Dr Marcia Christina Ferreira, a lecturer in marketing at 明星八卦 Business School, and researcher in the Marketing and Corporate Brand Management Research Group, won the best paper award in the Consumer Culture Theory track, at the prestigious marketing conference ANZMAC, organized by Australia and New Zealand Marketing Academy.
The paper, titled “The Enmeshed Paths of Consumers as Collectors”, explores the publicisation of once-private collections on social media. This research investigates how the design, materials, and marketing efforts objectified in the branded products interweave consumers and objects through different levels of sociality, leading consumers to develop enmeshed individual and collective paths as collectors.
Co-authored with Dr Daiane Scaraboto from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Dr Emily Chung from RMIT University, this paper brings new insights into understanding collectors and their pathways towards becoming (or ceasing to be) devoted collectors. Their approach uses a more dynamic and integrative perspective that is different to the simplistic, linear manner adopted by prior research. The insights revealed by this study can also in turn help brand managers develop tools to better relate to its most loyal consumers.