John Desmond Workshop

Masterclass with John Desmond

Thursday 23, April at 3:00 in Room ABS008​ (in the School of Management)​

We are fortunate to have John Desmond from St. Andrews University in Scotland come join us on Thursday. John is the author of the excellent Consumer Behaviour textbook and also the recent book on Hearts of Darkness which explores psychoanalysis in consumer research. John is also an outstanding teacher of marketing and this is a wonderful opportunity for us all. 

John has kindly agreed to present a short workshop on the topic of...

'Are Generation Y consumers narcissistic, altruistic, or both?​' 

There appears to be a major difference between those who argue that Millennial consumers are narcissistic (Twenge et al., 2008) and those who argue that they are largely altruistic (Welzel, 2009). The argument for narcissism gains support from Bauman’s (2000) concept of liquid modernity, which describes current consumer culture as liquid, where all notions of durability are abolished, so that Millenial consumers are constantly engaged in a series of shifting, discontinuous and shallow relations to people and objects. One interesting question is whether relationships with objects have become more liquid or are they simply different in form to those that preceded them? Do we treat people as objects. Also, in what situations do people seek liquid relationships, versus seeking stability and eschewing liquidity? An important part of any answer to this question is to evaluate the relevance of this metaphor to explain consumer culture today.

Leverhulme Trust PhD Studentship

Royal Holloway University of London has been awarded over £1 million from the Leverhulme Trust to support a total of 15 PhD research projects on the theme of Freedom and the Rights of the Individual in the Digital Age. We would like to draw your attention to the following project which is of relevance to the Marketing blog.

Surveilling children: Intensive parenting and children's freedoms in the digital age.

This will be supervised by Dr Vicki Harman (Sociology) and Dr Benedetta Cappellini (Marketing).

This project explores the increased surveillance of children in the family. It will do so by looking at how the consumption of technological devices (for example nanny cams, RFID- enabled clothing, mobile phones, GPS tracking devices, surveillance toys) is involved in surveilling children’s everyday lives from the perspective of parents and children themselves.

One of the most powerful and pervasive discourses concerning contemporary childhood is that children are subjects at risk who need vigilant protection. Given the range of risks that may potentially befall children in the digital age, whether being attacked by unknown adults met online or simply becoming obese, children’s own agency is perceived as insufficient for negotiating the risks of everyday life. As such, parents’ intensified surveillance is now considered the only plausible way of doing ‘good parenting’. Commentators have highlighted how the intensification of everyday parenting produces anxious parents, especially mothers, who need reassurance on their ways of surveilling their children from experts (such as nutritionists, paediatricians, teachers, celebrities and parenting experts) and from the increased consumption of up-to-date technology to support their monitoring and safeguarding efforts.

This project aims to understand how the growing domestic scrutiny results in a redefinition of childhood in which the lines between protection and freedom, surveillance and privacy have become complex and blurred. The research will involve semi-structured interviews with parents and children using photo-elicitation techniques. Key questions the project will explore include: How do children respond to the decrease of their personal freedom? In what ways do children negotiate or resist this growing scrutiny within and outside the domestic setting? What are the implications for family life and parent-child relations? What are the implications for children’s freedom of choice and expression?

About the Studentship
The studentship will include UK/EU fees and a stipend of £16,057 including London weighting for three years. There will also be additional support available for travel, subsistence and other related expenses linked to the research project.

For details of how to apply, please visit: https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studyhere/researchdegrees/feesandfunding/leverhulmedoctoralstudentships/home.aspx

The deadline for applications is 7 May 2015.

I'm New in the UK

Liliya Martinez, alumnus of the MA Marketing and author of this dissertation has set up a new website and blog called I'm New in the UK that recounts her experiences as immigrant into the UK. The website contains a survival guide to life in Britain and includes information regarding making friends, visas, etc.

Check out her website here.