Portrait of Dr Aleksandrina Atanasova

Dr Aleksandrina Atanasova

Senior Lecturer in Marketing

Bayes Business School , Faculty of Management

Contact

About

Overview

Aleksandrina Atanasova is an Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Bayes Business School. 

Alex is an expert in consumer behavior, cultural insights and branding. Her research is situated within the tradition of culturally oriented consumer research scholarship known as Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and focuses on the sociocultural, experiential, and symbolic aspects of consumption. Within this domain, she studies the effects of precarity, globalization and shifting social norms on consumers’ behaviors, particularly in relation to rising digitalization and dematerialization of consumption. Her most recent projects focus on the growing lifestyle movement of digital nomadism, where she explores topics such as symbolic consumption, materialism, status and consumer security in conditions of global mobility and minimal possessions.

Alex specializes in interpretive methodologies, such as ethnography, netnography, and depth interviewing to capture how people, brands and communities navigate and interact with the marketplace. 

Prior to joining academia, Alex has worked as a marketing executive and a consultant for leading global brands worldwide. She draws on years of industry experience in strategy, branding and consumer insight, having worked across sectors and markets in North America and Europe.

Qualifications

  • Fellow, Higher Education Academy (Advance HE)
  • PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
  • MSc, Aalto University, Finland
  • BSc, University of Wisconsin, United States

Languages

Bulgarian and French

Expertise

Primary topics

  • Consumer Behaviour
  • Marketing
  • Qualitative Research Methods
  • Marketing Management
  • Digital Marketing

Additional topics

  • Innovation & Creativity
  • Design Thinking

Industries

  • consumer goods
  • advertising
  • communications
  • fashion
  • food & drink
  • leisure/recreation
  • travel & tourism
  • retailing

Geographic Areas

  • Americas - North
  • Europe

Research students

2ndsupervisor

Publications

Chapter

  1. Atanasova, A., Bardhi, F., Eckhardt, G.M. and Mimoun, L. (2022). Digital nomadism as temporal privilege. The Routledge Handbook of Digital Consumption (pp. 22-34). Routledge.

Conference paper and proceedings

  1. Atanasova, A., Eckhardt, G.M., Laamanen, M., Eckhardt, G., Hamilton, A. and Chen, H. (2022). Reimagining the sharing economy: Are platform cooperatives the answer? 53rd Annual Conference of the Association-for-Consumer-Research (ACR) 20-22 October, Denver, Colorado, USA.

Internet publication

  1. Eckhardt, G. and Atanasova, A.(2024).The New Reality of Digital Nomads. Harvard Business Review.

Journal articles (8)

  1. Derek Robinson, T. and Atanasova, A. (2025). The Organizational Ontology of Person-Institutions. Organization Theory, 6(4). doi:10.1177/26317877251406604

    [publisher’s website]

  2. Eckhardt, G., Atanasova, A., Laamanen, M. and Kittinger-Rosanelli, C. (2024). Responsible Platforms: Aiming for Social Value Rather than Scale. NIM Marketing Intelligence Review, 16(2), pp. 46-51. doi:10.2478/nimmir-2024-0017

    [publisher’s website]

  3. Atanasova, A., Eckhardt, G.M. and Laamanen, M. (2024). Platform cooperatives in the sharing economy: How market challengers bring change from the margins. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. doi:10.1007/s11747-024-01042-9

    [publisher’s website]

  4. Atanasova, A., Bardhi, F. and Eckhardt, G.M. (2024). The democratization of the status game. Consumption Markets & Culture, 27(4), pp. 325-334. doi:10.1080/10253866.2024.2369090

    [publisher’s website]

  5. Atanasova, A., Eckhardt, G.M. and Husemann, K.C. (2024). Liquid Consumer Security. Journal of Consumer Research, 50(6), pp. 1243-1264. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucad047

    [publisher’s website]

  6. Atanasova, A. and Eckhardt, G.M. (2021). The broadening boundaries of materialism. Marketing Theory, 21(4), pp. 481-500. doi:10.1177/14705931211019077

    [publisher’s website]

  7. Atanasova, A. (2021). Re-examining utopia in contemporary consumption: conceptualization and implications for marketing. AMS Review, 11(1-2), pp. 23-39. doi:10.1007/s13162-021-00193-0

    [publisher’s website]

  8. Atanasova, A. and Eckhardt, G. (2021). Nomadland: The New Frontiers of the American Dream at the Periphery of the Market. Markets, Globalization & Development Review, 6(1). doi:10.23860/mgdr-2021-06-01-02

    [publisher’s website]