Marketing and Consumption Research

Marketing and Consumption Research Group has been traditionally known for its strong competence in consumer research. Today, this foundation is developed to encompass the multiplicity of different, but interrelated, marketplace actors operating in ecosystems consisting of both consumer and business partners.

The multiplicity in terms of research areas, methodologies, and focus of analysis constitute our key expertise. We combine profound market and consumer understanding within networked business knowledge to create novel insights and transformative marketing solutions that address strategic marketing and societal challenges from a systemic perspective. Thereby, our research shows how customers' mundane practices or decision-making rooted in socio-technical and historic frames are connected to offerings of variable business collaborators, and how this co-operation may induce value-creating outcomes. 

Our aim is to

• Produce new marketing knowledge and refine the extant knowledge to customer value in co-creation with various stakeholders on the way towards a sustainable and prosperous society. 

The sustainability lens is a given starting point in our research providing an intersecting theme in the various research projects in transformative marketing. Our research group studies areas such as energy transition, food consumption, wood consumption and construction, retailing and tourism, as well as housing and living, fashion industry and higher education focusing both urban and rural contexts. The areas are approached with a view aiming at increasing well-being in all forms and levels of society. 

The paradigmatic and methodological variance is an important feature of our research group. Our research approaches comprise traditional surveys, experiments, case-studies, narratives, interviews, ethnographies and even more recently emergent areas such as priming studies, gamification, netnography, as well as practice theory. 

Accordingly, our research paradigms vary. Consumer studies are grounded on consumer psychology, evolutionary inspired theoratisation, Consumer Culture Theory, and Transformative Consumer/Service Research. The B2B (Business to Business) research stems from, besides Industrial Marketing Discipline, research approaches based on the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing), Business Relationships & Networks, and Innovation Management theories as ways to shape stakeholder value creation in business ecosystems. 

Regardless of the research topic related either to the business or consumer value creation or societal challenge at hand, we find ways to examine it.

We work in close collaboration with other academic schools at the University of Vaasa and with the university’s three research platforms (VEBIC, Digital Economy, and InnoLab). The different stakeholders including companies, cities, and municipalities as well as other non-profit organizations are our key partners.

The leader of our research group is Senior Researcher Henna Syrjälä. 

Doctoral researchers

• Hanna Ahtosalo
• Tiia Alkkiomäki
• Ann-Sofi Backgren
• Päivi Borisov
• Laura Forsman
• Nicoleta Dudau (Szakali)
• Mika Hakosalo
• Audur Hermannsdóttir
• Maija Kantola
• Suzi Kimura
• Heidi Kock
• Niklas Kurki

• Lena Lindholm
• Roosa-Maaria Malila
• Krista Niemi
• Salla Niskanen
• Nayeem Rahman
• Anna-Mari Rimppi
• Ekaterina Sofroneeva
• Katariina Sorvari
• Iina Vartia
• Essi Vesterinen
• Leena Viitaharju