Browsing by Author "Cavusoglu, Lena"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Citation - WoS: 11
Citation - Scopus: 22
Fashion, Consumer Markets, and Democratization
(Wiley, 2022) Ati̇k, Deniz; Cavusoglu, Lena; Ertekin, Zeynep; Firat, A. Fuat
Previous research illustrates several attempts that consumers have made to create new markets when marketing organizations have not responded to their desires; however, individual efforts alone are insufficient to assure success in having voices heard. The effectiveness of these efforts heavily depends on the democratization of institutions. Discussions regarding the democratization of fashion have had some historical appeal in academia and popular media. However, an incomplete appraisal of democracy may have led to premature conclusions regarding fashion's democratization. Affirming that democracy requires acceptance of differences and empowerment of different groups as a principle, this study conceptually and critically examines the history of the outcomes of fashion consumers' attempts to have their voices heard and assesses the degree of democratization of the fashion market. Our research contributes to prior debates regarding the democratization of fashion by reviewing the pivotal chronological events in fashion history. Contrary to some previous views, it shows that diffusion of fashion to larger consumer segments across history does not automatically imply democratization of fashion, which has been greatly limited despite the potentials presented by the advents of sustainable fashion and digitalization in contemporary times. We conclude that the cycle of fashion becoming a principle of economic interest is largely the culprit for retarding democratization, and we offer reflections for key stakeholders in order to have a more democratic, sustainable, and inclusive fashion system.
Citation - WoS: 20
Citation - Scopus: 26
Health Commodified, Health Communified: Navigating Digital Consumptionscapes of Well-Being
(Emerald Group Publishing Ltd, 2017) Cavusoglu, Lena; Demirbağ Kaplan, Melike
Purpose - Historically, research on perceptions of health either converged upon the meanings created and proposed by specialists in the healthcare industry or focused on people who have medical conditions. This approach has failed to capture how the meanings and notions of health have been evolving as medicine extends into non-medical spheres and has left gaps in the exploration of how the meanings surrounding health and well-being are constructed, negotiated and reproduced in lay discourse. This paper aims to fill this gap in the understanding of the perceptions surrounding health by investigating consumers' digitized visual accounts on social media. Design/methodology/approach - Textual network and visual content analyses of posts extracted from Instagram are used to derive conclusions on definitions of health and well-being as perceived by healthy lay individuals. Findings - Research demonstrates that digital discourse of health is clustered around four F's, namely, food, fitness, fashion and feelings, which can be categorized with respect to their degrees of representation on a commodification/communification versus bodily/spiritual well-beingmap. Originality/value - Our knowledge about the meanings of health as constructed and reflected by healthy lay people is very limited and even more so about how these meaning-making processes is realized through digital media. This paper contributes to theory by integrating consumers' meaning-making literature into health perceptions, as well as investigating the role of social networks in enabling a consumptionscape of well-being. Besides a methodological contribution of using social network analysis on textual data, this paper also provides valuable insights for policy-makers, communicators and professionals of health.