This research proposes a consumer behavior model that highlights how women may be valuated across a continuum of living human being to commodity. We use the social epidemic of men's sexual violence against women to build a model that reframes sexual violence as men's violent consumption of women. Our model describes the process through which men can think about women as a commodity. We propose different paths through which commoditization occurs—men perceiving women as instrumental, interchangeable, and violable, as well as denying their subjectivity and autonomy—which can lead to violent consumption (the commitment of sexual violence). While sexual violence is a complex problem that defies easy solutions, we believe our nuanced and concrete model is more informative to actions to stop sexual violence than existing theories. We also discuss the role of other factors, including the marketplace, in enabling, attenuating, and reversing this process.

Prior research stresses the importance of consumer participation in service coproduction. We examine the coproduction of aesthetic services, which are services in which beauty is a critical outcome. Consumers face challenges communicating their aesthetic tastes because of technical constraints that are understood by service providers but that consumers do not fully understand. To fill this gap, consumers do aesthetic work in communities of practice. Service providers also face challenges, as they must coproduce with consumers whose aesthetic tastes are formed amid shifting social standards. In this qualitative study, we highlight aesthetic work as a different type of consumer work that involves developing cultural competence. We identify four types of aesthetic coproduction in which cultural competence is distributed differently within the service dyad: aesthetic codesigning, aesthetic consenting, aesthetic yielding, and aesthetic reigning. We explore the managerial implications that arise as consumers increasingly use online social resources that shape and increase aesthetic expectations. We examine the unintended consequences of aesthetic service coproduction in which providers’ technical and aesthetic expertise is difficult for consumers to understand often leading to disappointing outcomes.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer relationship marketing (CRM) activities are utilized by plastic surgery providers to encourage the sale of non-surgical cosmetic procedures (such as Botox). These procedures are considered to be an important gateway for future, more invasive (and profitable) services. As a result, the techniques used to build relationships with clients may be unethical, as they prioritize increased financial performance and profitability over customer well-being. Design/methodology/approach Conceptual models are presented that compare and contrast the CRM activities, mediators and expected outcomes for plastic surgery providers, motivated primarily by profit, with those primarily motivated by mutual betterment. Findings It is suggested that when accompanied by sales promotions, problem augmentation – an approach used by plastic surgeons to broaden the scope of a patient’s aesthetic problem to other areas of concern – may generate increased sales in the short term, but reduce the opportunity of positive word-of-mouth to recruit new clients. Originality/value This paper applies relationship marketing to a novel context to demonstrate how practices to retain and improve clients may harm their well-being and commoditize the service, unless mutual betterment is a key objective.

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