Purpose: This paper's purpose is to develop a meaning-based framework for customer loyalty by examining how consumers make sense of customer loyalty through meanings and metaphors.Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative study based on in-depth interviews and focus group data in the retail context was conducted with Finnish customers. The data were analysed with qualitative data analysis techniques such as the constant comparative technique.Findings: The empirical findings comprise eight loyalty meanings characterised by two dimensions. The first dimension is reflexive vs. routinised, and the second dimension is private vs. social. The loyalty types are dimensionalised through four metaphors: loyalty as freedom of choice; as being conventional and binding; and as belongingness.Practical implications: The findings improve the way customer loyalty currently is understood in the retail setting. The paper proposes that customer insight that utilises thick data can be used to grasp loyalty meanings. These data are rich in context and detail, and they take into account customers' everyday lives. Utilising thick data in the form of storytelling fuels customers' meaning-making related to customer loyalty, potentially enriching their relationship with the retailer.Originality/value: Customer loyalty has been driven largely by a transactional and company-centric perspective. This article presents an alternative view of customer loyalty that accounts for the variety of meanings that customers may assign to their loyalty-related thoughts and behaviours.

This study describes and analyses how practices organise temporality to reduce food waste. The study builds upon the material turn in practice theories and an ontological approach that together highlight emerging relations between humans and non-humans in practices. Three theoretical propositions are constructed that inform the empirical analysis. The study utilises empirical qualitative data from a Finnish blog campaign ‘From Waste to Delicacy’. The study identifies four bundles of practices organising temporality: scheduling, pausing, stretching and synchronising. Within these bundles of practices, potential food waste is enacted differently: as not realised food waste, revitalised food, refuted food waste and harmonised food (waste). The study produces novel understanding about temporal inter-relations between humans and non-humans – the dance of agency – in household food waste reduction.

This study focuses on food waste and its reduction by describing and analyzing the food waste-related everyday life of Japanese consumers through a practice theoretical lens. The research enables paying attention to the role of culture in sustainable consumer behavior, which is a largely unexplored area in previous food waste research. The methodological approach is qualitative and the empirical data of the study were generated through mobile ethnography. It combines elements from diary methods, multi-sited ethnography, and digital ethnography, producing visual and textual data of the practices that the participants of the study considered meaningful. The analysis identifies materials, meanings, and competences of the practices related to food waste reduction. These practices were interlinked with five broader food-related practices: planning, grocery shopping, cooking, eating, and handling surplus food. The findings reveal specific elements related to Japanese culture such as mottainai—a concept used to express the regret of wasting something valuable. The study contributes to the literature on sustainable consumption by emphasizing the importance of identifying and understanding how culturally linked practices may support sustainable (or unsustainable) consumption.

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to build a sociocultural perspective of brand revitalization. Maintaining brands and bringing them back to life in the market has received much less interest than their creation. Moreover, the existing literature is dominated by the marketing management paradigm where the company’s role is emphasized. This paper addresses the phenomenon of brand revitalization from a sociocultural perspective and examines the role of consumer collectives in the process.Design/methodology/approach: Using a data-driven approach, the study builds on the case of a consumer brand of footwear that has risen to unprecedented popularity without traditional marketing campaigns. Data were generated using an inductive theory building approach utilizing multiple methods, including interviews, participant observation and cultural materials.Findings: The paper presents a conceptual model of cultural brand revitalization that has four stages: sleeping brand, spontaneous appropriation, diffusion and convergence.Practical implications: Implications for companies in consumer markets are discussed, suggesting ways to facilitate the process of sociocultural brand revitalization.Originality/value: The paper contributes to the literature first by offering a sociocultural brand revitalization scenario that highlights the interplay between the actions of consumers and the company, second, by examining the interaction between the symbolic meanings associated with the brand and the practices used by consumers and, third, by offering insights into the relevance of national identity in creating brand meaning.