Güliz Ger

I'd like to buy the world a coke: Consumptionscapes of the “less affluent world”

The impact of globalization on the consumption patterns of the Less Affluent World are examined, drawing on examples of consumer culture contact with the More Affluent World. We find that rising consumer expectations and desires are fueled by global mass media, tourism, immigration, the export of popular culture, and the marketing activities of transnational firms. Yet rather than democratized consumption, these global consumption influences are more apt to produce social inequality, class polarizations, consumer frustrations, stress, materialism, and threats to health and the environment. Alternative reactions that reject globalization or temper its effects include return to roots, resistance, local appropriation of goods and their meanings, and especially creolization. Although there is a power imbalance that favors the greater influence of affluent Western cultures, the processes of change are not unidirectional and the consequences are not simple adoption of new Western values. Local consumptionscapes become a nexus of numerous, often contradictory, old, new and modified forces that shape unique consumption meanings and insure that the consumption patterns of the Less Affluent World will not result in Western consumer culture writ globally.ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag behandelt die Auswirkungen der Globalisierung auf die Konsummuster von weniger entwickelten Gesellschaften und bezieht sich auf beispielhafte Berührungen ihrer Konsumkultur mit Wohlstandsgesellschaften. Er zeigt, daß eine Wirkungskombination aus weltweit agierenden Massenmedien, aus Tourismus und Einwanderung, aus dem Export von Alltagskultur und aus grenzüberschreitenden Marketingaktivitäten zu zunehmenden Erwartungen und Wünschen der Verbraucher führt. Anstelle eines demokratisierten Konsums bewirken diese globalen Konsumeinflüsse jedoch eher soziale Ungleichheit, gesellschaftliche Polarisation, Verbraucherfrustration, Stress, Materialismus und Gefahren für Gesundheit und Umwelt. Als alternative Reaktionen, die eine Globalisierung ablehnen oder ihre Auswirkungen abmildern wollen, kennzeichnet der Beitrag die Rückkehr zu den regionalen Wurzeln, den Widerstand der Verbraucher, die lokale Anpassung von Allerweltsgütern und Veränderung ihrer subjektiven Bedeutungen, sowie vor allem eine “Kreolisierung” im Sinne einer eigenständingen Vermischung und Verschmelzung von Bedeutungsgehalten der unterschiedlichsten Herkunft. Wenn es auch ein Machtungleichgewicht zugunsten eines größeren westlichen kulturellen Einflusses gibt, so gehen die Veränderungsprozesse dennoch nicht einseitig in eine Richtung und das Ergebnis besteht nicht einfach in der Übernahme neuer westlicher Werte. Regionale Konsumpanoramen ergeben sich als Verknüpfung zahlreicher, oft widersprüchlicher, alter, neuer und modifizierter Kräfte, die eigenständige Konsumbedeutungen schaffen und gewährleisten, daß die Konsummuster der weniger entwickelten Welt nicht generell einem westlichen Kulturdiktat unterworfen werden.

Localizing in the Global Village: Local Firms Competing in Global Markets:

Local firms can compete with transnational firms if their actions are firmly based in the local culture and if they move from local strengths while being equipped with an in-depth understanding of the global production and consumption dynamics. Three domains where local firms can offer alternatives to standard global products are products grounded in local culture, information goods, and products for similar local conditions and the poor worldwide. Local firms must develop an innovative perspective, a global and local vision, self-crafted rather than transferred and imitated marketing skills and practices, partnerships and alliances, and a supportive political environment. Such firms can successfully travel on their alternative road within the global arena.

Early Modern Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture and the Formation of the Consumer Subject

We examine the sociohistorical formation of the consumer subject during the development of consumer culture in the context of leisure consumption. Specifically, we investigate how an active consumer was forming while a coffeehouse culture was taking shape during early modern Ottoman society. Utilizing multiple historical data sources and analysis techniques, we focus on the discursive negotiations and the practices of the consumers, the marketers, the state, and the religious institution as relevant stakeholders. Our findings demonstrate that multiparty resistance, enacted by consumers and marketers, first challenged the authority of the state and religion and then changed them. Simultaneously and at interplay with various institutional transformations, a public sphere, a coffeehouse culture, and a consumer subject constructing his self-ethics were developed, normalized, and legalized. We discuss the implications of the centrality of transgressive hedonism in this process, as well as the existence of an active consumer in an early modern context.

