Browsing by Author "Hietanen, Joel"

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  • Companion for the videography ‘Monstrous Organizing - The Dubstep Electronic Music Scene’
    (2018-05) Hietanen, Joel; Rokka, Joonas
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    This companion essay contributes to video-based organizational research by critically assessing conventional representational modes of videographic practice and conceptualizing an ‘expressive’ ontology for videographic research. We offer an image of thought that foregrounds the creative and powerfully affective potential of both videographic work and spectatorship. To advance this perspective and to inspire future research, we present our videography (length 30 minutes) that integrates various ‘expressive’ elements in montage form. We use the film to scrutinize the potential of video-based research and several methodological considerations tied to it. In doing so, we argue that video-based organizing of research activities can be seen as ‘monstrous’, an entire emergent mode of aesthetic storytelling that comes into being not in ‘capturing’ or ‘recording’, but rather as an affective production of potentialities.
  • Case Nordea
    (2019) Rusanen, Ringa
     School of Business | Master's thesis
  • Era of Talent War: Attracting and retaining the best talent by conveying employer brand promise through recruitment
    (2019) Lonka, Venla
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Objective The purpose of the study was to find out how companies can leverage employer branding in their recruitment process to attain the best possible talent. Academics have been focused on defining the concept of ‘employer branding’ and therefore there is lack of empirical research on implementation of employer branding strategies to recruitment. This thesis focuses on the concrete benefits employer branding can provide for companies when attracting new and retaining current talents. Practices of employer branding was investigated within the frames of a case company: Oy Karl Fazer Ab. Methodology The research was a descriptive and qualitative case study. Data was gathered via 9 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted to recruiters of Fazer and recently recruited employees of Fazer. In addition to interviews, media articles, annual reports and internal materials concerning recruitment and employer branding strategy received from Fazer. Findings The role of employer branding will be increased in recruitment in the future. It was found that company culture is one of the main reasons to leave or stay in the company. In order to attract and retain the best available talent, companies ought to consider this as management issue and implement the employer branding strategy systematically covering all functions and stakeholders of the company. Moreover, similar to marketing messaging and customer journeys, job applicants are wanting personalized and customized experiences during recruitment process. Especially in recruitment dialogue, communication could be enhanced with digital tools such as artificial intelligence to create customized messaging about the progress of recruitment.
  • Flawless devices, faulty users: Finnish young adults’ representations of smartphone usage
    (2017) Kallionpää, Stella
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Finnish smartphone users lead the global statistics of data usage. This makes them an ideal consumer group to research technology consumption practices. It has been estimated that consumers use their smartphones as much as one third of the time that they are awake. The device has become essential in everyday life as consumers have it always with them and it is always on. Smartphone usage has been researched for example in terms of technology adaptation and desired functionalities, but the research on consumers’ emotions towards technology is limited. The focus of this study is especially in the contradictions and paradoxes that Finnish young adults express in their narratives of theirsmartphones and smartphone usage. Past research on technology paradoxes, information technology development, postmodern consumption culture and social constructivism on technology serve as theoretical background for the study. This study has been done by using qualitative research methods. The data consists of ten interviews and projective techniques including sentence compilations and autodriving. Young Finnish adults who live in big cities and have high education were selected for the interviews, as statistically they are heavy users of smartphones, thus making them interesting subject of technology paradox research. The findings of this study outline the major mismatch in consumers’ narratives: they perceive their smartphones as useful and capable devices but consider their own smartphone consumption as incapable and counterproductive, which results into feelings of distress, anxiety and guilt. This misusage appears in multiple forms, interpreted in four themes of guilt: using smartphones to procrastinate, damaging meaningful social relations with smartphone usage, misusing or overdosing the massive amount of content and not meeting the expectations to be available. The narrative of flawless device and faulty user has implications both for consumer research and for management. The main contribution of this study is to widen the focus of academic legacy from the paradoxes of technology to the paradoxes of technology consumption. The study portrays the shift from consumers’ perceptions of their smartphones as devices to perceptions of themselves as smartphone users. This offers a fruitful basis for further research on technology consumption, which is an inseparable part of postmodern life.
