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.
AbstractAlthough stigma is prevalent in everyday life, consumer researchers' interest on the topic remains scant and focuses mostly on stigma management. We move beyond individual coping strategies and examine the processes of stigmatization and destigmatization. Through an ethnographic study of fashion consumption practices of urban Turkish covered women, we explore how veiling, a deviant practice stigmatized in the secular and urban mind-set, first became an attractive choice for some middle-class women and then transformed into a fashionable and ordinary clothing practice for many. We map out the global multi-actored work that underlies the emergence of veiling as an attractive choice and explicate its gradual routinization and destigmatization. We discuss the findings in terms of their implications for understandings of choice and free will, the formative role of fashion in the evolution of a new habitus and social class, and the relationship between the market and religion.
In: Askegaard , S & Ger , G 1997 ' Product-country images as stereotypes: A comparative study of Danish food products in Germany and Turkey ' Aarhus School of Business, MAPP Centre .
Executive summary 1. Stereotype research as known from social psychology and political research has only to a limited extent found its way into the field of product-country images. However, recent studies of country-of-origin or country images have taken up stereotypes and related concepts such as schemas and cognitive structures. 2. In this study, we examine product-country images in terms of stereotypes. In order to explore stereotypes of country and product meaning, we conducted research on the meanings pertaining to Denmark and Danish food products in two selected cultures: Germany and Turkey. 3. Focus group discussions were held in three cities in each of the two countries. The interview guide used in both countries reflects the attempt to combine product images and country images, and to obtain a relatively broad array of meanings and stereotypes pertaining to Denmark and its food products. 4. Germans qualify Danish food products as simple, yet tasty and delicious but also unhealthy due to high fat content and use of additives. Turks think of Danish food products as being of good quality and healthy due to hygienic production standards but also dull and tasteless and not compatible with Turkish food culture. 5. Other studies show that Danish exporters tend to have a more positive idea of Danish products' and Denmark's image on export markets than our results can confirm. Thus, there seems to be a clash between the way Danish exporters think others see us and the actual image on export market. 6. Product-country images are highly contextualized. Each export market even down to a regional basis has its own criteria and standards for judging national images in international marketing. 7. The German informants generally know Denmark better than the Turkish informants, leading to a higher degree of elaboration in the German stereotypes. Interestingly, however, the greater detail also increases the sources of "error" in the description. Thus, it is impossible to conclud the German stereotypes are more "correct" than the Turkish ones. This finding is contradictory to the standard assumption in country-of-origin research, that increasing familiarity leads to decreasing use of stereotypes and increasing "objective knowledge" about the country. 8. Finally, our results confirm that a stereotype approach to product-country images does indeed enrich our understanding of consumers' representations of products from other countries, that product and country images do influence each other, and that consumer imagery is an important factor for international economic life.
Abstract Prior consumer research has investigated the consumer behavior, identity work, and sources of ethnic group conflict among various immigrants and indigenes. However, by continuing to focus on consumers' lived experiences, researchers lack theoretical clarity on the institutional shaping of these individuals as ethnic consumers, which has important implications for sustaining neocolonial power imbalances between colonized (immigrant-sending) and colonizing (immigrant-receiving) cultures. We bring sociological theories of neoliberal governmentality and multiculturalism to bear on an in-depth analysis of the contemporary Canadian marketplace to reveal our concept of market-mediated multiculturation, which we define as an institutional mechanism for attenuating ethnic group conflicts through which immigrant-receiving cultures fetishize strangers and their strangeness in their commodification of differences, and the existence of inequalities between ethnicities is occluded. Specifically, our findings unpack four interrelated consumer socialization strategies (envisioning, exemplifying, equipping, and embodying) through which institutional actors across different fields (politics, market research, retail, and consumption) shape an ethnic consumer subject. We conclude with a critical discussion of extant scholarship on consumer acculturation as being complicit in sustaining entrenched colonialist biases.
AbstractThis article brings the sociological theory of governmentality to bear on a longitudinal analysis of American presidential speeches to theorize the formation of the citizen-consumer subject. This 40-year historical analysis—which extends through four economic recessions and the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—illustrates the ways in which the national mythology of the American Dream has been linked to the political ideology of the state to create the citizen-consumer subject in the United States. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data demonstrates 1) the consistent emphasis on responsibility as a key moral value, albeit meshed with ideals of liberalism and libertarianism at different presidential periods; 2) that the presidents iteratively link the neoliberal political ideology and the national mythology of the American Dream through a sophisticated morality play myth, wherein they cast the citizen-consumer as a responsible moral hero on a journey to achieve the American Dream; and 3) that the presidents use three main dispositives—disciplinary, legal, and security—to craft the citizen-consumer subject in their response to economic recessions. These findings extend prior consumer research on consumer subjectivity, consumer moralism, marketplace mythology, and politics of consumption.
