Isabelle Szmigin

• BA, MBA, PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Birmingham

Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) negatively impacts health systems worldwide. We aimed to capture perceptions of and barriers and facilitators for AF care in Brazilian primary care units (PCUs) from the perspective of healthcare professionals (HCPs). Methods This mixed-methods, cross-sectional study utilised an exploratory sequential design, be...

Background: The association between ideal cardiovascular health (ICVH) status and atrial fibrillation or flutter (AFF) diagnosis has been less studied compared to other cardiovascular diseases. Objective: To analyze the association between AFF diagnosis and ICVH metrics and scores in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil)...

Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia that affects 60 million people worldwide. Limited evidence on AF management exists from low- and middle-income countries and none from Sri Lanka. We aimed to investigate the existing AF care pathway and patients’ perception on AF management to identify barriers and enablers f...

Preventing premature non-communicable disease mortality necessitates a thorough review of one of the most important risk factors for stroke, which is atrial fibrillation (AF). The latter and AF-related stroke are still considered to be problems of high-income countries and are frequently overlooked in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In th...

Purpose This paper aims to examine how prosumption manifests in an online community, Instructables.com, and its value for those who engage with it. The paper emphasizes its distinctiveness compared to similar phenomena, particularly co-creation. Design/methodology/approach This work uses a netnography-informed research approach, involving Instruct...

This research examines individual voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Our research speaks to the new funding challenges traversing the British arts sector. Historically reliant on government funds, increasingly regional non-profit arts organisations must diversify their income sources and target a range of voluntary givers. By drawing on p...

Purpose In the context of European consumers’ experiences of austerity, this study aims to advance current resilience theory in marketing through developing persistent resilience from a context of austerity influenced consumption. Design/methodology/approach Following an interpretivist approach, 38 face to face, in-depth interviews were conducted...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to help researchers and practitioners to understand and respond to consumer complaining behaviour (CCB) by developing a taxonomy that addresses the inadequacies of previous consumer complaining taxonomies and models, simplifies the terminology and covers both traditional and new ways of complaining. Design/meth...

From the early days of hippie counter-culture, music festivals have been an important part of the British summer. Today they are commercialised offerings without the counter-cultural discourse of earlier times. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and focus groups conducted at a rock festival and a smaller boutique festival, the paper exa...

Concern has been expressed as to how obesity is framed as an individual responsibility easily solved with common sense. Such research has questioned the appropriateness of a size-based emphasis to public health. Moving away from the emphasis on the individual, this paper critically reviews consumer marketing techniques in the presentation of portio...

Consumption experience (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982) is widely used in the marketing literature although mostly within the broad context of service (Lusch and Vargo, 2006; Pine and Gilmore, 1999) or hedonic experience (Arnould and Price, 1993). Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) provide an alternative to consumers as logical thinkers, rather interpretin...

In this article, we explore the notion of freedom as a form of governance within contemporary consumer culture in a sphere where ‘freedom’ appears as a key component: outdoor music-based leisure events, notably music festivals and free parties. ‘Freedom’ is commodified as central to the marketing of many music festivals, which now form a highly com...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution of network competence to radical innovation. Design/methodology/approach Technological change associated with human body disposal acts as the form of radical innovation in which network competence is examined. Interviews, observations at industry conferences and secondary data are...

In response to recent calls for further cross-disciplinary research on austerity and a deeper sociological understanding of the impact and aftermath of the economic crisis on individuals and societies, this article builds on extant austerity literature through an exploration of its effects on European men. Informed by theories of liminality and rit...

Drawing on anthropological and gender theories, we investigate the liminal nature of male vulnerability within the context of austerity. From depth interviews with 11 males from 5 European countries, we contribute to the vulnerability and gender literature by revealing the effects of liminal vulnerability on male identities and roles.

Recently, Woodruff and Flint (2006) have backed Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) service-dominant (S-D) logic model stressing the role of value as a customer experiential phenomenon. According to the model, value is not embedded in products or services but always “value-in-use”, which means that customers experience value during interactions with service o...

This study aimed to identify the type of confusion that occurs when using different front of pack (FoP) label formats for comparing products. Thirty semi-structured interviews incorporating a think-aloud technique were conducted to identify differences in food constituents as represented by FoPs. An FoP format including traffic light colouring, cal...

This research makes a new contribution to alcohol policy practice and theory by demonstrating that transgression of officially sanctioned norms and values is a key component of the sub- and counter-cultural drinking practices of some groups of young consumers. Therefore, policy messages that proscribe these drinking practices with moral force are l...