  • From dust to buzz: Reconfiguring space for organization-creation
    (2024-04) Kuismin, Ari; Wickström, Alice; Hietanen, Joel; Katila, Saija
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    In this paper, we examine the relationship between space and entrepreneurship, understood as organization-creation, by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s spatial theorizing. Building on an ethnographic study of the Nordic Start-Up Incubator, we focus on the ongoing material, discursive, and affective reconfiguration of space to promote entrepreneurial ‘buzz’. We show how emancipatory promises (smoothings) are entangled with a logic of enterprise (striations), and how this ambiguity is enacted (folds) as organization-creation emerges spatially. This allows us to problematize the distinction often made between entrepreneurial spaces of emancipation and managerial spaces of control and to consider how they may co-constitute each other through subtle twists and turns. We conclude by discussing this multiplicity and ambiguity with regard to the politics of entrepreneurial spaces
  • The haunting specter of retro consumption
    (2021-06-01) Ahlberg, Oscar; Hietanen, Joel; Soila, Tuomas
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    We propose to intensify theorizing on retromarketing and nostalgic consumption by further developing “hauntology” as a conceptual lens for assessing the retro aesthetic as a commodified affective excess of meaning. This allows us to explore the consumption of marketized retrospective signs not from the perspective of personal experiences or creative meaning-makings but rather as affective encounters that desire in consumption desperately latches onto. In our view, it is thus not an aesthetic satisfaction, nostalgic comfort, or playful emancipations that are offered to us by retro consumption. Following a darker development of hauntology, we find ourselves instead thrust into spectral presences that we can never quite articulate, a haunting within us in an atmosphere of late capitalism where temporal belief in the future has been “cancelled.”
  • How consumption communities shape sustainable consumption? Studying antifouling painting as a communal practice in the Baltic Sea
    (2017) Saukkonen, Noora
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Objectives The main objective of the study is to explore the role of consumption community for sustainable consumption. The background of the study lies in the unsustainable consumption of the toxic antifouling paints in recreational boats in the Baltic Sea, hence the context of the study is in recreational boating and boat maintenance in the Baltic Sea. The study adapts practice theory, focusing on the practice elements, to explain the lack of sustainable consumption. The aim is to extend the present understanding on why leisure boaters find it hard to switch to ecological antifouling techniques by offering explanations for the role of boating community in explaining unsustainable consumption. In addition, the study aims at identifying potential opportunities and barriers boating community creates for sustainable consumption. The study lies under consumer culture theory (CCT) as market place cultures and communities form one of the main research programs of CCT. Methodology The study is qualitative in nature. The theoretical framework bases on practice theory, which also constructs the research approach of the study to understand the practice of antifouling painting, which is in the center of the analysis. The empirical data of the study consists of ethnography at the boatyards and harbors and eight in-depth interviews with leisure time boaters. Key Findings The findings indicate how the role of boating community in explaining the lack of sustainable consumption is prominent. The study finds that numerous factors within the practice elements of materials, competences and meanings explain boating community in terms of unsustainable consumption. Interestingly, the findings foreground how boating community can at times hinder sustainable consumption practices by uncovering the opportunities and barriers boating community is identified to create for sustainable consumption. Understanding the influence of consumption community and connected practice elements in terms of unsustainable consumption is helpful in trying to change the consumption to more sustainable. The study suggests that the change needs to start within the boating community. Marketers should be aware of the potential barriers boating community indicates to be creating as well. Furthermore, the findings contribute to the international research project CHANGE, which aims at changing leisure boat owners’ behaviors and making the Baltic Sea cleaner.
  • How do EU consumers see their privacy in the era of the GDPR?
    (2019) Kovacs, Zsofia
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    With modern-age technology allowing tracking, collecting, analysing and storing large amount of data, online data privacy has become a key topic. Data breaches and cases demonstrating unethical use of data have led to increased privacy concerns. To address such concerns, legislation is evolving along with improving technology to protect consumers’ privacy. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been introduced in the EU to strengthen privacy of EU citizens. Being in force since May 2018, the regulation package aims to increase data security through enhancing transparency, improved control over one’s data, reinforcing trust towards companies and better protection against data breaches. This study explores EU consumers’ data privacy experience in these areas to see how the GDPR impacted data privacy experience during its first year. The findings of this study show that the GDPR had a positive impact on transparency, control, trust and overall data security but consumers haven’t noticed significant changes in terms of data privacy. While transparency, control and trust have improved, there are significant gaps to close in terms of digital literacy, awareness and real options for disclosing data. The biggest obstacles seem to be the vast amount of data, the effort privacy protection requires, inevitability to disclose data when using services and the lack of awareness of one’s existing personal data and privacy threats. The study also confirmed existing theory (Schermer et al., 2014) about privacy fatigue and the counterproductive effects of strict consent requirements. Consumers see the GDPR as an insurance for future privacy issues and the perceived usefulness of the new regulation depends on demonstrating that it’s able to hold companies accountable for unethical behaviour.
