Consumers' Controversies about Consumption

This article introduces a preliminary model that conceptualizes the drivers, expressions, and consequences of consumers’ controversies about the limits of legitimate consumption within a social context. Drawing on qualitative data on the North American conflict over the cultural legitimacy of the Hummer brand of vehicles, the study documents that - contrary to the prevailing consumer-producer centric model - market-mediated social conflicts also emerge as immediate, interpersonal social practices through which consumers contest each others’ consumption choices, ideologies, and behaviors. The study reveals that consumer controversies often begin with violations of social expectations, manifest in vigilant justice, insult, discredit, ridicule, and instruction practices, and serve consumers to preserve, promote, and defend the consumption-related meanings, practices, objects, and identities that they consider sacrosanct for themselves and their social peers. The study suggests that consumer controversies affect consumer culture, identity projects, and marketing practices in important ways previously unrecognized by theories of consumer emancipation and resistance

Brand community under fire: The role of social environments for the HUMMER brand community

This research was undertaken as part of a larger consumer behavior research project investigating brands and brand communities as social systems. The paper is concerned with the particular role of social environments for brand communities previously neglected in literature. Grounded in a social-constructivist interpretive framework, a multi-perspective study was conducted to explore how the HUMMER brand community and its social environments discursively construct, situate, and legitimate one another. Findings reveal brand communities as powerful, socially embedded phenomena that continuously negotiate a set of core distinctions with and against their social environments

The Appeal of Protest Rhetoric: How Moral Entrepreneurs Recruit the Media into Moral Struggles

Whenever the news media feature brand-related moral struggles over issues such as ethicality, fairness, or sustainability, brands often find themselves in the position of the culprit. However, brands may also take the opposite position, that of a moral entrepreneur that proactively raises and addresses moral issues that matter to society. In this chapter, we present a case study of the Austrian shoe manufacturer Waldviertler, which staged a protest campaign against Austria’s financial market authorities (FMA) in the wake of the authorities demanding that the company closes its alternative (and illegal) consumer investment model after 10 years of operation. In response to this demand, the company organized protest marches, online petitions, and press conferences to reclaim the moral high ground for its financing model as a way out of the crunch following the global credit crisis and as a way to fight unfair administrative burdens. We present an interpretive analysis of brand communication material and media coverage that reveals how this brand used protest rhetoric on three levels – logos, ethos, and pathos – to reverse moral standards, to embody a rebel ethos, and to cultivate moral indignation. We also show how the media responded to protest rhetoric both with thematic coverage of context, trends, and general evidence, and with episodic coverage focusing on dramatic actions and the company owner’s charisma. We close with a discussion of how protestainment, the stylization of a leader figure, and marketplace sentiments can ensure sustained media coverage of moral struggles

The Throwaway Society: a Look in the Back Mirror

Whilst public criticisms of an increasingly wasteful consumer society emerged already in late nineteenth Century, the specific concept of a “Throwaway Society” was first used in the early 1960s. This short communication sketches the passionate debate around planned obsolescence and oversaturated consumers and offers a short historical glimpse at a persistent, existential problem that still awaits effective solutions

The relevance of consumption in Niklas Luhmann's theory of society

A majority of international contemporary consumer research studies assumes that consumption has achieved a state of universal relevance. Mike Featherstone (1983: 4), for example, observed a “gradual extension of consumerism to more and more sectors of the population”, whereas Don Slater (1997: 25) observed that “values from the realm of consumption spill over into other domains of social action, such that modern society is in toto a consumer culture, and not just in its specifi cally consuming activities.” Steven Miles (1998: 1) even asserted that consumerism is ubiquitous and ephemeral. It is arguably the religion of the late twentieth century. It apparently pervades our everyday lives and structures our everyday experiences and yet it is perpetually altering its form and reasserting its infl uence in new guises

From Marketing Ideology to Branding Ideology

This special issue of the Journal is concerned with the globalization of marketing ideology. That topic raises the questions of what constitutes a marketing ideology and what might be its status on the global scene. The different approaches adopted in this special issue acknowledge the breadth of the topic and illuminate the intersection of marketing with the basic forces of cultures, politics, religion, conflicts, and a dismal financial debt crisis in the Western nations. To gain perspective, it seems relevant to observe the historical trajectory of marketing ideology and its likely continued path. To this end, we trace marketing ideology from a 19th century premarketing ideology, to its initial focus on production/distribution technology, to its early 20th century focus on customer orientation and branding, to its current focus on network conversations and the significance of modern brand ubiquity. Using these insights, we then discuss two perspectives on future development and raise some potentially relevant questions

Can brands make us happy? A research framework for the study of brands and their effects on happiness

Brands permeate consumer culture. Yet, despite their ubiquitous presence, one of the societally most relevant and fundamental questions of brand existence remains among the most difficult to capture: Can brands make us happy? Academics have identified emotional and cognitive influences of brands on loyalty and studied the broader well-being effects of income and consumption. This paper adds to this discourse by analyzing the roads and barriers of researching correlations between brands and happiness. We first evaluate methods to reliably assess general influences on happiness. Then, we differentiate three levels of the consumer-brand experience and discuss if and how their respective correlations with happiness can meaningfully be measured. As a result, we offer a roadmap for brand-related happiness research that directs and inspires further inquiry

How globalisation affects consumers: Insights from thirty years of CCT globalisation research

Understanding how globalisation affects consumers is a key concern of international marketing research. Consumer culture theory (CCT) studies contribute to this stream of research by critically examining how globalisation affects consumers under different cultural conditions. We offer a systematic narrative synthesis of thirty years of CCT globalisation research to gain perspective on this important stream of research. We identify three theoretical perspectives – i.e., homogenisation, glocalisation and deterritorialisation – that have shaped the ways in which CCT scholars have approached globalisation phenomena. We discuss each perspective with regards to its underlying notion of culture, its assumptions of power relations between countries and the role that it ascribes to individuals in globalisation processes. We problematise these perspectives and show how CCT research has challenged and extended each perspective, focusing specifically on consumer empowerment, consumer identity and the symbolic meaning of global brands as substantial domains. Lastly, we discuss avenues for future consumer cultural globalisation research

How brands enchant: Insights from observing community driven brand creation

This paper explores the emerging phenomenon of community- driven brand creation. Drawing on a longitudinal netnographic study of the "outdoorseiten.net" online community, it develops the concept of "community brands." Community brands are consumercreated brands that enchant their participants by providing creative social spaces, in which they innovate, discuss, manufacture, and brand customized products independently from corporate agents. The study reveals influential expressions of authenticity, creativity, community, and independence within such a social space and derives valuable implications for consumer culture theory and branding