AbstractWhile previous research has mobilized sociological and psychological readings of the body, this study considers it ontologically as the ultimate place we must live in, with no escape possible. A phenomenological framework and a four-year, multimethod, qualitative study of tattoo recipients and tattooists substantiates the conceptualization of the body as a threefold articulation: an inescapable place (topia), the source of utopias arising from fleeting trajectories between here and elsewhere, and the "embodied heterotopia" that it becomes when people rework their bodies as a better place to inhabit. We show how tattooed bodies are spatially conceived as a topia through their topographies, territories, landscapes, and limits. We then highlight how this creates a dynamic interplay between past, present, and future, resulting in utopian dreams of beautification, escape, conjuration, and immutability. Finally, we show how tattooees produce embodied heterotopias, namely other places that both mirror and compensate for their ontological entrapment. In considering the body as a place, our framework enriches phenomenological and existential approaches to self-transformation in contemporary consumption.
Abstract Like homes, neighborhoods, and cities, retail locations offer significant opportunities for attachment far from domestic spheres. In commercial settings, consumers construct personal geographies, and find stable references for their lives. Our work advances previous consumer research by showing how these relationalities are situated, implicitly unstable and often impermanent. Individuals attach to commercial spaces in multiple ways, through both immediate and slow processes. We theorize that multiple affordances of spaces—whether sensual, symbolic, or cerebral—trigger meaningful ties, stimulate new affective and practice repertoires and may exert a transformative power in personal biographies. Bonds evolve in tandem with individuals' life courses and are also impacted by events beyond consumers' control, such as store closures. Whether disruptive or constructive, detachments can precipitate constructive change, allowing individuals to mobilize the emotional and cognitive resources at the base of their affective bond with treasured places, and redirect these assets more effectively. Forced and voluntary detachment from retail spaces are thus interpreted as integral and complementary components of attachment.
AbstractRepair is an overlooked but important aspect of consumer behavior with implications for the social and environmental sustainability of consumption. This ethnographic study examines the interplay of repair and consumption by analyzing when and how consumers repair the objects they use. The analysis examines how conflicting and complementary practice elements can lead to object replacement and disposal or, alternatively, facilitate object repair and extended use. Results unfold how consumers calibrate their routine activities around the continually changing material capacities of objects. Consumers engage in repair as a response to worn or damaged objects that misalign from and often disrupt ongoing practices. Repairers, including consumers and professional service providers, attempt to adjust object capacities in ways that realign disrupted practices with the routinized ways that consumers do them. When successful, repair sustains consumer practices by avoiding prolonged disruption and unnecessary waste. However, conflicts between production, consumption, and repair can hinder the efficacy of repair interventions and shape whether and how consumers repair the objects they use. The article explains these challenges and concludes by discussing their implications for studies of repair, consumer practices, and sustainable consumption.
Abstract Consumer movements strive to change markets when those markets produce value outcomes that conflict with consumers' higher-order values. Prior studies argue that consumer movements primarily seek to challenge these value outcomes by championing alternative higher-order values or by pressuring institutions to change market governance mechanisms. Building on and refining theorization on value regimes, this study illuminates a new type of consumer movement strategy where consumers collaborate to construct alternative object pathways. The study draws from ethnographic fieldwork in the German retail food sector and shows how building alternative object pathways allowed a consumer movement to mitigate the value regime's excessive production of food waste. The revised value regime theorization offers a new and more holistic way of understanding and contextualizing how and where consumer movements mobilize for change. It also provides a new tool for understanding systemic value creation and the role of consumers in such processes.
AbstractDiffusion is traditionally examined at a macro level, measured by adoption (e.g., sales), or at a micro level, assessed by consumer characteristics (e.g., adopter types). We address diffusion at a meso level focusing on how a practice disseminates across extended time and cross-cultural and cross-national space. We conduct an historical analysis and ethnographic inquiry of the dispersion of an indigenous practice, surfing, and the consequences of practice diffusion on practice reproduction. Our data suggest practice diffusion is not the wholesale adoption of a practice. Rather, a practice emerges across diverse cultural and national contexts through adaptation, fueled by processes of codification and transposition. We find that the movement of practice elements (meanings, materials, and competences) and their dynamic linkages (transposition, codification, and adaptation) enable a practice to (re)emerge across broad historic epochs and complex sociocultural landscapes. This study reveals how a practice evolves through shifts in power between practice carriers and noncarriers and results in distinct forms of reproduction (demarcation, imitation, acculturation, and innovation) that can mask the cultural genealogy of a practice. The continual maintenance and evolution of a practice depend on its strength of alignment and embeddedness within systems of practices that make up the social fabric of everyday life.