Yours, mine, and ours: How families manage collective, relational, and individual identity goals in consumption

Families regularly engage in consumption activities that help to define who they are as a family. Within families, a set of relationships co-exist (family, siblings, couples, parent-child, and so on) that shape families\u27 choices. In order to be relevant to families, firms must understand what they are trying to accomplish in their relationships. Research questions included (1) what identity-related goals do families express in their consumption stories; (2) how do families use marketplace resources (i.e. brands, products, and services) as they manage the interplay among family, relational and individual identity goals; and (3) under what conditions do families alter their consumption strategies as they manage these goals? Based on depth interviews with 88 family members from 21 families, I gathered collective vacation narratives to develop a grounded theory of identity management that explains families\u27 approaches to managing multiple identity goals, identifies how families enlist marketplace resources, outlines marketing outcomes, and delineates conditions that alter this process. As the framework emerged from attention to relational and collective units within the family, rather than solely to individuals, it offers a different lens for examining core marketing concepts. Seven identity goals emerged from this research: building, transforming, re-asserting, preserving, securing idealized, legitimizing, and concluding. Families enlisted marketplace resources directly as they managed the interplay among family, relational, and individual identity goals using the following approaches: (1) prioritizing identity bundles, (2) replicating practices, (3) integrating practices, (4) building resource constellations, and (5) enlisting platform resources. The narrative analysis revealed how families value firms\u27 resources according to the roles families assigned resources in their stories: obstacle, hero, enabler, challenger, educator-historian, entertainer, protector, mnemonic, and architect. Finally, families altered their consumption strategies based on three conditions: member (dis)agreement, commitment to specific identity performances, and synergy/discord among identity bundles. Study findings link identity-management approaches to marketing outcomes such as the displacement of families\u27 identity practices, loyalty, and processes of family decision-making. In general, resources embedded across identity practices and bundles (family, relational, and individual) displace other resources that may be less central to families\u27 identities and likely enjoy more enduring loyalty

Family Identity: A Framework of Identity Interplay in Consumption Practices

"Being a family" is a vitally important collective enterprise central to many consumption experiences and replete with new challenges in contemporary society. We advance a framework to learn how families draw on communication forms and use marketplace resources to manage interplays among individual, relational (e.g., couple, sibling, parent-child), and collective identities. Our framework also outlines potential moderators of this identity-management process. To demonstrate the value of our framework for consumer researchers, we propose numerous research questions and offer applications in the areas of family decision making, consumer socialization, and person-object relations. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

The Storied Life of Singularized Objects: Forces of Agency and Network Transformation

Our study contributes to understanding the role of material culture in families. Findings from a longitudinal case study extend Kopytoff's theory of singularization by explaining what occurs between the singularization of a focal object and its recommodification. We uncover processes that move an already singularized object in and out of a network of practices, objects, and spaces; identify forces that constrain and empower a singularized object's agency within that network; and demonstrate network transformations that result from the focal object's movement. This extension explains some paradoxical findings in consumer research: how objects are granted agency even while displaced, when irreplaceable objects can be replaced, and why families sometimes displace central identity practices. (c) 2009 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Agency, Identity and Materiality: the Storied Life of a Family and Their Table

We view consumer agency as improvisations and potentialities that come from the interplay of individual, relational and collective identities, material objects, other cultural resources, and situations in practice. Our paper is based on a two-year ethnographic case study we conducted that describes linkages between the biography of the Erikson family (a pseudonym) and the biography of their kitchen table. We uncover how contextual shifts and constellations of objects and spaces propel and alter the uses of the table, and how the table in turn alters key family identity practices. Our study illustrates "the positive blending of social and material relations" (Miller 2001, 115) that can occur at the intersection of object, personal and family biographies