This paper examines the distinct world of online poker. It outlines the online poker eco-system, and the players which inhabit it, their distinctive attitudes and behaviors towards the game and gambling. These unique patterns of behavior have been created and sustained by the interaction of players within online poker forums. Therefore online poker forums were identified as primary mechanism within which a poker sub-culture may exist. The study conducted an extensive netnography of online poker forums. The study found that within the online poker eco-system there are forums which are elevated to sacred status amongst this online poker sub-culture. The members of these forums enact sub-cultural characteristics such as ethos of collaboration/cooperation, and a competitive hierarchy of status. In particular this paper identifies the importance of identity generation, and communities within the online poker eco-system.

This paper explores consumer behaviour on the popular anonymous social networking site (SNS) Yik Yak. It examines the reasons behind the turn to anonymous social networking and also considers the ways in which anonymity impacts consumers' selfperformances on SNS.Design/Methodology/Approach -The study utilised a netnographic approach to explore Yik Yak across eight universities in Ireland and the UK. Data are based on observation and participation on the app. Screenshots on smart phones were the central method used to collect data. Data also included twelve in-depth interviews.Findings -Young consumers are becoming fatigued by the negative effects of selfpresentation on many SNS. By enabling consumers to engage in what they consider to be more authentic modes of being and interaction, Yik Yak provides respite from these pressures. Through the structures of its design, Yik Yak enables consumers to realise selfauthentication in anonymised self-performances that engender a sense of virtue and social connection.Originality/Value -By invoking a performative lens, this paper extends a novel theoretical approach to understandings of identity formation within consumer research. Highlighting anonymity as a dynamic process of socio-material enactments, the study reveals how consumers' self-performances are brought into effect through the citation of various discursive arrangements, which promulgate distinct understandings of authenticity.Practical Implications: This research highlights the potential value of anonymous SNS in fostering supportive dialog, concerning mental health amongst post-millennials.

No abstract

Consumer research has offered a multitude of understandings of space. While these insights have contributed both to absolute and relativistic appreciations, the discourse has tended more often towards absolute representations. Through an examination of Irish road bowling, built from a four year ethnography, we position Henri Lefebvre's triadic model of social space as a heuristic device that may be used to further relativistic representations of space. In doing so we expose how Irish road bowlers produce space on public roads. We find that such space and the actions of road bowlers within it are deeply influenced by both historic and contemporary socio-cultural discourses. In this way we highlight how Lefebvre can be used to get at the context of context and offer an alternative understanding of normative and existential communitas.

Marketing scholarship has commonly demonstrated how consumers assemble heroic identities as a means to facilitate forms of empowerment and emancipatory consumption. Although some insight into more troubling aspects of heroic discourses has been shared, prioritisation of the positive potentialities of heroism remain privileged. We invoke social heroism as an interpretive lens to study the lived experiences of parent-carer’s to children with impairments, employing paradoxes of heroism as heuristics to explore how heroic discourses disempower parent-carers. We find that parent-carers do not identify with the heroism surrounding care. Instead, they view themselves as unessential due to the ableist tenets that underlie heroic discourses. We uncover three problematizing and subtle practices of ableism; purification, micro-aggressions and responsibilized-commoditization. Such insight, (i) advances marketing theory’s understanding of the socio-political structuring of heroism, (ii) advances discourse on consumer vulnerabilities and ableism and (iii) begins to meet the calls for research into care politics and justice.