Tracy Harwood

De Montfort University | DMU · The Institute of Creative Technologies

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore potential applications of cyborgian technologies within service contexts and how service providers may leverage the integration of cyborgian service actors into their service proposition. In doing so, the paper proposes a new category of “melded” frontline employees (FLEs), where advanced...

With the global COVID-19 pandemic and its continuing impacts, we have reached a nexus which places new emphasis on our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with others – other nations, other species, other worlds. A critical question is: Does this mean that our transition into the posthuman is complete? It is therefore with some interest...

This important new work focuses on the pioneers in machinima, considered to be the grassroots and beginnings of virtual production. Machinima’s impacts are identified by the community, supplemented by Harwood and Grussi’s research and experience over a period of 25 years – from game, film and filmmaking to digital arts practice, creative technologi...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a design fiction diegetic prototyping methodology and research framework for investigating service innovations that reflect future uses of new and emerging technologies. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on speculative fiction, the authors propose a methodology that positions service innovations wi...

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the generation and transformation of values through the production and consumption of ‘Let’s Play’, as a new area of practice in the creative economy. Let’s Play emerged from the practice of machinima, ‘animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3D environment’, and is referred to as non-narrative mac...

Purpose This paper aims to provide empirically derived insights into trust and its predictors within a cyber-physical system context of a household service. Design/methodology/approach The methodology comprises an innovative mixed methods design encompassing a videographic animated film portraying a potential “slice of life” household service-sy...

Purpose Technological disruptions such as the Internet of Things and autonomous devices, enhanced analytical capabilities (artificial intelligence) and rich media (virtual and augmented reality) are creating smart environments that are transforming industry structures, processes and practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore critical techn...

Let’s play is a globally significant phenomenon in creative online content generation that has evolved from gaming culture. Little is understood about the behaviour and motivations of community participants to generate creative content or the values they associate with their creative work. This research explores the processes let’s play players eng...

Much of the extant literature proposes that contemporary motivated consumers assess, evaluate, and differentiate firms based not only on their corporate reputation (CR), but also on their corporate sustainability (CS) strategy. However, research that examines the inter-relationship and cognitive associations between CR, CS strategy, and a firm’s pr...

Purpose The characteristics of the Internet of Things (IoT) are such that traditional models of trust developed within interpersonal, organizational, virtual and information systems contexts may be inappropriate for use within an IoT context. The purpose of this paper is to offer empirically generated understandings of trust within potential IoT a...

Purpose This paper presents the findings from research that explores the business value of a performance arts-based initiative in supporting change management through devising. Devising is a process that encompasses improvisation to generate social interaction within a community of practice. Design/methodology/approach A novel approach is report...

This article explores hybrid curatorial practices that have developed around digital “socio-techno-cultural” practices such as machinima. Machinima is a creative cultural movement that has evolved considerably since its emergence in 1996. The article highlights interrelated themes of curatorial practice: coevolving sense-making and social consumpti...

This chapter presents an overview of machinima, an important socio-cultural movement that originated in the 1990s gameplay movement known as demoscene. The chapter presents a review of literature and key issues related to its evolution. Modes of its production (perfect capture, screen capture, asset compositing, bespoke machinimation) are described...

The paper presents findings of an empirical qualitative investigation into the role of machinima (machine-cinema) in extending the brand reach of game developers' market propositions, drawing on participation, co-creation and immaterial labour literature. Machinima is a contemporary Internet cultural phenomenon, whereby firms' 'super' customers cre...

Purpose – This study aims to provide empirically generated insights into a gamification approach to online customer engagement and behavior (CE and CEB). There is a substantive discrepancy between popular coverage and empirically based research as to the effectiveness of virtual brand gamification in engaging customers. Design/methodology/approach...

The chapter reports on an empirical investigation into consumers’ visual attention within a UK retail (marketing) environment using mobile eye-tracking technology. Retail environments are complex, visually stimulating spaces that support both hedonic and utilitarian consumer experiences. There is little prior research into the use of mobile eye-gaz...

The first Digital Personhood Network Meeting took place on the 6th & 7th of March 2014 with keynote presentations from Research Council staff, Professor Chris Hankin and Laura Hood from The Conversation, as well as updates on the five Digital Personhood sandpit projects. The sandpit projects cover a diverse range of Digital Personhood aspects, from...

