fragmentation and for international marketing are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer‐citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business‐society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. First, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer‐citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Second, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer‐citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction There have been several philosophical debates in the history of marketing thought about the discipline's mission and role within business and society. Among these debates are science versus art, [...]