Young people's drinking practices have recently become the focus for a sustained and pervasive discourse of moral panic in the arenas of social policy, academic research and popular culture. There is now a considerable body of research on young people's alcohol consumption, especially 'underage' or other 'problem' drinking, much of which has used l...

This study explores the complex relationship between paid work and participation in exercise and leisure-time physical activity among older women. The role of other factors that enable, motivate and constrain physical activity is also investigated. National context is explored using British Household Panel Survey data. Interviews with key stakehold...

This study aims to investigate online consumer complaining behaviour (CCB) on Facebook, the most widespread and popular social networking site. More specifically, the main objectives of this study are (1) to understand why consumers complain on Facebook and (2) to identify what consumers expect from companies in response to their complaining activi...

This paper reports on an exploratory study examining women's views about and experiences of retirement. It has long been recognized that women's careers often follow a different path than men's due to the differential impact of family and domestic responsibilities and their relative underrepresentation at higher levels of organizations. However, ma...

This article builds on Hillcoat-Nallétamby and Phillips' (2011) conceptualization of sociological ambivalence within the relational framework to examine a particular consumption practice, the funeral. We develop understanding of social, cultural and relational issues that arise from the experience associated with funeral-arranging. This is not a vo...

Recently, Gruber, Abosag, Reppel, and Szmigin’s [(2011). Analysing the preferred characteristics of frontline employees dealing with customer complaints – a crossnational Kano study. The TQM Journal (Kano Special Issue), 23(2), 128–144]. Kano study revealed that complaining customers in Saudi Arabia are less difficult to delight than UK customers....

Shared value, the concept popularized by Porter and Kramer in the Harvard Business Review (Porter & Kramer, 2006, 2011), seeks explicitly to address the task of regaining trust and purpose for business and the broader institution of capitalism in the current age of crisis. “The capitalist system is under siege”, the authors contend, “…learning how...

This paper contributes to debates on post-feminism and the constitution of contemporary femininity via an exploration of young women’s alcohol consumption and their involvement in normative drinking cultures. We view femininity as a profoundly contradictory and dilemmatic space which appears almost impossible for girls or young women to inhabit. Th...

Growing inequality and its implications for democratic polity suggest that corporate social responsibility (CSR) has not proved itself in twenty-first century business, largely as it lacks clear criteria of demarcation for businesses to follow. Today the problem is viewed by many commentators as an ethical challenge to business itself. In response...

About the book: Marketing and consumer research has traditionally conceptualized consumers as individuals- who exercise choice in the marketplace as individuals not as a class or a group. However an important new perspective is now emerging that rejects the individualistic view and focuses on the reality that human life is essentially social, and t...

The paper aims to understand how Facebook is used to generate product related online negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) with two specific objectives: 1) to identify the nature of NWOM activities on Facebook and 2) to identify and explore the approaches that consumers use to construct their NWOM messages on Facebook. Following Kozinet’s (2010) guidelines...

Despite the growing success of well-marketed environmentally friendly products, there remains a gap between consumers' positive attitudes towards green issues and products, and their inconsistent and often conflicting consumption behaviour. Indeed, this is a challenge for social marketers seeking to advance the sustainability agenda. Therefore, thi...

Laddering is a well-established research technique in the social sciences which provides rich data to help understand means-end considerations otherwise hidden from quantitative research. It does this through revealing relationships between the attributes of individuals, objects or services (i.e., means), the consequences these attributes represent...

In this paper we use Bakhtin’s theory of carnival in a literary analysis of young peoples’ accounts of the role of alcohol in their social lives. Bakhtinian themes in the focus group transcripts included the dialogic character of drinking stories, the focus on parodic grotesquery, ribald and satiric laughter, and the temporary subversion and revers...

Purpose Social marketing initiatives designed to address the UK's culture of unhealthy levels of drinking among young adults have achieved inconclusive results to date. The paper aims to investigate the gap between young people's perceptions of alcohol consumption and those of government agencies who seek to influence their behaviour set within a c...

Purpose This paper seeks to use the Kano model to gain a deeper understanding of attributes of effective frontline employees dealing with customer complainants in personal interactions. Previous research revealed that excitement factors deteriorate to basic factors over time. This research aims to investigate whether the same phenomenon holds true...

