Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research

The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call for a return to Foucault is issued via a critical engagement with the so-called practice-turn. This re-turn does not seek to reconstitute venerably Foucauldianism, but to theorize ‘inters-’ as vanishing points that challenge the integrity of discrete cultural orders in non-convergent manners. The propounded interdiscursivity approach is offered as a reading strategy that permeates the contemporary cultural consumption phenomena that are scrutinized in this book, against a pan-consumptivist framework. By drawing on qualitative and mixed methods research designs, facilitated by CAQDAS software, the empirical studies that are hosted here span a vivid array of topics that are directly relevant to both traditional and new media researchers, such as the consumption of ideologies in Web 2.0 social movements, the ability of micro-celebrities to act as cultural game-changers, the post-loyalty abjective consumption ethos. The theoretically novel approaches on offer are coupled with methodological innovations in areas such as user-generated content, artists’ branding, and experiential consumption

Steps towards transformative consumer research practice: a taxonomy of possible reflexivities

NoThe aim of ACR 2005 has been articulated by the organisers as the promotion and dissemination of consumer research `for¿ consumers. This call asks for transformative consumer research raising the issue that `Historically, the organization¿s research has been impelled by the theoretical and substantive interests of academics¿. It is on this point that this paper acts to transform arguing that a transformative ethic should be enacted though consumer research praxis. To achieve this it presents worked examples of the practice of reflexivity in consumer research developing a taxonomy of `possible reflexivities¿, and discusses their possibilities for transformation of the consumer research process

Lesser or just different? Capturing children''s voices in consumer research

Child research has been conducted 'on' rather than 'with' children, and has often used parental proxies or opinion to account for the views of the child. Due to this the voice of the child has been unheard. Once access and ethical concerns have been addressed the adult researcher then has to decide which role to take when conducting research with children. Children are largely seen in one of three ways, and each perspective has an impact on the role the adult researcher could adopt. The first claims that children are entirely different from adults, and fosters the notion that they are unreliable and contaminated data sources. The second perspective views children as being entirely the same as adults, and the third views children as being similar to adults but as having different (although not necessarily inferior) competencies. The latter perspective has received most support and is the favoured view of the child respondent

Towards a theory of shopping: a preliminary conceptual framework

One criticism (Arnould, 2000) of Miller's 1998 book, A Theory of Shopping and the jointly authored Shopping, Place and Identity (Miller et al., 1998) is that the authors fail to incorporate or even acknowledge the body of literature which exists within marketing and consumer research. Thus, as Arnould states, `the authors rediscover some of the findings of theoretical marketing literature about shopping venues, shopping and customer- store and service relationships' (Arnould, 2000, p. 106). This paper attempts to redress the balance by proposing a conceptual framework for shopping which incorporates relevant marketing and consumer research literature and which also draws on the wider literature in the social sciences to set the context for progress towards a theory of shopping

Can consumer research panels form an effective part of the cancer research community?

The North Trent Cancer Research Network’s Consumer Research Panel (NTCRN CRP) was established in December 2001 by the Academic Unit of Supportive Care at the University of Sheffield. In three years, the CRP has succeeded in nurturing a climate of sustainable consumer involvement within the NTCRN and this has become embedded in the culture of the network. Furthermore, the panel have championed a sustainable development of consumer involvement in health and social care research by testing new ground and forging a new way of working between health professionals and patients and carers. The CRP model has been held up as an example to other cancer networks, with new panels being set up around the country to emulate its success. This paper describes the Sheffield model of patient and public involvement and using the eight key principles of successful consumer involvement in research, identified in a recent paper by Telford et al (2003), provides a useful framework for analysing the work of the Panel. This demonstrates how consumers and professionals can inform each other to work constructively and synergistically to achieve impressive research results. The need for measurable outcomes to assess the impact and effect of consumer involvement is finally explored

