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Abstract
The purpose of our conceptual introduction is to theorize how brands will continue to be relevant in the future marketplace. We identify three themes that emerge in this special issue that offer intriguing directions for future exploration and managerial action. The first theme is that because of brands' pervasiveness, consumers have developed a meta concept of "brands" that shapes how consumers think about the market, themselves, and others. While marketers consider the power of a particular brand as a valued consumer resource, this theme speaks to the power of "brands" as a category. The second theme contributes to a growing conversation highlighting consumer agency in relation to brands. Consumers manage their relationships with brands; selectively draw on media to create their own brand narratives; and can even upend the "rules" of brand management. The final theme is that brand owners must balance continuity and change, recognizing that brand contestation and cultural change are both inevitable. Brands need to actively consider the sometimes polarized, contesting and agentic voices of consumers and other actors, finding ways to positively influence firm and societal outcomes. We hope this special issue spurs continued new research to imagine future complex dynamics of consumers and brands.

Technology champions are members of organizations presenting new technology to fellow members who are potential users. They are widely accepted as instrumental in many implementation settings. In the perspective that dominates the current literature, champions are allied with outside technology, and users are slow to adopt innovation. Much effort has gone into describing traits of champions and solving problems in the process of getting users to accept the new technology. This focus emphasizes one particular view of the champion role, and leads to a constrained set of alternatives to manage technology championing. We propose instead that champions can be seen as agents of potential users, and implementation described in terms of constructs familiar in the agency model. This approach challenges some fundamental premises in the existing literature and introduces new propositions to the research on technology champions. They address alignment of self-interest between champions and users, implicit contracts, incentives and penalties, risk-bearing, and performance evaluation.

AbstractAn investigation into the embodiment of consumer knowledge is presented, drawing on ethnomethodology and the allied field of conversation analysis. Analyzing video recordings of 189 service encounters at the ticket desk of an art gallery, the study explores the embodiment of consumer knowledge, how consumer knowledge is witnessable from quotidian details of customers' embodied conduct, how they talk, move their bodies, gesture, handle objects, and cast their gaze. Consumer knowledge is shown to be socially organized, with social considerations informing what customer should know, and how customers' faulty assertions and claims should be treated. In the way firms approach consumer knowledge, the article describes how they might create or undermine interactive value. This article breaks new ground by demonstrating that consumer knowledge is relevant for understanding the actions of consumers, not only as a result of cognitive processes but also as it is embodied.

AbstractHow do consumer watchdog organizations (CWOs) change markets? Research on consumer activism has prioritized studying grassroots movements of ordinary consumers over more formalized activist actors, resulting in a paucity of theoretical resources for understanding the activism of powerful consumer organizations such as CWOs. This article draws on the sociology of valuation and evaluation to develop a new theoretical model of consumer activism, the value-translation model, which departs from previous research in shifting the focus from activists' efforts to change which higher-order values govern markets to activists' efforts to change how they govern markets. Through a historical study of a Danish CWO associated with the comparative-testing movement, the article shows how CWOs "translate" higher-order values into "trials of value" (i.e., practical evaluation procedures that "test" the strength of the connection between goods and higher-order values) and "evaluation agents" (i.e., market actors capable of carrying out and acting on evaluations). Such translations structure how higher-order values influence markets and are therefore critical to manage for directing market change. The study extends our understanding of how objects are systemically valorized and revalorized and how formalized forms of consumer activism can play an important role in such processes.

AbstractThe dominant theoretical approach to exploring ethnic and racial inequality in marketing and consumer research focuses on discrete acts of discrimination that stem from social psychological causes (e.g., prejudice, stereotypes, and negative racial attitudes). It holds limited explanatory power for meso- and macro-structural phenomena that also generate racialized outcomes. An implication is that ethnic and racial inequality can be portrayed as something imposed on market systems rather than a routine feature of their functioning. In response, I introduce and synthesize two variants of Racial Formation Theory (RFT) and propose it as a useful theoretical approach for addressing whether and how organizational and institutional actors in market systems engage in goal-directed action that allocates resources in ways that challenge (or reinforce) ethnic and racial oppression.

AbstractLeisure is desirable and beneficial, yet consumers frequently forgo leisure in favor of other activities—namely, work. Why? We propose that goal conflict plays an important role. Seven experiments demonstrate that perceiving greater goal conflict shapes how consumers allocate time to work and leisure—even when those activities are unrelated to the conflicting goals. This occurs because goal conflict increases reliance on salient justifications, influencing how much time people spend on subsequent, unrelated activities. Because work tends to be easier to justify and leisure harder to justify, goal conflict increases time spent on work and decreases time spent on leisure. Thus, despite the conflicting goals being independent of the specific work and leisure activities considered (i.e., despite goal conflict being "incidental"), perceiving greater goal conflict encourages work and discourages leisure. The findings further understanding of how consumers allocate time to work and leisure, incidental effects of goal conflict on decision-making, and the role of justification in consumer choice. They also have implications for the use of "time-saving" technologies and the marketing of leisure activities.