Judith Fletcher-Brown - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Judith Fletcher-Brown

Journal of Advertising, 2024

Transformative advertising research (TAR) suggests examining advertising's transformation... more Transformative advertising research (TAR) suggests examining advertising's transformational possibilities via the interactions between institutional actors at each marketing level to gauge its effect on society. We employ rhetorical institutionalizm as a lens to examine the online speech acts of consumers as they respond to a brand activism campaign focusing on an environmental problem. Our data takes the form of written comments by YouTube users and employs a research design using automated text analysis and qualitative thematic data analysis. Our contributions to TAR are threefold. First, we offer a preliminary conceptualization of the role of consumer language as rhetorical institutional work to advance TAR scholars and practitioners' insight. Second, we highlight the role of linguistic tone and clout in giving speakers agency through which consumers as institutional actors create, maintain and disrupt institutional logics and practices. Finally, we develop a tripartite classification of consumer speech acts used to support brand activism. We label these Activist Warriors, Brand Champions and Conscious Consumers as typologies that deepen understanding of how consumers' online speech may amplify brand activism, thereby contributing to advertising's transformative outcomes. We conclude by outlining important managerial implications including how practitioners can adopt the tripartite classification to enhance brand activism campaigns.

International Journal of Research in Marketing, Jun 1, 2021

Vulnerable consumer engagement: How corporate social media can facilitate the replenishment of de... more Vulnerable consumer engagement: How corporate social media can facilitate the replenishment of depleted resources. Technology may facilitate health and wellbeing consumer engagement. When there is scant public health provision and socio-cultural norms marginalise consumers stigmatised from cancer, we reveal how a brands' corporate social media campaign can support vulnerable consumers with resource constraints. Drawing from a transformative consumer research lens, we investigate five years of computer-mediated communications facilitated by the Indian brand Dabur Vatika. Through a grounded theory and an abductive reasoning approach, we unveil how vulnerable consumers directly or indirectly affected by cancer leverage brand's social media to replenish resources. First, we identify how vulnerable consumers engage to replenish depleted emotional and social support resources. We further expand consumer engagement scholarship by offering a preliminary definition of "vulnerable consumer engagement". Second, we provide a nascent classification of vulnerable consumers in a consumer-producer role, Principal Vulnerable Consumers and Associate Vulnerable Consumers, distinguished by their proximity to the vulnerable context. Lastly, we reveal how brands may perform a transformative role, to replenish social, emotional and operant resources at micro level through the engagement of vulnerable consumers with corporate social media. This insight is informative for policymakers, advertising practitioners and transformative consumer research academics.

Tourism Review

Purpose This paper aims to investigates the use of internal communications to foster workforce re... more Purpose This paper aims to investigates the use of internal communications to foster workforce resilience in the cruise industry during a crisis. Drawing on the regulatory focus theory, this study explores how internal communication strategies can build employee resilience particularly at a time of difficulty. The regulatory focus theory explores the employee’s rationale for goal pursuit. Prevention-focused individuals are concerned with safety and responsibility while promotion-focused individuals focus on goal advancement. The authors seek to broaden the existing understanding of the application of the regulatory focus theory as a lens to inform internal communications crisis strategies. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative research using 15-semi structured interviews with cruise industry experts was undertaken during the pandemic. Applying a sensemaking and sense giving approach the researchers thematically analyzed the data in three stages, allowing for new theoretical insigh...

Journal of Business Research

Current Issues in Tourism

Raw data from YouTube comments.

Journal of Business Research, 2017

In India, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer among women in cities and u... more In India, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer among women in cities and urban areas, yet women seek medical care extremely late due to lack of awareness about self-examination. This study explores the health marketing literature via signaling theory, to uncover the unique social, economic, cultural and institutional challenges and opportunities faced by health marketers and consumers in breast cancer awareness (BCA) in an emerging economy-India. An interpretive-inductive method, alongside a grounded theory approach via focus groups with medical professionals and interviews with women is employed. Findings reveal complex challenges at national, state and community levels which impact negatively on the reputation of India's health sector. Social marketing strategies could be leveraged to raise BCA via community health activists. Propositions are suggested and a conceptual framework is developed to assist health marketers to manage BCA in an emerging economy.

Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, 2015

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review live-client learning activities in higher educat... more Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review live-client learning activities in higher education, highlighting a lack of multi-stakeholder evaluation of “learning by doing” pedagogies in current literature. It extends existing discussion of employability outcomes, dominated by findings from larger organisations, towards arguably, a more meaningful concept: “employagility”; whereby graduates engage in “agile” life-long skills development, through exposure to learning within small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME), enhancing potential to contribute to local and wider economies. Design/methodology/approach – Findings from in-depth, semi-structured interviews and reflective learning journals, captured from triangulated perspectives, presented as the “3Es”: employers, educators and engagers (in this case, undergraduate marketing students). Findings – Students identified involvement in “real” live-client projects, applying knowledge learned in the classroom to solve a business problem...

