Market Interactions

Emotional consumption of Vulnerable Spaces (ECOS)

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This project explores how individuals emotionally experience environmental changes such as climate events, biodiversity loss, and landscape transformation in the Anthropocene. It focuses on emerging feelings like eco-anxiety and solastalgia—forms of distress linked to the degradation of one’s home environment—and examines how these emotions reshape identities, lifestyles, and everyday consumption practices. By connecting personal emotional experiences with broader market and institutional dynamics, the project sheds light on how vulnerability, both of people and places, transforms consumption patterns and influences more sustainable behaviours. Ultimately, it aims to provide new insights and recommendations for integrating emotional dimensions into sustainability policies and market strategies, offering a socio-cultural perspective on environmental transitions.

The project is funded by ANR and is coordinated by Hélène Gorge-Cortet, Université de Lille, in association with Université de Perpignan Via Domitia and Université Savoie Mont Blanc.

MINT Faculty involved: Rodrigo Castilhos (participant)

Repro Marketing

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Repro Marketing Research Group (Repro Mark) is an international interdisciplinary research collective led by Jennifer Takhar, dedicated to understanding reproductive technologies and their evolving impact on marketing, consumers, and society. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from marketing, sociology, public health, ethics, gender and technology studies, the group explores how innovations such as IVF, fertility tracking apps, genetic testing, and surrogacy reshape, consumer experiences and marketplace dynamics. Through qualitative and quantitative research, policy analysis, and industry collaboration, Repro Mark examines branding, access, equity, regulation, and communication strategies in reproductive markets. By generating rigorous, socially informed insights, the collective aims to support responsible innovation and more inclusive, evidence-based marketing practices. Repro Mark, is affiliated with the Marketing Department (MINT) at SKEMA Business School and includes valued, international members from SKEMA, University College London, UCL, University of Stirling, University of Birmingham, Shiv Nadar University, Syddansk Universitet - University of Southern Denmark, Queen Mary University of London, CNRS.

MINT Faculty involved: Jennifer Takhar (Founder and coordinator)

Unclaimed Equity: The Organizational Failure to Overcome Menopause Burden and the Paradox of Menopause‑Friendly Policies

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This research examines a central ethical and organisational paradox in contemporary workplaces: despite the growing adoption of menopause‑friendly policies, many menopausal employees continue to experience significant, and often invisible, burdens. Focusing on organisational life, the project investigates how menopause is framed, governed, and lived at work, and identifies the conditions under which menopause‑specific policies fail or even backfire.

By analysing how menopause‑friendly policies are designed and experienced, the study shows how multiple forms of menopause burden intensify self‑regulation labour and, in turn, give rise to unethical or compensatory coping behaviours among mid‑life employees. Theoretically, the project advances business ethics debates on embodiment, representation, and the unintended ethical consequences of diversity and inclusion governance. Managerially, it provides guidance on how organizations can cultivate psychologically safe cultures that reduce self‑regulation labor and enable more ethical, supportive, and genuinely inclusive responses to menopause at work. 

This project is a collaborative initiative between colleagues from MINT and Dr. Libo LI from the University of Southampton, bringing together interdisciplinary expertise to examine the ethical and organizational challenges surrounding menopause‑friendly policies at work.

MINT Faculty involved: Jennifer Takhar and Thi Thanh Huong (Jenny) Tran

Storytelling in a Time of Polycrisis

This research stream examines how stories shape the ways individuals, groups, and institutions make sense of major environmental and social challenges and respond to them. Taking an interdisciplinary, multimethod approach, the projects investigate how narratives influence interpretation, judgment, and behavior across crises from climate change to liberal democracy. The projects pay particular attention to the marketplace and public-policy consequences of such communication: how climate fiction can foster engagement with environmental issues; how responsibility for sustainability becomes diffused across multiple stakeholders; or how expressions of injustice can signal retaliatory behavior. Across these crises, the broader aim is to understand when storytelling promotes empathy, coordination, and constructive action, and when it instead contributes to polarisation, avoidance, or conflict. 

