{"title":"How consumer-initiated platforms shape family and consumption","authors":"Lydia Ottlewski, Joonas Rokka, John W. Schouten","doi":"10.1177/14705931231201780","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Research has recently highlighted processes of platformization through which consumer activities are shaped by socio-technical features of digital environments. Prior theorizations have focused on corporate-initiated platform dynamics and affordances, emphasizing either the managerial facets of platformization or how consumers use and interact with these platforms. Our interpretive research on Familyship.org offers a contrasting case and theorizes how ordinary consumers, thwarted by social and legal constraints in their desires to create families, leverage platformization for family creation and consumption. Our findings conceptualize consumer-initiated platforms and show how their key affordances— embeddedness, privacy, modularization, and scaling—shape one of the most sacred spheres of life, the institution of family. Our study contributes by theorizing how consumer-initiated platform affordances differ from dominant corporate-initiated ones and why the differences matter. We discuss how they can help consumers to find solutions to acute consumption problems and to reimagine dominant cultural institutions.","PeriodicalId":48020,"journal":{"name":"Marketing Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Marketing Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14705931231201780","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Research has recently highlighted processes of platformization through which consumer activities are shaped by socio-technical features of digital environments. Prior theorizations have focused on corporate-initiated platform dynamics and affordances, emphasizing either the managerial facets of platformization or how consumers use and interact with these platforms. Our interpretive research on Familyship.org offers a contrasting case and theorizes how ordinary consumers, thwarted by social and legal constraints in their desires to create families, leverage platformization for family creation and consumption. Our findings conceptualize consumer-initiated platforms and show how their key affordances— embeddedness, privacy, modularization, and scaling—shape one of the most sacred spheres of life, the institution of family. Our study contributes by theorizing how consumer-initiated platform affordances differ from dominant corporate-initiated ones and why the differences matter. We discuss how they can help consumers to find solutions to acute consumption problems and to reimagine dominant cultural institutions.
期刊介绍:
Marketing Theory provides a fully peer reviewed specialised academic medium and main reference for the development and dissemination of alternative and critical perspectives on marketing theory. A growing number of researchers and management practitioners who believe that conventional marketing theory is often ill suited to the challenges of the modern business environment. The aim of Marketing Theory is to create a high quality, specialist outlet for management and social scientists who are committed to developing and reformulating marketing as an academic discipline by critically analysing existing theory. The journal promotes an ethos that is explicitly theory driven; international in scope and vision; open, reflexive, imaginative and critical; and interdisciplinary.