This paper presents a research study examining the acculturation and identity of second‐generation Indian Punjabis. It focuses on how they balance their lives between two cultures and reflects on the nature of second‐generation integration in light of cultural context, situational factors, ethnicity and consumption, presenting the conflicts and ten...

In this chapter, we reflect on the discourses of deficit theme in the context of our study of young people and alcohol in the UK, and in light of the way the UK’s alcohol problem is constituted in public policy discourse. We chose one policy document in particular because it came directly from the UK Government cabinet office and focused prominentl...

Individuals around the world engage in one common yet fundamental activity that is of personal, emotional, social, and environmental significance –disposal of the dead. As the global landscape becomes increasingly populated, so disposal choice becomes a critical environmental issue. Disposal of the dead is an essential aspect of our existence; it i...

The rise in access to complex consumer credit arrangements has taken place against a backdrop of a call for increased individual responsibility. Consumers are required to behave in a way which recognizes both their rights and responsibilities. But how much responsibility should they be expected to shoulder in critical areas of complex choice? Stude...

In this study we draw on varied theoretical perspectives to explore and gain an alternative understanding of consumption at New Consumption Communities (NCCs). Intrinsic to the notion of NCCs is a sense of community between production‐engaged consumers who question market practices deemed inadequate or unfair. Reported findings are part of a three‐...

The emergence of a more reflexive and discerning customer has created inter alia a demand for ‘better’ food (i.e. quality and ‘authenticity’) in terms of sourcing, processing, and specialist distribution/retailing. As a consequence, the food production/distribution industry is under pressure to change many of its practices. One manifestation is the...

The figure of the consumer has been central to the UK New Labour government's approach to reforming public services. However, this article is critical of the narrow debate of the Government and its critics around the consumer as chooser. It aims to broaden the debate by drawing attention to relatively neglected historical, geographical and conceptu...

The rapid commercial evolution of the World Wide Web has resulted in an environment where consumers engage directly with businesses in a variety of ways and levels of interactivity. This has resulted in a conflict between the need for identifying individual consumers in buyer–seller interactions through the use of personal data and their desire to...

Drinking to intoxication now forms an increasingly normalised part of most young people’s social lives. Research on young people’s alcohol consumption indicates a pattern of increased sessional heavy drinking in the UK from the early 1990s, although there is some recent evidence that this trend is starting to level off (Measham, 2008). We have expl...

Purpose This paper seeks to explore the nature of complaint satisfaction with particular emphasis on the qualities and behaviours that male and female customers value during personal complaint‐handling service encounters. Design/methodology/approach A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was used to reveal the cognitive structu...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of complaint satisfaction, specifically to examine how contact employees should behave and which qualities they should possess. The study also aims to explore the comparability of results obtained from two laddering methods, as the alternative techniques may lead to different sets of attrib...

This paper explores the nature of the consumption environment of credit, termed the 'credogenic' environment and identifies its key players including financial services providers, regulators and consumers. Perspectives from both students and key infor-mants from a range of consumer and debt advice agencies, regulatory bodies and banks in the UK and...

In this article, we critically reflect on the constitution of the UK's alcohol problem in the government's ‘Safe, Social, Sensible’ policy document, referring to findings from a 3-year ESRC funded study on young people, alcohol and identity. We suggest that discursive themes running throughout ‘Safe, Sensible, Social’ include ‘shared responsibility...

Young people’s alcohol consumption has been the focus of heightened concern over ‘binge drinking’ in social policy, academic research and popular culture. A normalised culture of intoxication is now central to many young people’s social lives, playing an important role in the night-time economy of towns and cities across the UK. In this paper we dr...

This paper considers the ethical purchasing of what is described as conscious consumers. Conscious consumers remain a ‘work in progress’, and present a complex mix of behaviours; while seeking ethical alternatives, other social and economic forces impact on their behaviour (e.g. family, convenience, price) such that positive ethical choices are not...

Marketing to ethnic communities is fraught with problems of understanding the cultural contexts and value systems of others. Within Britain, this is in many ways exacerbated by the prevalence of a multicultural society that spans generations. Second-generation ethnic consumers live in the world of their parents and their community, but often work a...

This paper explores the nature of the consumption environment of credit, termed the 'credogenic' environment and identifies its key players including financial services providers, regulators and consumers. Perspectives from both students and key informants from a range of consumer and debt advice agencies, regulatory bodies and banks in the UK and...

Marketing to ethnic communities is fraught with problems of understanding the cultural contexts and value systems of others. Within Britain, this is in many ways exacerbated by the prevalence of a multicultural society that spans generations. Second-generation ethnic consumers live in the world of their parents and their community, but often work a...

