Head of MINT Centre : Isabella Soscia
MINT (Market Interactions) mission is to be a hub for researchers passionate for studying complex and dynamic interactions in market, consumers, and society. Our aim is to effectively and morally guide consumers, organisations, and institutions toward a sustainable future through the development of exploratory and quantitative market-relevant research.
Research themes
First, MINT researchers are interested in studying the relations among different stakeholders in marketing domain such as the online communities’ dynamics and the discussions generated in these contexts, the cross-class marketplace encounters, and the interactions among consumers, governments, and companies. For example, one piece of research in this domain explores how new middle-class consumers, who are facing the current economic crisis after having experienced more than a decade of expansion in consumption, put in place strategies that minimize the effects of the crisis and remain invested in consumer culture.
Secondly, MINT researchers focus on objects of stakeholders' interactions, namely brands, applications and interface design, but also waste, disposal, and common goods, such as public health and climate. For example, one of the papers published in this area examines sustainable consumption behavior in the context of the annual inorganic collection.
Thirdly, some MINT projects analyze the moral regulation of these interactions in both local and global environments: the emotions elicited in clients by marketing conducts, the ideological contestation, the anti-consumption practices, and the consumer resistance. For example, one work in progress examines the conditions in which corporate misconduct (in regard to climate change) causes outrage amongst consumers, consequenntly eliciting negative moral emotions. This study explores the capacity of said negative moral emotions, and to what extent they energise consumer decisions and action tendencies to retaliate against offending companies.