This is a collaborative research stream involving colleagues from MINT, IMT Atlantique, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, University of Amsterdam, University of Cambridge, University of Sydney, and University of Queensland.

MINT faculty involved: Tom van Laer

International Conference on Luxury Business

Conference Co-Chairs

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• Professor George Christodoulides, American University of Sharjah (UAE)
• Professor Anastasia Stathopoulou, SKEMA Business School (France)
• Professor Jonas Holmqvist, KEDGE Business School (France)
• Professor Emanuela Prandelli, Bocconi University (Italy)

Context and purpose

Scholarly interest in luxury has grown significantly, as reflected in the increasing output of journal articles, edited volumes, and the popularity of luxury-focused sessions at major international conferences. This momentum has firmly established luxury business as a vibrant research domain.

The International Conference on Luxury Business builds on this momentum by offering a biennial platform for rigorous and high-quality academic exchange. Conceived as a small and selective gathering, it is dedicated to bringing together leading researchers at the forefront of luxury research. Its purpose is to convene distinguished scholars from around the world, alongside emerging researchers, to share insights, foster collaboration, and advance the visibility and impact of luxury research, while engaging selectively with practitioners to enhance relevance.

The inaugural edition will be held in Sharjah and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from October 29 to 31, 2026, and hosted by the American University of Sharjah.

Conference aim and scope

The conference provides a collegial and high-quality forum for discussing research across the luxury business spectrum. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

• Sustainability, circularity, and responsible practices in luxury
• Luxury branding, heritage, and brand equity
• Luxury consumer psychology, identity, and symbolism
• Luxury retailing and experiential design
• Luxury services and experiences
• Digital innovation and technology adoption in luxury contexts
• AI and hyper-personalization in luxury
• Global and cross-cultural perspectives on luxury consumption
• Social media and luxury brand communication
• Luxury hospitality and tourism
• Luxury supply chains and value creation
• Governance,leadership and stewardship in luxury

Interdisciplinary perspectives are strongly encouraged.

Conference structure

• Thursday, October 29 (morning): doctoral colloquium led by Professor Nina Michaelidou
• Thursday, October 29 (evening): welcome reception and opening keynote
• Friday, October 30: full day of academic sessions and panels and dinner
• Saturday, October 31 (morning): sessions and closing remarks
• The event concludes by mid-day Saturday to facilitate departures.

Key dates

• Call for Papers: October 2025
• Submission deadline: April 15, 2026
• Notification of acceptance: May 31, 2026
• Final program announced: September 30, 2026
• Conference dates: October 29–31, 2026

MINT Faculty involved: Anastasia Stathopoulou

EDF Crowd Innovation Platform

This research stream explores how crowd-based innovation platforms—such as those developed by EDF—enable co-creation with consumers and reshape the way organizations generate, evaluate, and implement new ideas. By inviting users, customers, and broader communities to contribute insights, solutions, and creative input, these platforms extend innovation processes beyond firm boundaries. They foster more diverse idea generation, strengthen user engagement, and enhance the legitimacy and relevance of innovation outcomes, particularly in domains such as energy transition and sustainability. At the same time, co-creation raises important questions about motivation, coordination, and the effective integration of user contributions into organizational decision-making.

Adopting a behavioral and design-oriented perspective, this research stream investigates how platform design influences user innovation performance and engagement. The projects examine key features such as feedback mechanisms, reward structures, participation rules, and social interaction tools, and how these elements shape both the quantity and quality of user contributions. More broadly, the aim is to understand how to design crowd innovation platforms that not only attract participation but also sustain meaningful engagement and generate high-value innovations.

This is a collaborative research stream involving colleagues from Excelia Business School.

MINT Faculty involved: Zhenzhen Zhao