This paper explores how British and Brazilian consumers dispose of their unwanted or no longer used goods. Post-consumption environmental impact has become a global issue, and the need for consumers to reduce, reuse and recycle is paramount. A study of seven participants with recycling experience was undertaken. Divergent concerns in relation to wa...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on complaint satisfaction with a particular emphasis on the qualities and behaviours that affect customers during personal complaint handling encounters. Design/methodology/approach Following a literature review of complaint satisfaction and the role of customer contact employees in complaint encounter...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to thoroughly explain how qualitative researchers can design and conduct online interviews to investigate interesting consumer phenomena. Design/methodology/approach – A semi‐standardized qualitative technique called laddering was applied successfully to an online environment. Laddering allows researchers to...

This paper considers the ethical purchasing of what are described as conscious consumers. Conscious consumers present a complex mix of behaviors; while seeking ethical alternatives, other social and economic forces impact on their behavior such that positive ethical choices are not always made. We identify two areas of theory relevant to the concep...

Background: Recent debates on 'binge drinking' in the UK have represented the activities of young drinkers in urban areas as a particular source of concern, as constituting a threat to law and order, a drain on public health and welfare services and as a source of risk to their own future health and well being. The discourse of moral panic around...

This paper broadens current knowledge on consumer waste and disposal behaviour by exploring the diverse and complementary waste-reduction strategies and behaviours adopted by environmentally conscious consumer communities in the UK. Using a critical ethnography methodology and a multi-locale approach to designing the field, six distinct ethical vol...

Purpose The symbolic and social roles of waste are explored through a small sample of UK and Brazilian consumers from urban and rural communities. These findings are relevant in highlighting the importance of considering socio‐cultural differences in waste policies. Design/methodology/approach Following an ontologically realist and epistemological...

This paper presents key branding findings from a qualitative study of consumers and financial services practitioners and explores the current role, importance and challenges associated with branding within Irish retail financial services. Managerial and consumer research highlighted the limited role of branding and the growing gap between brand-bas...

Abstract not available.

This paper considers the integration of ethical brands into mainstream consumption choices. After examining the growth and success of ethical brands within the last few years, the paper considers the branding issues that are of particular importance to ethical producers. It then identifies four dimensions that help the ethical brand cross the divid...

The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of the teaching qualities of effective lecturers that students desire and to uncover the constructs that underlie these desire expectations to reveal the underlying benefits that students look for. An empirical study using the means–end approach and two laddering techniques (personal interviews and l...

The paper explores the meaning of convenience food for UK mothers, investigating the relationship between mothers and their families' food. The study examines the role of convenience food within the food strategies of contemporary UK families, and aims to elicit consumption meanings in the broader social context of family relationships with food, t...

Purpose This research seeks to explore current attitudes, motivations and behaviours in relation to student credit and debt consumption in the UK and Ireland. Design/methodology/approach Key qualitative consumer research based on 20 interviews with Irish and UK higher education students is presented. Findings The findings highlight that, while th...

Purpose The paper explores how the complex relationship between consumption and production evolves as women enact their roles as mothers, and reconstruct their self‐identity through their use or avoidance of convenience products. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative, individual interviews are used to allow an in‐depth analysis of the life stori...

Women in their 40s face a range of issues regarding how they choose to present themselves to the world; often these choices involve forms of consumption. We talked to two groups of British women and discussed how they felt about themselves and the pressures upon them. We present a discussion which aims to synthesize some of the key features of how...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to explore the potential for learning from customers of a market leader through qualitative marketing research. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents findings from a study that applies a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. An online variation of an existing qualitative research me...

This paper explores the nature of complaint satisfaction with a particular emphasis on the qualities and behaviours that affect customers during the personal complaint handling encounter. The paper reviews the literature on complaint satisfaction and the role of the contact employee in the complaint encounter. An empirical study using the means-end...

This paper explores the nature of complaint satisfaction with particular emphasis on the qualities and behaviours that affect male and female customers during personal complaint handling encounters. An explorative study using the means-end approach and qualitative laddering techniques provides a deeper understanding of attributes of effective custo...

This paper presents the key relationship findings from an in-depth qualitative consumer study of Irish retail banking and explores the nature of customer loyalty and its effects on relationship preferences and decisions. Building upon prior exploratory managerial and consumer research, 50 in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive stratifi...

