Bernardo Figueiredo

The discourses of marketing and development: towards 'critical transformative marketing research'

Abstract In order to understand the connection between development, marketing and transformative consumer research (TCR), with its attendant interest in promoting human well-being, this article begins by charting the links between US ‘exceptionalism’, ‘Manifest Destiny’ and modernisation theory, demonstrating the confluence of US perspectives and experiences in articulations and understandings of the contributions of marketing practice and consumer research to society. Our narrative subsequently engages with the rise of social marketing (1960s-) and finally TCR (2006-). We move beyond calls for an appreciation of paradigm plurality to encourage TCR scholars to adopt a multiple paradigmatic approach as part of a three-pronged strategy that encompasses an initial ‘provisional moral agnosticism’. As part of this stance, we argue that scholars should value the insights provided by multiple paradigms, turning each paradigmatic lens sequentially on to the issue of the relationship between marketing, development and consumer well-being. After having scrutinised these issues using multiple perspectives, scholars can then decide whether to pursue TCR-led activism. The final strategy that we identify is termed ‘critical intolerance’.

Moving across time and space: temporal management and structuration of consumption in conditions of global mobility

With a focus on highly skilled professionals who have moved and resettled in different countries for reasons related to work, the aim of this paper is to enhance understanding of the role of consumption practices in managing the temporal dimension of global mobility. Two related datasets are used: in-depth long interviews with globally mobile professionals and a multi-sited ethnography with a community of global expatriates. Findings show how these consumers manage their multiple temporal frameworks (through zoning, by developing and using temporal coordinating mechanisms and by projecting themselves into the future) and reveal new temporal frameworks created by global mobility (cycles of mobility, embodied mobility rhythms and distorted timelines). The research raises questions about the way consumption by globally mobile professionals shapes, and is shaped by, processes of globalization and the demands of flexible capitalism in late modernity.

Regions and archipelagos of consumer culture A reflexive approach to analytical scales and boundaries

Marketing scholarship often employs geographical regions to demarcate and contextualize market and consumer research. Regions help researchers grasp phenomena that span over areas larger than a single locality. However, the potential for regions to create greater understanding in consumer research has been limited by researchers’ acceptance of geopolitical frontiers as the natural boundaries of cultural practices. We introduce critical regionalities and the archipelago metaphor as an analytic lens for interrogating and redrawing regional borders while preserving the benefits of a regional approach. Combining poststructuralist and critical historical perspectives, we argue for greater sensitivity to place and history in operationalizing regional consumer cultures. To illustrate this approach, we take Latin America as our point of departure and use examples from the central consumption areas of food and dwelling, for example, the consumption of rice and beans and the rise of gated communities. We contribute to recent theoretical developments in marketing and consumer culture theory with a flexible notion of regional consumer culture, paying critical attention to the relationship between analytical scales and researchers’ reflexivity. This approach also allows for more attention to non-Western contexts, ontologies, and epistemologies.

Developing Markets? Understanding the Role of Markets and Development at the Intersection of Macromarketing and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR)

Situated at the intersection of markets and development, this commentary aims to promote a cross-fertilization of macromarketing and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) that directs attention to the sociocultural context and situational embeddedness of consumer experience and well-being, while acknowledging complex, systemic interdependencies between markets, marketing, and society. Based on a critical review of the meaning of development and an interrogation of various developmental discourses, the authors develop a conceptual framework that brings together issues of development, well-being, and social inequalities. We suggest that these issues are better understood and addressed when examined via grounded investigations of the role of markets in shaping the management of resources, consumer agency, power inequalities and ethics. The use of markets as units of analysis may lead to further cross-fertilizations of TCR and macromarketing and to more comprehensive theorizing and transformational impact. Two empirical cases are provided to illustrate our framework.

The construction of qualitative research articles: a conversation with Eileen Fischer

ABSTRACT Eileen Fischer, Professor of Marketing and Anne & Max Tanenbaum Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at the Schulich School of Business at York University, has published research on entrepreneurs, consumers, and markets in several leading management and marketing journals. Professor Fischer has served on the editorial review boards of Consumption Markets & Culture; Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice; Family Business Review; Journal of Business Venturing; and Journal of Small Business Management and is a current co-editor of the Journal of Consumer Research. In preparation for this conversation, the interviewers invited questions about the construction of qualitative research articles from multiple junior scholars in the field of consumer culture theory (CCT). This invitation yielded dozens of questions that were whittled down to the final questions you see here.

