Collaborative Consumption of Children's Products and Clothes
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2018
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Marketing
Language
en
Pages
91 + 9
Series
Abstract
This research studies how consumers engage in collaborative consumption and how they consume within. Furthermore, this study contributes to the existing literature by identifying key practices, which are most evident within collaborative consumption. The context of this research is children’s products and clothes, and thus the aim of this study is to find out how parents engage in collaborative consumption as an alternative marketplace for children’s products and clothes. To explore the practices within collaborative consumption and their profound meanings, practice theory is used. This study addresses the sayings, doings, underlying understandings, explicit rules and teleoaffective structures, which are all inherent dimensions of a practice (Schatzki, 1996). Moreover, by taking the practice theoretical approach, this study is enable to not only describe the process of doing something but also address the underlying elements that influence why something is done in a certain way. In order to examine how parents engage collaborative consumption of children’s products and clothes as an alternative market place and what kind of practices are related to it, 8 semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted. Narrative inquiry is interested in making sense of overall human action and human meaning. From the interview data, this study identified four thematic groups of practices, buying, selling, sharing and owning, which describe different ways of engaging in collaborative consumption of children’s products and clothes. The first thematic group of buying demonstrates how redistribution markets are used to save money, do impulse purchases and kill time. The second thematic group of selling illustrates how redistribution markets are used to get rid of unnecessary stuff. It also entails the idea of sorting goods, as different goods are sold through different channels to get maximum amount of money back, as well as the idea of teaching others, since besides tangible items, also knowledge was often shared. The third identified theme discusses sharing, which indicates that redistribution markets can be used to give and receive used goods as well as to help others. The fourth and last thematic group of owning illustrates how redistribution markets enable temporary owning and renting. It also discussed how parents saved certain objects. Together these four identified thematic groups form the idea of engaging in collaborative consumption of children’s products and clothes as a social hobby.Description
Thesis advisor
Toyoki, SammyCozma, Petri
Keywords
sharing economy, collaborative consumption, redistribution markets, practice theory, narrative research