Robin Canniford

Consumer empowerment: a Foucauldian interpretation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to question the taken for granted assumptions that underpin a liberal or lay view of consumer empowerment implicit to this special edition. In particular, the idea that it benefits consumers to have more choice is questioned.Design/methodology/approach – The key constructs of Michel Foucault – disciplinary power, governmentality and technologies of self – are used to argue that people can never escape from the operation of power. Rather it is shown how power operates to produce consumers.Findings – The liberal view of the empowerment of consumers through choice is questioned. Rather we suggest the opposite; that choice is a disciplinary power and that more and more choice can lead to choice paralysis. The contemporary phenomenon known as blogging is described as a Foucauldian technology of self. Managerial implications are discussed.Originality/value – The value of a Foucauldian inspired theory of empowerment is that it represents a more sophisticated understanding o...

Learning to be tribal: facilitating the formation of consumer tribes

Purpose – Studies of marketplace cultures emphasize the benefits of communal consumption and explain the ways that brand managers can leverage subcultures and brand communities. The ephemeral and often non‐commercial nature of consumer tribes means that they are more difficult to manage. This paper, aims to suggest that a necessary pre‐requisite for understanding how to engage with consumer tribes is to identify how consumers become members of tribes.Design/methodology/approach – Data are drawn from a five‐year ethnographic study of the archetypical club culture tribe that utilized a variety of data collection methods including participant observation and in‐depth interviewing.Findings – The paper identifies “learning to be tribal” as a communal practice that occurs through three interconnected processes of engagement, imagination and alignment.Originality/value – This paper makes three contributions: it clearly distinguishes between the three main forms of communal consumption found in the marketing lite...

Non-Representational marketing theory

The purpose of this article is to evaluate and advance tools that marketing and consumer researchers have recently gathered from assemblage and actor–network theories. By distinguishing between two different styles of applying these theories we explain that a ‘representational’, interventionist and problem-solving mode has come to dominate existing uses of assemblage and actor-network theories in our field. We explain that current applications can be supplemented by a non-representational mode of theorising that draws on work pioneered by Nigel Thrift. Specifically, we explain that non-representational marketing theory can expand our ontological sensitivities through improved attention to the minutiae and hitherto unrepresented constituents of life. Towards this end, we offer methodological suggestions to extend attention to flows of everyday marketplace activity, precognitive forms of networked agency, as well as affect and atmosphere in consumption spaces.

Moving shadows: suggestions for ethnography in globalised cultures

Purpose – Traditional notions of culture have become unicorns: assumed creatures of the past, whose authenticity seems increasingly doubtful. It is required of us to rethink the boundaries of culture and social science; to develop our understanding of interdependency and instability in cultural life. In order to incorporate possible discourses, the practice of research must also change. This paper discusses some problems associated with ethnography in global cultures.Design/methodology/approach – I begin by presenting a brief history of ethnography as a method for investigating unconceptualised groups. Following this, through reference to my own research, I argue that the foundations of this methodology can be developed to include the broad networks of influences extant in contemporary cultures. To this end, I consider a solution that poses the researcher as a locus of investigation from which the relationships that construct a culture may be collated and interpretations built.Findings – The research acco...

A Typology of Consumption Communities

Purpose – This conceptual chapter clarifies concepts of marketplace community. Methodology/Approach – Through a review of selected CCT studies, the chapter explores and reviews theories of subcultures of consumption, brand communities and consumer tribes. Findings – Subcultures of consumption, brand communities and consumer tribes exhibit divergent qualities that are summarised in a typology of communities. Research implications – The perspectives offered by tribal studies present powerful tools that compliment subcultural and brand community approaches to understanding the construction of marketplace cultures. Practical implications – Theory that improves the understanding of different features of marketplace communities can help marketing practitioners to determine more appropriate communal marketing strategies. Originality/Value of paper – This chapter recommends a consistent and commonly shared set of descriptive and theoretical terms for different kinds of marketplace community.