Holy Mary Goes ’Round: Using Object Circulation to Promote Hybrid Value Regimes in Alternative Economies

This study examines how object circulation—the recurrent transferring of objects among members of a group—can be used to foster a hybrid value regime in alternative economies. Prior research notes that alternative economies harbor multiple conceptions of what is valuable, suggesting that hybridity can help sustain alternative economies. This study mobilizes ethnographic and netnographic data to examine the circulation of singularized objects in a religion-based alternative economy in Brazil. It focuses on value creation through object circulation to shed light on the constitution of value regime hybridity. Findings explain how the governing institution in this economy—the church – fosters a hybrid value regime through promoting the creation of multiple types of value outcomes and incentivizing their intertwining. We discuss how value regime hybridity reduces tension and criticism directed at the alternative economy and promotes resource dependence among heterogeneous participants.

Cosmopolitanism and Its Sociomaterial Construction in the Servicescape

This chapter addresses the way the market and the servicescape provides resources to enact cosmopolitan ideology, embody cosmopolitan characteristics, or participate in cosmopolitan practices. It thereby contributes to understandings of the sociomaterial inscriptions of cosmopolitanism as related to retail brand ideology, branded and themed spaces. By examining cosmopolitanism as an ideology that informs the servicescape, we suggest a shift away from understanding the consumption of cosmopolitanism as a descriptive inventory of consumer traits, preferences, and behaviors, to instead understanding cosmopolitanism as a value proposition―a ludic space where cosmopolitan consumers can identify with and exercise their cosmopolitan tastes and practices. We explore how the servicescape transforms when it is charged with cosmopolitanism through an investigation of the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, who claims Ethiopian, Swedish, and American identities, and the spatial and visual strategies that configure cosmopolitanism in his restaurant Red Rooster Harlem. Our findings draw from interviews with Samuelsson, representations of Samuelsson and the Red Rooster Harlem in the popular media, Samuelsson’s own cookbooks, and analysis of the floor plan and design of Samuelsson’s restaurant. By analyzing how the servicescape offers narrative templates and resources for cosmopolitan consumers’ experience and re-construction of identity, we link current thinking about cosmopolitanism with the sociomaterial construction of the servicescape and open new avenues for understanding ideological servicescapes.

Imagining the global: transnational media and popular culture beyond East and West

Darling-Wolf’s Imagining the Global: Transnational Media and Popular Culture Beyond East and West addresses a persistent issue in globalization studies. If globalization is “the collective awarenes...

The Object of Research: Considering Material Engagement Theory and Ethnographic Method

The paper outlines a methodological approach for investigating how consumers create brand meaning using the material resources companies provide. The approach draws from Material Engagement Theory-to discuss the role of consumers in creating patterns of meaning by engaging with objects. It also explicates the role of objects in supporting this patterning. We explain how an in-situ diary tool (dscout, in our case) can be useful to support this approach. We demonstrate our methodological approach in the context of the Red Rooster Harlem, a cosmopolitan restaurant in New York, owned by the celebrity Chef Marcus Samuelsson.

Critical Regionalities: Re-Thinking Regions in CCT ☆

Abstract Purpose We introduce critical regionalities and the archipelago metaphor as an analytic lens for interrogating and redrawing regional borders while preserving the benefits of a regional approach. Methodology/approach Using secondary data from Latin America, we interrogate the mode by which regions are adopted in marketing and consumer research, raising a discussion of the analytical scales and boundaries of regional cultures, considering regional interdependencies and their common sociohistorical backgrounds. Findings We use the critical regionalities approach to examine the rise of gated-communities in Latin America and demonstrate how a regional approach can reveal connections between meso-level sociohistorical processes and cultural values. Research implications The critical regionalities approach transforms assumptions of national or global scales into tools of inquiry: both the nation and the globe become possible scales to contrast with regional archipelagos and enhance researchers’ reflexivity of the how’s and why’s of consumer phenomena. Social implications The method prompts cultural researchers to adopt scales of analysis that more closely reflect the social phenomena being studied, which is especially useful for understanding emerging markets and marginalized areas. We also emphasize the importance of attending to consumer cultural phenomena and processes in non-Western contexts. Originality/value The paper offers a solution for the conundrum of how to write about regions without essentializing them. Marketers and policy makers can use the concept of cultural archipelagos to define new segments and understand new markets, without the need to conform to preestablished geographic or political borders.