  • Videographic encounters with the Helsinki start-up scene
    (2019) Hurskainen, Riku
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Dear reader, please watch the videographic counterpart of this study, labeled with the same name: Making strategy in the flow of Pöhinä – Videographic encounters with the Helsinki start-up scene. This output will be available in the Vimeo web-service and can be searched with its title. In case of changes in the Vimeo service, the video will be made available elsewhere and will be searchable using any internet search engine. This paper and the corresponding video are both valid in itself as an academic study to read or view as they stand, but to truly understand the phenomena, it is strongly advised to watch and read both of them. For the ones who watched the video and seek an empiric written theorization of the phenomena, this is the right study to read. This study is about the people and the affective ways of doing strategy in the Helsinki start-up eco-system of Maria01. It aims to provide an interesting glimpse to the subjective processes which are used to implement and design working strategies in these starting companies and to present the scene they operate. The phenomena of strategy-making will be contextualized by theories first de-scribing the entrepreneurs who make it themselves. After this, how the strategy is being made will be described on the prior studies of affectivity and performativity, binding these to the concept of effectuation. This will give us a coherent concept to describe the strategy making happening. The phenomena is studied by three in-depth interviews of three young successful start-up CEO’s. The interviews are not only analyzed following the tradition of interpretive consumer research and delivered in text to the reader, but are filmed and edited to an expressive form, to deliver the reader a videographic performance and experience of the phenomena. With this research, I am to analyze whether the universal traits of entrepreneurship, leadership and strategy-making still stand in the very contemporary and young start-ups of the Maria01 start-up incubator in Helsinki, the so-called “Pöhinä”-scene, and what forces affect them. This research also serves as a contribution to the vid-eography academia and is one of the first ones to investigate strategy as a phenomena through this method.
  • Mapping the absence: a theological critique of posthumanist influences in marketing and consumer research
    (2020-10-12) Botez, Andrei; Hietanen, Joel; Tikkanen, Henrikki
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    In this study, we critically examine the ongoing adoption of various posthumanist influences into the fields of marketing and consumer research from a theological perspective. By conducting a theological-historical assessment, we propose that it is not posthuman notions of human/technology relations, nor their broader context in the emerging non-representational paradigms, that mark radically new disruptions in the continuing restructuring of the disciplines of marketing and consumer research. Instead, we argue that what is taking place is an implicit adherence to a contemporary form of age-old Christian dogma. As a radical conjecture, we thus propose that an identification of certain similarities between Christian dogma and the grounds for various posthumanist frameworks suggest that posthuman thought may well herald the global dissemination of a far more elusive, authoritarian, and hegemonic system than that which posthumanists typically claim to have abandoned. Consequently, we elaborate on implications to developments in marketing thought.
  • The Paradox of Appearing Authentic and Endorsing Sponsored Content
    (2020) Pärnänen, Paula
     School of Business | Master's thesis
  • The r/wallstreetbets ‘war machine’: Explicating dynamics of consumer resistance and capture
    (2023-06) Jones, Hunter; Hietanen, Joel
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    Following the recent #GameStop ‘market disruption’ where r/wallstreetbets ‘rogue’ traders were able to momentarily topple billion dollar hedge funds, we employ Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘war machine’ concept in order to comment on the potential of consumer resistance when matched up against global financial markets. While most extant theory follows the Foucauldian tradition in asserting that consumer resistance is a reaction to power, we use Deleuze and Guattari’s immanent theorisation of desire to make the case for thinking of resistance as primary. Far from a hagiography of affective affirmation, our immanent perspective draws attention to how state and corporate forms are readily able to co-opt consumer resistance. Ultimately, we make the case for reorienting consumer resistance research away from seeking out ruptures and breaks in stable structures of power to asking a more difficult question: how can resistance be organised to avoid capture?