Partly primitive: discursive constructions of the domestic surfer

Various studies highlight the importance of discourses in consumer culture, yet fewer explore the historical development of these phenomena. This paper examines a long-view of the meanings and uses of primitive discourse in consumer culture. An investigation of the changing representation of indigenous Hawaiian surfing within Euro-American culture between the late-eighteenth and mid-twentieth century illustrates the ambiguous and malleable articulations of marketplace discourses. We find that over the course of this period, primitive discourses are expressed differently by changing figurations of social actors in manners that serve colonial, celebratory, contemplative and countercultural intentions. Finally, we find that the construction of surfing as a partly primitive marketplace culture combines these discourses to offer consumers a distinct and domesticated theatre of liberatory othering. Illustrating the changing possibilities and potentials for otherness in consumer culture, this paper reaffirms that contemporary marketplace cultures have complex historical roots. These legacies justify extended contextual investigations. Implications concerning representation and the politics of marketplace primitivism are discussed.

Poetic witness Marketplace research through poetic transcription and poetic translation

This article introduces the concept of ‘poetic witness’, a method of performing and presenting research that acknowledges the constellations of multiple objects, emotions and forces that constitute everyday consumption life worlds. This possibility is enabled through methodological processes of poetic transcription and poetic translation, which are applied to data collected during an ethnography of surfing culture. Potential uses for poetic witness in future marketing research are offered. In particular, poetic witness is shown to generate insightful research questions and to widen theoretical agendas for future marketing research.

Heterotopian selfies: how social media destabilizes brand assemblages

Purpose Digital technologies are changing the ways in which the meanings and identity of both consumers and brands are constructed. This research aims to extend knowledge of how consumer-made “selfie” images shared in social media might contribute to the destabilization of brands as assemblages. Design/methodology/approach Insights are drawn from a critical visual content analysis of three popular champagne brand accounts and consumer-made selfies featuring these brands in Instagram. Findings This study shows how brands and branded selves intersect through “heterotopian selfie practices”. Accentuated by the rise of attention economy and “consumer microcelebrity”, the authors argue that these proliferating selfie images can destabilize spatial, temporal, symbolic and material properties of brand assemblages. Practical implications The implications include a consideration of how selfie practices engender new challenges for brand design and brand management. Originality/value This study illustrates how a brand assemblage approach can guide investigations of brands at multiple scales of analysis. In particular, this paper extends knowledge of visual brand-related user-generated content in terms of how consumers express, visualize and share selfies and how the heterotopian quality of this sharing consequently shapes brand assemblages.

Against Modern Football: Mobilising Protest Movements in Social Media

Recent debates in sociology consider how Internet communications might catalyse leaderless, open-ended, affective social movements that broaden support and bypass traditional institutional channels to create change. We extend this work into the field of leisure and lifestyle politics with an empirical study of Internet-mediated protest movement, Stand Against Modern Football. We explain how social media facilitate communications that transcend longstanding rivalries, and engender shared affective frames that unite diverse groups against corporate logics. In examining grassroots organisation, communication and protest actions that span online and urban locations, we discover sustained interconnectedness with traditional social movements, political parties, the media and the corporate targets of protests. Finally, we suggest that Internet-based social movements establish stable forms of organisation and leadership at these networked intersections in order to advance instrumental programmes of change.

Unmanageable multiplicity: consumer transformation towards moral self coherence

Purpose – This study aims to explore: consumer experiences of intense moral dilemma arising from identity multiplicity conflict, expressed in the marketplace, which demand stark moral choices and consumer response to intensely felt moral tension where their sense of coherent moral self is at stake. Design/methodology/approach – The authors gathered ethnographic data from amongst ethical consumers, and theorised the data through theory of life projects and life themes to explain how multiplicity can become an unmanageable problem in the midst of moral dilemma. Findings – The authors reveal that in contrast to notions of liberating or manageable multiplicity conflict, some consumers experience intense moral anxiety that is unmanageable. The authors find that this unmanageable moral tension can provoke consumers to transform self and consumption choices to construct a coherent moral self. The authors identify this transformation as the meta life project. Research limitations/implications – This work contribu...