Dissertation: Symbolically embedded – Essays on the creation and use of symbolic resources in ...
Anu Norrgrann’s dissertation aims at providing an understanding of how products function as symbolic resources in business networks. It builds on the resource interaction discussion within the network research tradition (IMP) and addresses the symbolic dimension of embeddedness and its importance for the ability of products to function as value-providing resources for intermediate and final customers.
Conceptually, the four resource entities (4Rs) framework is enriched with elements from consumer culture theory and the service-dominant logic of marketing and the analytical boundary is stretched towards the user and consumer spheres.
The thesis comprises four essays, based on three, complementary case studies from the field of furniture production and retailing.
– The essays highlight the role of retailers as resource intermediaries in purveying, shaping and acting as intermediate users of symbolic resources; the path-dependence and inertia related to symbolic resources, and the way such resources that are developed in one relationship, can be symbolically utilized in new ventures; and the role of brands and other communicative signs in handling customer relationship dynamics and building value propositions through interaction, says Norrgrann.
The findings highlight the connection between symbolic resources manifested in a product’s design, brand and value proposition, and the relationship mechanisms and characteristic affecting the way such resources emerge and become useful and valuable for both intermediate network actors and consumers.
Public defence
The public examination of M.Sc. Anu Norrgrann’s doctoral dissertation “Symbolically embedded. Essays on the creation and use of symbolic resources in furniture networks” will be held on Tuesday 23 June at 12 o´clock in auditorium Kurten (C203, Tervahovi). Professor Lars-Erik Gadde (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) will act as opponent and professor Martti Laaksonen as custos.
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