  • Redefining the role of marketing - a qualitative case study on how marketing is seen in Finnish B2B companies
    (2019) Puputti, Pauliina
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Digitalization, emerging technologies, and the increasingly transparent markets are forcing companies to rethink their business models and the ways they can engage with their customers and ecosystems. To understand this changing landscape of marketing, the objective of this study is to gain a better view on how marketing is organized in the future. As marketing in a B2B context is not discussed as broadly as in a B2C context, the focus here is to understand how the marketing leaders in B2B organizations see the future of marketing and the role of CMO to develop. This paper seeks to contribute to the existing marketing literature by examining the needed organizational structures in the future as well as by identifying the required components and capabilities for future marketing success. The empirical part of this research was conducted as an embedded single case study. The data was mainly collected through semi-structured interviews with a total of 9 marketing leaders from internationally operating B2B companies. The empirical data was analyzed and then compared with the previous literature to formulate the research findings. Overall, the findings contributed to the research questions by determining the organizational structure for a customer-centric firm and by identifying several organizational components and capabilities affecting the success of marketing in the future. The research findings demonstrate that managing customer experiences is becoming increasingly essential for B2B organizations in the future. As customer experiences consist of all the encounters a customer has with a firm’s product, services, and brand, there needs to be a closer alignment of customer-facing functions (i.e. marketing, sales and customer service) to support the seamless and coherent customer experience throughout the customer journey. This will result in the creation of customer and market operations functions, which primary purpose is to ensure the superior customer experience. This customer-centric focus will also force firms to redefine their culture to be more outside-in as well as to adapt their operating models, tools, and metrics. Technological development will bring new opportunities for organizations to enable the data-driven and proactive approach to offer more personalized, contextual and relevant dialogue and services for their customers. Therefore, closer cooperation with other supporting functions such as IT and R&D are also needed in the future. Overall, 12 marketing components were identified as essential for marketing success in the future.
  • Renegotiation of consumption practices in the presence of volunteering experience
    (2017) Padhaiskaya, Tatsiana
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Objectives The main objective of the research is to understand how regular engagement into helping activities contributes to changes in consumption practices among volunteers, especially if the nature of volunteering experience is mundane rather than extraordinary. Precisely, this research aims to identify key aspects of volunteering experience that contribute to behavioral changes. The study also focuses on the process of renegotiation of consumption practices among volunteers who have been engaged in helping activities for a relatively long time. Methodology This research is qualitative and interpretive in nature. Seven regular volunteers, who are involved in organization of multicultural events at Finnish Red Cross, were interviewed. Field notes gathered during ethnographic observations in the volunteering groups complemented data collected during long unstructured interviews. Data collection, analysis and interpretations followed the narrative research approach and method. Key findings This study discovers that prolonged engagement into helping activities leads to changes in consumption practices, even if the nature of those activities is mundane rather than extraordinary. Aspects present in volunteering experience, as acquisition of cultural and social capitals as well as volunteer-related stereotypes, contribute to the process of circular self-reflection. In the presence of new knowledge and connections, volunteers renegotiate previously stable consumption practices in an attempt to become more responsible consumers. Primary socialization mediates this process. Key findings also describe various strategies that volunteers exploit to renegotiate consumption. The study emphasizes the dual role of volunteering in this process – it both predisposes consumers towards changes and sometimes acts as a reason to justify excessive spending.
  • The role of C2C relationships in B2B brand community - Case: Thinking Portfolio
    (2019) Kalmari, Reeta
     School of Business | Master's thesis
    Brand communities are a phenomenon that has been studied mainly in the context of B2C companies. However, brand communities could offer large benefits also for B2B companies, especially as in B2B market long-term customer relationships are often in an important role. Relationships among the customers, the C2C relationships, are the most important relationship in a B2B brand community and the most important incentive for the brand community members to belong to the brand community. The purpose of the study is to explore the C2C relationships in the brand community of Thinking Portfolio. Thinking Portfolio is a Finnish B2B company, the main product of which is a project portfolio management tool. Thinking Portfolio customers consist of large international corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises and public sector organizations. The study aims to answer two research questions: (1) “What kind of C2C relationships there are in Thinking Portfolio brand community?” and (2) “What benefits Thinking Portfolio brand community members get from C2C relationships?”. In addition to answering these research questions, the study aims to find ways and suggestions on how Thinking Portfolio as a company could benefit from the brand community and develop it further. The research method used is a qualitative case study. The main data collection method is 10 semi-structured interviews of Thinking Portfolio customers. In addition to the interviews, previously written customer stories and a video recording of a presentation given by a customer at Thinking Portfolio User Day were analyzed. Also, observation was done in User Day 2018 event organized by Thinking Portfolio. The results of the study, first of all, indicate that there is a brand community around Thinking Portfolio, however it is quite loose and it does not include all Thinking Portfolio customers. Secondly, there are two kinds of C2C relationships in Thinking Portfolio brand community: C2C relationships inside customer organizations and C2C relationships among customer organizations. These relationships differ between different organizations regarding scope, quantity and mode. Thirdly, it was found out that C2C relationships create a lot of functional benefits, but only few experiential and symbolic benefits. Examples of the functional benefits that the brand community members receive from the C2C relationships are concrete practical tips, solutions to problems and new information and ideas. Suggestions for Thinking Portfolio were constructed from the findings of the research. They relate to virtual brand community, Round Table discussion events, recommendations to new customers, and seeing brand community as part of other operations.
