Exploring and Conceptualizing Illegitimate Exchange Activities—Towards an Understanding of Black Marketing

• Main Authors: Caskey, D''Arcy Nelson, 凱達西
• Other Authors: Ming-Huei Hsieh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7h824h

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國際企業學研究所 === 101 === The many economic exchanges and supporting activities found in black markets have long remained outside marketing academia’s generally recognized scope. Marketing literature’s silence towards black marketing is unusual considering these activities’ global prevalence, aggregate value, and the many influences they have on consumer preferences and choices in underground and legitimate markets alike. This thesis explores aspects of black marketing in two essays. One essay contextualizes black marketing activities in relation to the scope of conventional marketing. The other develops a conceptual process model based on an empirical examination of a specific group of seldom studied but frequently encountered black marketing phenomena. The first essay begins with a review of the marketing literature, which reveals illegitimate exchanges have seldom been investigated because they do not fall within conventional interpretations of marketing. Instead marketing has focused almost exclusively on legitimate exchanges that create positive perceived value (to both parties). Several main obstacles that have contributed to marketing academia’s lack of interest in these phenomena are also identified and explained. Next a conceptual framework is introduced that underlies all different types of exchange activities including illegitimate ones. This framework, which is grounded on an extensive review of marketing and other relevant literatures, classifies exchange activities along three dimensions: value, legal legitimacy, and free will. The result is a conceptual marketing universe that can be divided into 16 sectors. This essay contributes to the marketing literature by identifying, describing, and contextualizing the many illegitimate exchange activities have been mostly excluded until now. It also overcomes most of the obstacles identified in the literature review. This framework provides a guide for future research that wishes to explore relevant topics. It also implies that many existing marketing theories/models can be reexamined to identify the possible influences of black marketing activities that initially went unnoticed. The limitations and implications of this framework are also discussed. The second essay investigates one specific and infrequently discussed black marketing activity that was identified in the previously proposed conceptual framework—scams. The diverse exchange activities that make up this group share the characteristics of illegitimacy, one-way or negative-value transfer, and the use of deception. This is an important research inquiry because scams pervade global markets and consumers’ everyday lives. Furthermore scams directly and indirectly affect the marketing and perception of the legitimate marketing objects they imitate. Despite this topic’s importance, existing research from a marketing perspective is extremely limited and disparate. This empirical study helps fill this knowledge gap. Data for this study was gathered from multiple sources including police and governmental websites, online self-reports, media articles, and face-to-face in-depth victim interviews. The subsequent analysis took a sociocultural-cognitive perspective and utilized a qualitative research methodology, which led to the development of the process model of victim acceptance of scams. The process of victimization begins with thinking errors during authenticity processing and continues with default processes at both conscious and nonconscious levels. According to this model victims process scams as authentic cultural information (CI) when in fact the CI is mimicked. Frequently mimicked types of CI are also identified and classified, which helps highlight the common thinking errors that scams take advantage of. The model also shows how supplementary distracting and confounding CI helps compel victims to voluntarily transfer value to the scammer. The essay concludes with a discussion of the implications of this model to both marketing in general and social marketing in particular. Several propositions are also introduced that can be tested in future research. Limitations of the current framework are likewise discussed.