Customer Behaviour: Current understandings, challenges, and prospects

Call for book chapter contributions for an edited monograph for Palgrave Macmillan

This collection of original essays will focus on understanding why and how citizens become customers – or opt-out- and the consequences for society, community, and self, is timely in the debate over how to ensure society sustainably accomplishes well-being. The survey will not be limited to within the marketing discipline, and will take a broader societal perspective, in accord with calls for developments beyond consumer society to sustainable society.

The book is envisaged to comprise about 15 essays, with an introduction and concluding editorial commentary, and an invited essay from Professor Michael Baker, Editor of the Journal of Customer Behaviour.

Chapter topics

The aim is to assemble a comprehensive assessment of the current body of knowledge in the field of customer behaviour and to identify educational and research agendas for future developments. Topics might include:

What is ‘customer’ behaviour?

Is the distinction of consumer behaviour and organisational buyer behaviour now defunct?

Ways of provisioning

When did/do and how do citizens become customers?

The demise of the producer-consumer distinction in the “all business is for service” logic/prosumption

Is ‘customer’ an outmoded concept in post-industrial society?

Critical thinking about consumer society

How is customer behaviour knowledge used in marketing management?

Developments in/beyond customer relationship management

Issues and prospects in ‘customer orientation’

Customer experience

How is customer behaviour taught in business/management schools?

Social, technical, economic, and cultural considerations for the future of the citizen-customer role

Looking back over 12 years of published work in the Journal of Customer Behaviour – Michael Baker

Who is the book for?

Scholars, researchers, and research students, as well as senior undergraduate and postgraduate students studying marketing, marketing management, and related.

Similar books published

A current search of Google Scholar and Amazon.com returns just three books with the focus proposed. There appears to be no currently available research book that focuses on the general concept of “customer”, although many practitioner-oriented books cover aspects of managing customer relationships, customers and new media, and so on. There is apparently no research monograph available that provides a state-of-the-art assessment of knowledge in this central aspect of marketing theory and practice.

Rice, C. (1997). Understanding Customers. Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann.

Sheth, J. N., & Mittal, B. (2004). Customer Behavior: A Managerial Perspective. South-Western.

Sheth, J. N., Mittal, B., & Newman, B. I. (1999). Customer Behavior: Consumer Behavior and Beyond. The Dryden Press.

Call for contributions

Proposals/synopses are invited for chapters to contribute to a substantive and original ‘state-of-the-art’ coverage of this field.

Please send your proposal or synopsis by Monday 29th September to:

Dr Richard J Varey
Professor of Marketing
The Waikato Management School
Hamilton, New Zealand
rvarey@waikato.ac.nz

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