  • “Something is missing”: Melancholia and belonging in collective consumption
    (2021-03-01) Wickstrom, Alice; Denny, Iain; Hietanen, Joel
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    In this essay, we explore the limits of marketized belonging through Kristeva?s theorization of melancholia and desire. This allows us to problematize ?joyful? accounts of societal re-enchantment and how ?belonging? through collectives of consumption (such as neo-tribes, subcultures of consumption, and brand communities) is generally seen as a natural response to modernist rationalization and increased individualization. Instead, we argue that the scholarly understanding of collective forms of consumption has been premised upon paradoxical ground due to the notion of the subject-as-consumer as lacking often being implicitly reproduced, albeit theoretically neglected, allowing for the reproduction of romanticized ideals of marketized ?communality.? We foreground how tensions between individuality and communality are negotiated within markets and argue that collective forms of consumption feed upon separation, fragmentation, and the suspension of ?joy? rather than relationality and belonging. We propose that this allows for a better understanding of the desire to become through collective consumption and direct further attention toward questions related to liminality, detachment, loss, and exclusion.
  • Special section – The moral legitimatisation of money and debt in consumer society
    (2024-06) Arnould, Eric; Soila, Tuomas; Hietanen, Joel; Huotari, Ilmari; Pantzar, Mika
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    This introduction to the special section brings into focus how little interest the marketing and consumer research academies have shown in money and debt: both philosophically and historically. When recognised explicitly, money and debt continue to be treated largely as 'givens' – epiphenomena morally embedded in consumer culture and rarely questioned. We assess how this situation has come about in these fields' theoretical lineages and anticipate future directions of inquiry. We also introduce our three contributions and weave them into the narrative of our story.
  • Videography in consumer culture theory : an account of essence(s) and production
    (2012) Hietanen, Joel
     School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)
    Liberated into the online virtual spaces through digitalization, video media has become an omnipresent part of our lives. Simultaneously, the videographic method for conducting and expressing ethnographic research has received increasing attention in the field of consumer culture theory (CCT). Yet, as is the usual case with nascent and still marginal research orientations, the publications about the method have been relatively descriptive, and thus have not explored the potential of the approach from a philosophical perspective. This dissertation addresses this gap and develops a possible ontology and epistemology for conducting and expressing research on video media. How is videographic expression different compared to text and photography? What could it be like to experience it? While such a philosophical account of essence(s) in video work in CCT calls for establishment, there is also a need to further consider issues about the production of videographic research on a workbench level, i.e. what the production of such visual ethnographic research is like. In this study an epistemology of videographic relation is constructed, in a bricolage fashion, by adapting ‘postmodern’ perspectives from ‘poststructuralist’, ‘radical humanist’ and a Deleuzian ‘superior empiricist’ perspectives. This Deleuzian approach eschews the objectifying and Cartesian logic of representation and any correspondence between video and a reality that is often attributed to the videographic image. Instead, I will present possibilities for evocative relations of affect and embodiment that have the potential to emancipate thought and thus constitute an efficacious relation towards the world. Adopting key notions from Deleuzian philosophy of cinematography, I will also provide concrete approaches from my three earlier videographic projects, in order to bring these abstract notions into practice by utilizing various aesthetics of the moving image, thus extending the toolkit of aspiring videography researchers in CCT.
  • Your trash, my treasure – personal values of secondhand clothing shoppers
    (2017) Kareinen, Kira
     School of Business | Master's thesis