Non-western contexts: the invisible half

Like many other disciplines within the broad area of social sciences (e.g., anthropology, gender studies, psychology, sociology, etc.), consumer research is also highly navigated by scholars from Western countries. This, however, does not mean, by any means, that consumer research is devoted to studying Western contexts only. As evident from the ever-increasing number of regional conferences (e.g., Asia-Pacific and Latin American conferences of the Association for Consumer Research) and non-Western students' enrolment in doctoral programs at Western universities, there are many more researchers (from non-Western countries) who are entering the field and enriching it by their colourful contributions. Yet, given the low number of publications on consumer research in non-Western contexts, it seems that our current knowledge in these societies has a long way to go to flourish. More specifically, and in the domain of consumption culture research, this gap is even further widened by the fact that the culture of consumption in such contexts is largely interpreted with reference to the 'grand narratives' of Western scholars (e.g., Foucault, Mafessoli, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Derrida, etc.). Therefore, from an ontological perspective, it seems that our existing knowledge about non-Western societies lies heavily on the 'theoretical structures' that are 'constructed' by Western philosophy as a set of ideas, beliefs, and practices (Said, 1978). As Belk (1995) reminds us, consumption culture always existed in all human societies. What makes contemporary societies different from that of our predecessors' is not the fact that consumption culture did not exist in those societies, but that consumption culture has become a prevailing feature in modern society (Slater, 1997; Lury, 1996; Fırat and Venkatesh, 1995; McCracken, 1988). Therefore, the nature and dynamics of consumption culture in each society should be studied not only against the sociocultural, historical, and economic background of a given context (Western or non-Western) but also with reference to the philosophical and epistemological viewpoints that analyse and interpret cultural practices of that society from within that culture. Addressing such issues, this paper discusses some of the key reasons for lack of theory development in the field from non-western contexts. The paper invites scholars in non-Western contexts to introduce the less articulated, and sometime hidden, body of knowledge from their own contexts into the field of marketing in general and consumer research in particular

Response styles in consumer research

In researchers’ efforts to better understand consumers, questionnaires are an indispensable source of data. In consumer surveys the Likert item format, where respondents rate their agreement with specific statements, is very popular. However, responses to such items may be biased by response styles, defined as respondents’ tendencies to disproportionately select specific response options. A well-known example is the acquiescence response style, i.e. the tendency to disproportionately use the response options expressing agreement, but respondents may also make disproportionate use of the extreme options, the midpoint option, or the options expressing disagreement. Despite repeated warnings regarding the biasing effect of response styles, most survey research does not control or correct for their impact. A reason for this may be the incomplete understanding of response styles and their antecedents, as well as the difficulties encountered in measuring response styles. The research programme reported in this dissertation aimed to contribute to the understanding of response styles in consumer research by further crystalizing the conceptualization of response styles, by optimizing measurement of response styles, and by explaining the processes that underly response styles. To this end, five empirical studies were carried out. A first study investigated respondents’ understanding of reversed items in questionnaires. Reversed items relate to the same construct as their non-reversed counterparts, but in the opposite direction (e.g. ‘I love to buy new products’ is a reversal of ‘I dislike the purchase of innovations’). This study indicated that responses to items are influenced by the presence of other items that measure the same construct. The exact functional form of this influence is different for reversals and non-reversals, indicating a difference in the way respondents process both types of items. Since this study questioned the validity of reversals for measuring response styles, in the subsequent studies a measurement method for response styles was proposed that captures response tendencies across random samples of items. In a second study, it was shown that response styles are tendencies which are largely stable over the course of a single questionnaire administration. Study 3 established response styles as largely stable tendencies across different questionnaire administrations with a one year time gap in between and using different sets of questions. A fourth study compared response styles across different modes of data collection (self-administered paper and pencil questionnaires, telephone interviews and self-administered online questionnaires). This study showed that there may be differences in response styles across modes of data collection that cannot be detected by the traditional measurement invariance tests. A fifth and final study found two major segments of respondents that differ in the way they satisfice, i.e. economize on the time and effort invested in responding to questionnaire items. One group tends to disproportionately use the midpoint when satisficing. A second group, when satisficing, disproportionately uses the midpoint as well as the negative and positive extremes of the response scale. In sum, though many questions remain unresolved, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of response styles. More specifically, theory is enhanced by (1) a further delineation of the concept of response styles, which is translated in a proposed operationalization of response styles, (2) evidence in support of the stabililty of response styles, (3) the establishment of response styles as a potential biasing factor in cross-mode comparisons, and (4) a model that captures the relation of response styles to satisficing