Prof. Eileen Fischer, eminent marketing researcher, talks about the roles that emotional work plays in creating and sustaining alternative markets. If you've ever wanted to "shop local," you'll be surprised to learn how much emotional effort it takes to keep alternative markets running.

Making a simple consumer choice has become a minefield of moralizing and shame. It’s not enough to buy the right products, you have to use them in the right way. Dr. Ela Veresiu, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Schulich School of Business, studies how consumer behaviour is moralized. With her co-authors, she has identified four scripts that people follow in taking a moral position on the products and services they use.

Authenticity. Corporations chase it. Consumers desire it. Maxim Voronov, Professor of Sustainability and Organization at the Schulich School of Business, studies authenticity in a business context. He breaks it down into two categories, traditionality and originality. Which one a corporation pursues depends on factors such as how large they are and how old they are. In this episode, host Cameron Graham talks to Maxim about his study of authenticity in the Canadian whisky industry.

Prof. Markus Giesler, of the Schulich School of Business at York University, is a consumer researcher. This means he looks at how markets dynamically shape human behaviour. He is an Editor at the Journal of Consumer Research and the bright spark behind one of the most popular courses at our school, "Customer Experience Design." It’s a course that models customer experience design for his students in every lecture, project, and assignment. In this episode, he talks about his latest research paper, “The Consumerization Of Care,” in which he explores how we as a society have responded to the global pandemic in ways that redefine social solidarity.

Assistant Prof. Ela Veresiu is a marketing scholar unlike any other. Her research on consumer behaviour deals with an impressively diverse range of subjects, from super-elite members of the World Economic Forum to Roma migrants in Italy.