Eric J. Arnould

Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research

This article provides a synthesizing overview of the past 20 yr. of consumer research addressing the sociocultural, experiential, symbolic, and ideological aspects of consumption. Our aim is to provide a viable disciplinary brand for this research tradition that we call consumer culture theory (CCT). We propose that CCT has fulfilled recurrent calls for developing a distinctive body of theoretical knowledge about consumption and marketplace behaviors. In developing this argument, we redress three enduring misconceptions about the nature and analytic orientation of CCT. We then assess how CCT has contributed to consumer research by illuminating the cultural dimensions of the consumption cycle and by developing novel theorizations concerning four thematic domains of research interest.

How Brand Community Practices Create Value

Using social practice theory, this article reveals the process of collective value creation within brand communities. Moving beyond a single case study, the authors examine previously published research in conjunction with data collected in nine brand communities comprising a variety of product categories, and they identify a common set of value-creating practices. Practices have an “anatomy” consisting of (1) general procedural understandings and rules (explicit, discursive knowledge); (2) skills, abilities, and culturally appropriate consumption projects (tacit, embedded knowledge or how-to); and (3) emotional commitments expressed through actions and representations. The authors find that there are 12 common practices across brand communities, organized by four thematic aggregates, through which consumers realize value beyond that which the firm creates or anticipates. They also find that practices have a physiology, interact with one another, function like apprenticeships, endow participants with cultural capital, produce a repertoire for insider sharing, generate consumption opportunities, evince brand community vitality, and create value. Theoretical and managerial implications are offered with specific suggestions for building and nurturing brand community and enhancing collaborative value creation between and among consumers and firms.

Commercial Friendships: Service Provider--Client Relationships in Context

The authors describe commercial friendships that develop between service providers and clients as one important type of marketing relationship. They report results of five studies that employ quant...

“My Favorite Things”: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry into Object Attachment, Possessiveness, and Social Linkage

We explore the meaning and histories of favorite objects in two cultures using surveys and photographs. Favorite object attachment is differentiated from the possessiveness component of materialism and from attachment to other people. Meanings of favorite objects derive more from personal memories in the U.S. and from social status in Niger than from object characteristics. Since favorite objects serve as storehouses of personal meanings, gender, age, and culture reflect differences in object selected as well as reasons for selection. In the U.S., photographs show greater proximity to objects that are symbols of others or experiences than to objects enjoyed for their own attributes.

“We Gather Together”: Consumption Rituals of Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving Day is a collective ritual that celebrates material abundance enacted through feasting. Thanksgiving Day both marks and proves to participants their ability to meet basic needs abundantly through consumption. So certain is material plenty for most U.S. citizens that this annual celebration is taken for granted by participants. Not just a moment of bounty but a culture of enduring abundance is celebrated. This article draws on ten data sets compiled over a five-year period. We interpret the consumption rituals of Thanksgiving Day as a discourse among consumers about the categories and principles that underlie American consumer culture. That is, Thanksgiving Day is read as an enacted document orchestrated symbolically and semiotically through consumption. The cultural discourse of Thanksgiving Day negotiates meanings and issues in both the domestic and national arenas that are difficult for many to acknowledge, articulate, and debate verbally. Through the use of multiple perspectives and sources of data, we attempt to elucidate both the emic and etic meanings of this holiday.

Older Consumers' Disposition of Special Possessions

This article explores precipitating events, emotions, and decisions associated with older consumers’ disposition of special possessions. Findings are based on analyses of semistructured interviews with 80 older consumers, complemented by depth interviews with seven informants. Cherished possessions and their disposition play a significant role in older consumers’ reminiscence and life review. Concerns about disposition of special possessions involve strong and ambivalent emotions. Older consumers voice concern over avoiding intrafamilial conflict, reducing uncertainty, and exercising control over the future life of special possessions. We emphasize the storied nature of the meanings consumers attach to their cherished possessions and the way in which these storied meanings are bundled with life review and disposition concerns. Many older consumers attempt to control meanings transferred with cherished possessions. They seek to pass on personal and familial legacies, achieve symbolic immortality, insure a ...

Consumers’ emotional responses to service encounters: the influence of the service provider

Reports on a study looking at dimensions of service provider performance that influence immediate emotional responses to service encounters, based on 914 service encounters. Identifies five service‐provider dimensions that are significant predictors of emotional response to services. Finds that different service‐provider dimensions influence positive as compared with negative emotional responses and that temporal duration and spatial intimacy of the encounter affect both the reported levels and relative importance of these service‐provider dimensions to emotional responses.

Postassimilationist Ethnic Consumer Research: Qualifications and Extensions

Data collected among Greenlandic immigrants in Denmark fuel a critical examination of the postassimilationist model of ethnic consumer behavior in a non-North American context. We find that Greenlandic consumer acculturation is broadly supportive of the postassimilationist model. However, acculturative processes in the Danish context lead immigrants to adopt identity positions not entirely consistent with those reported in previous postassimilationist consumer research. Further, we identify transnational consumer culture as an acculturative agent not identified in previous research on consumer ethnicity and question the performative model of culture swapping. Finally, the analysis supports ideas about postassimilationist ethnicity as culture consumed. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Implementing a Customer Orientation: Extension of Theory and Application

The marketing literature affirms the value of a customer orientation to organizational performance, but it is relatively silent on the implementation of this orientation. This research reports the results of a paired-comparison ethnographic study of the dynamics of implementing a customer orientation in a major public school district. Changes at a progressing site are compared with those at a struggling site. The study provides answers to the question of how an organization adopts a customer orientation by refining understanding of the roles of leadership, interfunctional coordination, and the collection and dissemination of customer-focused data in the transformation process.

Between Mothers and Markets: Constructing family identity through homemade food

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of homemade food in the construction of family identity. The article examines how homemade, its interface with markets’ competing food offerings, and intergenerational perspectives on homemade can cast light on competing understandings of the family, social relationships, and the market. Using two empirical studies conducted in a Midwestern cultural setting, findings highlight the importance of family meanings of homemade food, the role of homemade food in demarcating the realms of the family and market, the influence of producer-consumer relationships on threats posed by the market to a coherent family identity, and the qualitative changes in the social reproduction of family identities that result from divergences in homemade food meanings and practices across generations.