Elin Brandi Sørensen

Buying into motherhood? Problematic consumption and ambivalence in transitional phases

Current theory on transitional consumption seems to rest on the premises that (1) consumption facilitates role transitions; (2) consumers know how to consume their way through these transitions; (3) consumers are motivated to approach new roles; and (4) consumption solves liminality. This perspective, however, offers an incomplete picture of consumption’s role in the management of major life transitions. This article explores the ways in which ambivalence is woven through consumption experiences in times of liminality. It reviews prior research on consumption, role transitions, and ambivalence in the context of women’s transition into motherhood. Findings are presented from an international interpretive study of women’s consumption experiences during their transition to motherhood. This paper’s findings suggest that while consumption can indeed play a positive role during role transitions, it can also, at other times, make transition a complicated, complex and confusing process.Title Buying into motherhood? Problematic consumption and ambivalence in transitional phases Authors(s) VOICE Group; Davies, Andrea; Dobscha, Susan; Geiger, Susi; Prothero, Andrea; et al. Publication date 2010 Publication information Consumption, Markets and Culture, 13 (4): 373-397, Special Issue: Consumer Culture Theory 2008 Publisher Routledge (Taylor & Francis) Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/4966 Publishers statement This is an electronic version of an article published in Consumption Markets & Culture, Volume 13, Issue 4, 2010. Consumption Markets & Culture is available online at: www.tandfonline.com//doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2010.502414 Publishers version (DOI) 10.1080/10253866.2010.502414

Motherhood, Marketization, and Consumer Vulnerability

This article explores consumer vulnerability and the role of public policy by focusing on new mothers. Developing the consumer vulnerability model of Baker, Gentry, and Rittenburg, the authors consider how medical contexts, political and legal factors, economic resources, societal prescriptions, media representations, and the presence or absence of appropriate policy all contribute to the social construction of motherhood ideologies. These ideologies are adopted and amplified in the marketplace and used to encourage consumption as a means of coping with this particular role transition during a time of physical and psychological changes in mothers-to-be. This article illustrates that the extended market logic dominating contemporary mothering environments both contributes to and has the potential to exacerbate new mothers’ vulnerability, raising important challenges for public policy, both in the immediate and in the longer term. The authors assess public policy implications and conclude that the market does not always provide the best answers to uncertainties people may experience and that macromarketers and public policy makers have a particular responsibility to identify alternative solutions.

Laddering: how (not) to do things with words

Purpose – This paper seeks to provide a discourse‐based critique of the laddering interviewing technique, and to make academics as well as practitioners aware of some of the limitations in applying this particular consumer interviewing technique.Design/methodology/approach – The paper first describes the laddering interviewing technique, which traditionally has been conceptualised within a cognitively‐oriented perspective, i.e. the laddering interview is seen as a cognitive task. Then a critical discussion of some of the problems inherent in this view follows. After this, an alternative conceptualisation of the laddering interview is proposed, namely, that it is a discursive event. On the basis of insights from Wittgenstein and Austin it is suggested that the laddering interview is a room for social actions where both interviewer and interviewee are “doing things with words”. An example of applying the discursive approach to a sample sequence from a laddering interview is also provided. Finally, it seeks ...

Reflections on collaboration in interpretive consumer research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of collaboration in interpretive consumer research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews literature on research teamwork, particularly on qualitative and international projects. It also provides an account of research collaboration on an interpretive research project across four countries, involving eight researchers. Findings – Despite the cult of individualism in academic life, most articles in leading marketing journals are now written by multi-author teams. The process and implications of research collaboration, particularly on qualitative and international projects, have received little attention within the marketing literature. Qualitative collaborations call for another layer of reflexivity and attention to the politics and emotions of teamwork. They also require the negotiation of a social contract acceptable to the group and conducive to the emergence of different perspectives throughout the research process. Originality/value – While issues surrounding the researcher-research participant relationship are well explored in the field, this paper tackles an issue that often remains tacit in the marketing literature, namely the impact of the relationships between researchers. The paper draws on accounts of other research collaborations as well as authors’ experiences, and discusses how interpersonal and cross-cultural dynamics influence the work of interpretive research teams.