Qualitative Research, 2019

As health advertising researchers we become involved with a variety of health and well-being issu... more As health advertising researchers we become involved with a variety of health and well-being issues in order to advance social marketing research. Health advertising research involves mainly face-to-face encounters with participants using qualitative methodologies. This article explores the challenges a researcher of British origin faced undertaking fieldwork in India in an effort to collect qualitative data about breast cancer awareness (BCA) and prevention, a culturally taboo subject. Key obstacles included cultural barriers, research method assumptions and researcher resilience. Reflexivity has been recognized as a crucial stage in the process of generating knowledge via qualitative research processes. Thereby applying the critical lens of reflexivity, this article reflects upon the complexities of accessing Indian women (a fiercely private demographic) to participate in discussions about the sensitive topic of breast cancer. The results are discussed and recommendations from thi...

Journal of Knowledge Management

Purpose Knowledge is a key success factor in achieving competitive advantage. The purpose of this... more Purpose Knowledge is a key success factor in achieving competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to examine how mobile health technology facilitates knowledge management (KM) practices to enhance a public health service in an emerging economies context. Specifically, the acceptance of a knowledge-resource application by community health workers (CHWs) to deliver breast cancer health care in India, where resources are depleted, is explored. Design/methodology/approach Fieldwork activity conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with frontline CHWs, which were analysed using an interpretive inductive approach. Findings The application generates knowledge as a resource that signals quality health care and yields a positive reputation for the public health service. The CHW’s acceptance of technology enables knowledge generation and knowledge capture. The design facilitates knowledge codification and knowledge transfer of breast cancer information to standardise quality patient c...

Summary: Getting a job at the end of a course of study is typically used as a key HE employabilit... more Summary: Getting a job at the end of a course of study is typically used as a key HE employability performance indicator, yet this doesn’t cater for evaluating the support of start-up activity or tracking of career changes over the life-long trajectory of exiting students, as a measure of longer term benefits of a university experience. In this PDW, BAM delegates will be introduced to the concept of “employaGility” and encouraged to share their experiences of multiple stakeholder engaged learning methods and extracurricular activities. Based on theoretical and empirical evidence, ‘employaGility’ challenges whether academic and support staff involved in employability and enterprise related learning, teaching and support services (e.g. careers and placement offices; incubator, accelerator and start-up hubs) are fulfilling the needs of all higher education stakeholders. This workshop intends for participants to reflect on learning, teaching and service provision related to enhancing st...

This paper contributes to the call for more socio-cultural research in health advertising. Advert... more This paper contributes to the call for more socio-cultural research in health advertising. Advertising is a cultural artifact, reflecting, behaviours, values and reinforces lifestyle. Balancing the Filipino cultural expectations of modesty and motherhood with modernity produces a cultural conundrum to challenge the advertisement creative, but is there a magic wand? Although the human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV) is an advancement in women’s health, it is associated with behaviour, juxtaposed to Filipino moral and religious values. This paper addresses the call for exploration of inter relationships between health messages, culture and religion. Using an a priori coding scheme a content analysis explores ,fright factors to communicate risk, the inter- connection of culture and religion, and the under researched issue of HPV risk management in a collectivist society. Findings show a mother’s moral imprint lasts a lifetime highlighting the Filipina’s struggle to conform to the demands ...

Breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in urban Indian women. India is undergoing a period so... more Breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in urban Indian women. India is undergoing a period social and economic change but women's health care appears neglected. The single largest impact on breast cancer will come from raising awareness and educating women about self-examination. The proposed study’s aim is to explore the macro, meso and micro agents that operate at each marketing level in breast cancer advertisements, to inform future health intervention campaigns (HICs) in India. Uniquely, this enquiry will examine the contribution of Human Resource Departments (HRD) to midstream (meso level) message dissemination via the firm’s inter-organizational social network. This working paper answers the call for social marketing theory development via application of interdisciplinary frameworks rather than the traditional 4ps approach. Finally this investigation has the capacity to appraise Indian public health policy concerned with breast cancer awareness and could impact future ...

Gender role representations in advertising are influential in society because they transmit stere... more Gender role representations in advertising are influential in society because they transmit stereotypes and can present behavioural norms for male and females. Due to the significance of presumed societal and sales impact, studies have looked at gender roles in many western countries but few have investigated the Asia Pacific. This paper investigates gender expectations through the operation of cultural and religious themes in HPV television advertising in a non-caucasian country. Familiar feminine gender-role dimensions in Philippine culture such as modesty, morality, and sexual purity are examined in an effort to determine whether these expectations of women have moved on with the emergence of a more permissive society. A review of the recent literature is undertaken to identify the role of advertising in shaping and influencing cultural norms. Findings show the role of housewife and mother stemming from the religiosity that permeates Filipino society dominate the advertising mess...

This article examines how women enact an entrepreneurial identity as a means to secure legitimacy... more This article examines how women enact an entrepreneurial identity as a means to secure legitimacy for their entrepreneurial activity. Using a netnographic analysis of media interviews with women in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), we identify how women construct an entrepreneurial identity. Findings indicate that women highlight micro aspects of their identity, provide both personal and external sources of evidence to substantiate their claims, and adhere to potentially conflicting institutional logics. The findings contribute to knowledge of how entrepreneurship is legitimised and can disrupt institutional arrangements which constrained women. This article provides both a gendered and novel contextual view, adding theoretical depth to contemporary conceptualisations of entrepreneurial legitimacy.