Accounting for Materialism in Four Cultures

Accounts for materialism are examined based on qualitative research in Romania, Turkey, the USA, and Western Europe. Various spontaneously offered accounts reconcile the discrepancy between the belief that materialism is bad and materialistic consumption behavior and aspirations. These accounts include justifications - passionate connoisseurship, instrumentalism, and altruism - and excuses - the compelling external forces, the ways of the modern world, and deservingness. The differences in accounts can be understood culturally and historically. In negotiating the ‘bad’ material world with their own consumption worlds, informants draw from various ethics prevalent in their cultures to moralize their personal materialistic consumption. Our findings suggest ways in which materialism, moralized by local accounts, is able to grow globally in spite of its condemnation.

Constructing and Representing the Islamic Consumer in Turkey

Abstract This study looks at how marketers in Turkey construct and represent tesettürlü consumers (women wearing Islamically inspired forms of covered dress) in advertising and other commercial imagery, and how these representations are shaped and transformed by the local and global dynamics of consumerism, capitalism, and politics. We believe that the emergence of tesettürlü women as a distinct consumer segment and their evolving representation in the marketing imagery are revealing of the processes of identity formation and negotiation as well as the social changes that have been occurring in Turkey since the 1980s. By attending to the discourses and practices of market actors, namely companies and designers that manufacture and sell clothing and related products to tesettürlü women in Turkey, we show how the Islamic fashion industry operates through a play on cultural difference and similarity, and fabricate the ideal of a “modern” tesettürlü woman which is attainable through consumption.

The positive and negative effects of marketing on socioeconomic development: The Turkish case

Some observations and thoughts about domestic and international interactions between marketing and economic, sociopolitical, and cultural factors are presented using Turkish examples. These interactions are discussed in terms of satisfaction of the needs (having, actualization, and social) of the three parties that seem to be differentially influenced by marketing: over- and underprivileged individuals, the society, and the businesses. In particular, the attention is drown to the fact that whereas marketing has had mainly positive effects on the countrys privileged consumers, the poor consumers have seldom benefitted. The author suggests a number of actions, to be taken by business and non-business organizations, that could increase the need satisfaction of each of the parties.

Islamic marketing at the Nexus of global markets–religions–politics and implications for research

This essay explores Islamic marketing at the intersection of global capitalism and global Islam and argues that Islamic marketing is one case in point that global capitalism lives and thrives with religions rather than replace them. I review briefly the global rise of religions and the different accounts of that resurgence and point to the political nature of religions. Besides politics, the global search for community bolsters the value of religion and the opportunity for Islamic marketing. Given the multiplicity of capitalisms and the embeddedness of marketing in the nexus of global markets, religions, and politics, I suggest that the emergent arena of Islamic marketing is ripe for studies grounded in the particular context and history as well as in recent social theory. Research can potentially generate theory about markets and marketing if and only if marketing scholars regard the phenomena of Islamic marketing as part and parcel of the logics of the market, capitalism, and globalization and examine the locally specific links among religion (and communality), markets, and politics. Critical ethnography and political economy analyses are some of the promising approaches for that end.

An emotional economy of mundane objects

This article illuminates the affective potentialities of objects. We examine the circulation of Kurdish music cassettes in Turkey during the restrictive and strife-laden period of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. We find that the practices comprising circulation – recording, hiding, playing, and exchanging cassettes – constituted tactical resistance and generated communal imaginaries. We illuminate the “emotional economy” that is animated by a mundane object: the cassette, through its circulation, becomes saturated with emotions, establishes shared emotional repertoires, and habituates individuals and collectives into common emotional dispositions. Cassettes thus play a part in shaping and reinforcing an emotional habitus that accompanies the emergence of a sense of “us,” the delineation of the “other,” and the relationship between the two. We thus demonstrate the entwinement of materiality and emotions, and examine how this entwinement generates emotional structures that shape and perpetuate the imagining of community as well as the enactment of resistance.

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.

Special Issue on Turkey and Turkish Communities

The purpose of the issue is to help illuminate marketization and marketing dynamics in a world of global markets and growing globalization. Turkey and Turkish communities present a fertile context in which such dynamics can be studied, since they represent a meeting and confrontation of the East and the West, culturally, historically, economically, socially, and politically, whether within Turkey or elsewhere where large communities of immigrants reside. A crucial question is: what can macromarketing scholars learn from studying various phenomena and issues in the Turkish context? Thus, the special issue welcomes works, which will generate new learning, insights, and conceptualization/theorization about markets, market(ing) processes and systems, marketization trends, and macro consumption and marketing phenomena. Broader, contextualized, and critical perspectives into the phenomena of interest are likely to be gained through this special issue.