The first Digital Personhood Network Meeting took place on the 6th & 7th of March 2014 with keynote presentations from Research Council staff, Professor Chris Hankin and Laura Hood from The Conversation, as well as updates on the five Digital Personhood sandpit projects. This document contains the feedback from the impact activities breakout sessi...

This research contributes to a gap in our understanding of value and its cocreation by empirically investigating issues related to ambiguities of legal ownership of cocreated outputs from a virtual experience environment and the subsequent consequences of these on value creation. The context is Machinima, the making of original content using the co...

This article proposes that machinima is a practice-based approach to learning digital creative practice. It features excerpts from key informant interviews with six prominent machinima artists: it is the first time they have been brought together to consider the role of machinima as a learning tool from their different perspectives. The article beg...

This paper presents an overview of research into consumer responses to lighting within retail stores using mobile eye-tracking. It begins with a brief review of pertinent literature in relation to lighting and visual attention. The study is small scale and experimental, using 3 scenarios with different lighting patterns on a visual merchandising un...

This paper presents a review of extant literature about virtual worlds market research. We discuss the need for greater recognition of differences to traditional online and e-commerce web services, including social media. Our review considers what makes virtual worlds different and of particular interest to market researchers, including an overview...

This paper, published in large part in Ciaramitaro’s (2011) Virtual Worlds and E-Commerce, reflects how gaming and virtual worlds have impacted on ecommerce in recent years. A dynamic commercial environment with massive growth in user numbers and an overspill into real worlds through gamification, virtual worlds have contributed new language, new...

The author examines the past, present and future of machinima, hereby defined as an art form in transition. Although both socially and culturally embedded in gaming cultures, machinima could expand well beyond gaming, as it represents a successful example of convergence of filmmaking, animation and games development. Although the medium has a stron...

This chapter firstly explores the characteristics and features of online games and their potential for e-commercial exploitation via the communities of interest that have evolved within and around the gaming environments. The chapter then considers the most common models of e-commercialization applied in online games, virtual and mirror worlds by d...

Interpretations of value and the processes of value creation are rapidly evolving from product and firm centric perspectives to personalised consumer experiences. However, whilst much of the literature in this area advocates the role of the firm as that of ‘enabler’ and ‘community leader’, relatively little empirical based research exists on ‘post...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on a study which aims to identify the characteristics and determinants of client sophistication within the UK corporate legal services market and to investigate its effect in determining the nature and essence of client‐solicitor relationships. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses in‐depth inter...

Relationship marketing principals of co-creating value and interactivity through a process of co-production are fundamental (e.g. Ballantyne 2004; Egan 2004) and yet there has been little investigation into how this translates to an online socially networked context. This paper examines one such online tribal community to investigate its characteri...

Managerialism doesn't work in Higher Education, but collegiality does. (Ramsden, 200445. Ramsden , P. Keynote: the higher education academy. paper presented at The Learning and Teaching Conference 2004: Delivering Excellence, University of Hertfordshire. June–1 July29. View all references) This article argues that developing a team‐based approach...

Purpose This paper provides a general review of relationship marketing, its application to a business‐to‐business context and examines reasons for its failure. Design/methodology/approach Reporting on the literature and two separate research investigations undertaken by the authors, research suggests there are few companies that succeed in develop...

This paper reviews the findings of research into information exchange in real-life negotiations in business-to-business (B2B) relationships. Despite the recognition by both practitioners and academics of face-to-face negotiation as a core competence essential to the longevity of business relationships, there has been little research into verbal neg...

Content analysis is a method for analysing the content of a variety of data, such as visual and verbal data. It enables the reduction of phenomena or events into defined categories so as to better analyse and interpret them. This paper provides an overview of content analysis from a marketing perspective. The basic concepts and techniques are prese...

Despite a multitude of papers on selling and even negotiation, there has been very limited investigation of what leads to successful negotiation. This paper begins to tackle that shortfall and outlines the findings of exploratory research into negotiation styles of customer-supplier dyads engaged in strategic relationship development. First, it rev...

Relatively little research has addressed satisfaction within a business - to - business c redence service context. This research attempts to address this by examining the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction within such a context. Drawing on extant literature, a model is proposed and tested using structural equation modelling. The resul ts...

Induction into university education is identified as crucial to the retention of an increasingly diverse student body. This paper explores the issues revealed by a qualitative examination of a series of case studies of Higher Education (HE) induction programmes in UK universities. These case studies represent a cross-section of induction programmes...