Marius K. Luedicke

Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict

Consumer researchers have tended to equate consumer moralism with normative condemnations of mainstream consumer culture. Consequently, little research has investigated the multifaceted forms of identity work that consumers can undertake through more diverse ideological forms of consumer moralism. To redress this theoretical gap, we analyze the adversarial consumer narratives through which a brand‐mediated moral conflict is enacted. We show that consumers’ moralistic identity work is culturally framed by the myth of the moral protagonist and further illuminate how consumers use this mythic structure to transform their ideological beliefs into dramatic narratives of identity. Our resulting theoretical framework explicates identity‐value–enhancing relationships among mythic structure, ideological meanings, and marketplace resources that have not been recognized by prior studies of consumer identity work.

Consumer acculturation theory: (crossing) conceptual boundaries

Consumer acculturation theorists have developed an insightful body of literature about the ways in which migrants adapt to foreign cultures via consumption. The present paper revisits 14 key studies from this field to highlight its most important contributions, critique its conceptual boundaries, and present cases of conceptual border crossings that indicate an emerging need for a broader conceptualization of the phenomenon. The paper closes by introducing a model that frames consumer acculturation as a complex system of recursive socio-cultural adaptation, and discusses its implications for future research.

From Marketing Ideology to Branding Ideology

This special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing is concerned with the globalization of marketing ideology. That topic raises the questions of what constitutes a marketing ideology and what might be its status on the global scene. The different approaches adopted in this special issue acknowledge the breadth of the topic and illuminate the intersection of marketing with the basic forces of cultures, politics, religion, conflicts, and a dismal financial debt crisis in the Western nations. To gain perspective, it seems relevant to observe the historical trajectory of marketing ideology and its likely continued path. To this end, we trace marketing ideology from a nineteenth-century premarketing ideology, to its initial focus on production/distribution technology, to its early twentieth-century focus on customer orientation and branding, to its current focus on network conversations and the significance of modern brand ubiquity. Using these insights, we then discuss three perspectives on future development and raise some potentially relevant questions.

Marketing as a Means to Transformative Social Conflict Resolution: Lessons from Transitioning War Economies and the Colombian Coffee Marketing System

Social conflicts are ubiquitous to the human condition and occur throughout markets, marketing processes, and marketing systems. When unchecked or unmitigated, social conflict can have devastating consequences for consumers, marketers, and societies, especially when conflict escalates to war. In this article, the authors offer a systemic analysis of the Colombian war economy, with its conflicted shadow and coping markets, to show how a growing network of fair-trade coffee actors has played a key role in transitioning the countrys war economy into a peace economy. They particularly draw attention to the sources of conflict in this market and highlight four transition mechanisms—empowerment, communication, community building, and regulation—through which marketers can contribute to peacemaking and thus produce mutually beneficial outcomes for consumers and society. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for marketing theory, practice, and public policy.

Where Marketing Causes Trouble

In its broadest sense, marketing is ‘what people do when they want to provide something to, or get something from, someone else’ (Levy, 1978, p. 14). Marketing is typically considered successful if (and only if) the parties involved consider the exchange of this ‘something’ of ‘posi. tive value’ (Bagozzi, 1974). In pursuit of mutually beneficial exchanges, marketing no longer provides consumers only with everyday necessities and amenities — such as nutrition, shelter, sanitation, or transport — but also plays an increasing role in supporting consumers’ identity construc. tion and expression.

Consumers' Controversies about Consumption

This article introduces a preliminary model that conceptualizes the drivers, expressions, and consequences of consumers’ controversies about the limits of legitimate consumption within a social context. Drawing on qualitative data on the North American conflict over the cultural legitimacy of the Hummer brand of vehicles, the study documents that - contrary to the prevailing consumer-producer centric model - market-mediated social conflicts also emerge as immediate, interpersonal social practices through which consumers contest each others’ consumption choices, ideologies, and behaviors. The study reveals that consumer controversies often begin with violations of social expectations, manifest in vigilant justice, insult, discredit, ridicule, and instruction practices, and serve consumers to preserve, promote, and defend the consumption-related meanings, practices, objects, and identities that they consider sacrosanct for themselves and their social peers. The study suggests that consumer controversies affect consumer culture, identity projects, and marketing practices in important ways previously unrecognized by theories of consumer emancipation and resistance.