Welcome to the blog. I’m a writer in Newfoundland, Canada. I’m also a lifelong Southern California beach girl who spent some years in Tucson and in New York. In my writing life, I am a short story and creative nonfiction author. Since I’ve had a number of former lives (computer teacher, Disneyland VIP tour guide, NICU respiratory therapist, stay-at-home mom of five, doctoral student, consumer sociologist, business school professor, customer experience consultant, teenage delingquent…life is long and my journey has had a lot of twists and turns) it turns out that context, plot, dialog, narrative, story arc, etc. come pretty easily. You know that saying “Write what you know”? Well, there are just too many words and too many stories and too little time.
I have a number of academic publications as well, studying consumers and institutions in times of change. I use my background in consumer sociology and sociology of consumption to find actionable strategic insights to improve the customer experience. My three academic areas of study: 1. The marketization of institutions and public spaces (e.g. religion, health care, finance/credit, higher education, community) 2. Cultural change and consumer identity (e.g. the datafication of society and the quantification of the consumer; meeting Covid challenges; consumers leaving identity-salient institutions) 3. Marketing for social enterprises (e.g. bringing services marketing principles to social enterprise for better chance of viability).
In my personal life, I joined the Great Resignation in December 2021, left my tenure track job in New York, and moved to Newfoundland to write full time and to be with the love of my life. John is a Canada Research Chair in Social Enterprise, and is also an author and poet. We live by the sea in a tiny mostly-original 1911 house in a working fishing village. We are currently writing a textbook from our ethnographic work about social entrepreneurs and identity transformation. We are also developing executive education courses in story telling for entrepreneurs, services marketing for entrepreneurs, and marketing for sustainability. We spend our days writing together by our wood-fire stove; hiking, whale/puffin/iceberg watching and blueberry/cranberry picking; cooking and baking; and basically just being incredibly thankful that our checkered pasts have brought us together to this place and time.
In recent news, I have finally acquired a baby grand piano…more on that later
–BD
Beth DuFault Ph.D. 