This paper presents the key findings in relation to current consumer perspectives on the role of relationships, the nature of loyalty and types of customer interaction from an in-depth qualitative consumer study of Irish retail banking. Although the literature proposes that the RM approach is particularly applicable to the financial services sector...

This article explores the aestheticization of consumption through a study of two recent exhibitions in Britain. The collapse of many of the historical boundaries and distinctions between art and life have led to what Featherstone (1991) refers to as the aestheticization of everyday life. It is important for marketing theory to both explore the mean...

Many young people enjoy alcohol consumption as part of their social lives, but recently there has been increased concern regarding the amount they drink and how they behave in public places when intoxicated. So called 'binge' drinking has become a particular concern in the UK. Such drinking behaviour is often positioned in opposition to 'normal' dr...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the diverse and complementary resistance and waste‐reduction practices adopted by UK‐based New Consumption Communities, and whether such behaviours empower them to achieve their environmental and social goals. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology can be broadly classified as critical ethnography, which...

Purpose – To revisit relationship marketing in the context of the digital economy. Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a conceptual framework (the customer bonding triangle) that enables greater understanding of the contributions of service delivery and online communities in the development of bonds in interactive relationships. The f...

Purpose To broaden the scope of our knowledge of collective voluntarily simplified lifestyles in the UK, by exploring whether voluntary simplifiers achieve their goals by adopting a simpler life. Design/methodology/approach Radical forms of voluntary simplifier groups were explored through participant‐observation research. The methodology can be b...

Purpose – This paper is a general review contextualising the current debate on ethics and international marketing. The aim of the paper is to present an overview of historical and current trends as a background for this special issue edition of International Marketing Review focusing on international marketing ethics. Design/methodology/approach –...

Reflecting recent European and International trends, the Irish financial services sector has witnessed phenomenal technological and competitive developments, affecting consumer decision-making and behaviour and forcing financial suppliers to re-assess their approach to setting customer expectations and assessing the consumer experience. This study,...

Purpose – This paper explores the role of financial services brand values and compares the importance of process and outcome factors in terms of their impact on customer perceptions, behaviour and experience. Design/methodology/approach – Building on exploratory managerial and consumer research, 50 in-depth interviews were conducted with a quota sa...

The rapid increase in the volume and variety of product placement approaches has outpaced research in the field. There is a marked shortage of studies that address particular product placement (pp) techniques in specified situational contexts. This paper reports the category of pp known as explicit, non-integrated product placement in the context o...

Ethical consumption is part of a broader consumption picture. This paper conceptualizes ethical consumption by theoretically positioning it within Holt’s typology of consumption practices (1995). In particular it focuses upon ethical consumption as an integration process, identifying four possible dimensions of ethical consumption as, a distinction...

This paper explores how the ‘paradox of convenience’ affects mothers’ lives. We present the results from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six mothers in order to explore their sense of fragmented time and their relationship with convenience goods. We question whether convenience is ‘convenient’ for every mother and investigate its advantag...

Reflecting recent European and international trends, the Irish financial services sector has witnessed phenomenal technological and competitive developments, affecting consumer decision- making and behaviour and forcing financial suppliers to re-assess their approach to setting expectations and assessing the consumer experience. This study, using a...

This study investigates the nature of customer-supplier interaction that currently exists within Irish retail financial services. Specifically, issues relating to the role, meaning and importance of financial service interaction within the context of current demand- and supply-side relationship marketing issues are explored. Although the literature...

Believes that older consumers may be as concerned about purchasing ethically as any other consumer group and so presents an interpretive study into the attitudes and buyer behaviour of older consumers in the context of ethical purchasing. Briefly reviews the literature on the older consumer, purchasing ethics and issues in ethical purchasing before...

This article examines time and experience of time linked to the consumption behaviour of expectant mothers. Using Dapkus's three categories of time (Limits and Choices, Change and Continuity and Tempo) to frame respondent discussions, the study follows and interpretive route to examine the temporal experiences that affect expectant mothers. The ran...

This paper explores and investigates the role of branding within financial services. Specifically, the study aims to assess the importance of branding and its associated elements including brand image and brand experience in the relationships that exist between consumers and their financial brands. It aims to achieve this through research, which id...

This paper presents a structure for understanding Internet communities. A conceptual framework is developed with a view to enabling an understanding of the delivery of service and engendering of loyalty in an on-line community. This framework, termed the customer bonding triangle, incorporates three elements, service value, technical infrastructure...