The Panoptic Role of Advertising Agencies in the Production of Consumer Culture

Advertising's role in promoting an ideology of marketed consumption has been widely commented upon by critical theorists yet the mechanisms through which this influence becomes manifest remain relatively under-examined. In particular there has been no explicit examination of the mediating role of cultural knowledge in the production of ideologically driven advertising. This paper invokes the panoptic metaphor to position the knowledge gathered by and on behalf of advertising agencies as a major dynamic in the production of consumer culture. The consumer of advertising is a known entity for advertising agencies: the subject is watched, filmed, questioned, recorded, and tracked. Indeed, consumer biography and subjectivity itself has become material that is both produced and consumed by advertising agencies in order to produce culturally constitutive advertising. The paper integrates disparate literatures to situate knowledge of consumer culture at the hub of advertising's constitutive ideological influence.     

The impact of branding on low‐income adolescents: A vicious cycle?

This study examines the impact of consumerism and consumer culture on low‐income British adolescents. Specifically, it investigates the effects of branding and advertising on the formation of selfconcept clarity (SCC) and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII). A comparative study was conducted between two groups, low‐ and high‐income teenagers, assessing SCC and CSII by means of quantitative scales. It was found that low‐income teenagers are less clear in their self‐concept and are more susceptible to interpersonal influence than their high‐income counterparts. A significant negative correlation between the two scales revealed that the less clear one's self‐concept is, the more susceptible one is to interpersonal influence. It is proposed that an inability to “keep up” with the latest fashion trends (due to restricted consumption opportunities) may result in a damaged self‐concept among low‐income teenagers, which leads to heightened susceptibility to consumption pressures and hence heightens the negative socio‐psychological impacts of living in poverty. The results of the study are reviewed in terms of branding, advertising, and consumer behavior and a proposed conceptual model of branding's impact on low‐income teenagers is presented as a “vicious cycle.” © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Green Demarketing in Advertisements: Comparing “Buy Green” and “Buy Less” Appeals in Product and Institutional Advertising Contexts

This research compares consumer response to traditional green advertising appeals to that of less conventional, “green demarketing” (GD) appeals—messages by for-profit companies encouraging reduced category consumption for the sake of the environment. Rather than encouraging greener consumption, modern environmentalism calls for decreased consumption overall, a trend reflected in recent advertising campaigns (e.g., Patagonia's “Don't Buy This Jacket”). Despite its potential impact and unconventionality, research on GD in general is sparse, and no empirical research has examined consumer response to GD appeals relative to traditional green appeals. In three experiments, we find that, in the context of product advertising, consumers' attitudes for green ads are more favorable than those for GD ads, mediated by greater inferences of genuine environmental concern. However, we find the reverse pattern in the context of institutional ads. Further, an “anti-consumption amplifier” message embedded in the ad—espousing the potential harm of overconsumption—further boosts favorable consumer attitudes for the GD institutional ad relative to its traditional green counterpart. Importantly, we assess all effects while controlling for consumers' individual levels of green consumerism, such that implications may be applied more generally rather than to a specific segment of green consumers.     

Consumer Culture Plots in Television Advertising from Nigeria and South Africa

The goal of this study is to respond to Taylor's recognition of the dearth of cross-national advertising and globalization studies in emerging markets. To fill this theoretical gap in the literature, we employ semiology to evaluate the plots and stories used in promoting global consumer culture in television advertisements from the two major economic powers in sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria and South Africa. Unlike previous cross-national advertising and globalization studies that suggest that advertising is a reflection of cultural and global consumerism values, our findings suggest that advertisements reflect a romanticized view of middle-ground politics promoted by political establishments both at the national and the international level. We also found that the reflection of middle-ground politics in advertisements may be more prevalent in countries undergoing major ideological change.     

Consumer education between ‘consumership’ and citizenship: experiences from studies of young people

The aim of consumer education has been mainly to teach and educate students to act as informed, rational and prudent consumers. This perception of consumption as reasoned behaviour or action is inadequate in the late modern society, where consumerism is first and foremost characterized by globalization, cultural change and the liberation of the individual. The results of a research study involving Danish pupils aged 12–19 years present a picture of consumption connected both to material and non‐material aspects of life. Consumption as such has a significant impact on and meaning for the individual: it becomes a means by which human beings communicate and interact. Consumption is part of children's and young people's education and socialization, and plays a role in the development of identity and self‐image. Institutional consumer enlightenment and the education of students in school stand in contrast to informal consumer socialization and the education of individuals. The aim of formal consumer education may be described as ‘educating for critical consumer awareness and action competence’. However consumer education finds itself in the dilemma between ‘consumership’ and ‘citizenship’. This pilot study is aimed at understanding consumer socialization in order to improve formal consumer education and to reflect on how empowerment becomes part of consumer education.     

The Role of Commodified Celebrities in Children’s Moral Development: The Case of David Beckham

This paper presents an existentialist interpretation of the identity constituting meanings that middle‐class men and women ascribe to their bodies and their related motivations to engage in consumption activities that seek to transform their embodied selves. We begin by describing the relevance of the existential conceptualization of the embodied self to the postmodern condition of consumer culture. We apply this existential perspective to discern three dialectically structured themes drawn from phenomenological interviews with men and women across a broad age range. One emergent and unexpected finding is the extent to which these men and women expressed a constellation of common body image anxieties, thematic meanings, and self‐critical, objectifying interpretations of their bodies. Based on these findings and historical considerations, we propose that men's embodied selves are, like women's, fully inscribed in the patriarchal discourses that circulate throughout postmodern consumer culture. However, men occupy a distinct social space and, accordingly, we argue that their embodied selves are uniquely situated in a cultural model of hegemonic masculinity. We conclude that the postmodern ideal of the plastic, transformable body has become a resonant cultural metaphor through which middle‐class consumers enact their identity projects of creating a desired embodied self.     

消费社会语境下的广告文化批判

消费社会是以商品的大规模消费为特征的社会,从消费社会的角度来看,广告文化具备符号化、视觉化、时尚化和鼓励炫耀性消费的特征。在消费社会,广告通过建构商品符号意义,强化、误导目标受众的身份认同,刺激消费者的欲望,来助推消费心理,夸大其对心理满足的功能。它深深地受到商品逻辑的制约,反过来以商品逻辑瓦解原有的社会价值结构和秩序,并在与媒介的同谋中,广泛而持续地干扰媒介传播,刺激着消费社会以及社会文化的负面发展。     

Phenomenology of Aesthetic Organising--Ways Towards Aesthetically Responsive Organizations

Through explication of a visual research method, this paper theorizes how masculine identity interacts with consumption—of imagery, products, desires, and passions in advertising and consumer culture. We analyze the male body as a discursive “effect” created at the intersection of consumption and several marketing discourses such as advertising, market segmentation, and visual communication, balancing between brand strategy—what the marketer intends—and brand community—the free appropriation of meaning by the market. The paper’s contribution rests in extending previous work on male representation into historical, ontological, and photographic realms, providing a necessary complement between understanding advertising meaning as residing within managerial strategy or wholly subsumed by consumer response. We argue that greater awareness of the connections between the traditions and conventions of visual culture and their impact on the production and consumption of advertising images leads to enhanced ability to understand how advertising works as a representational system and signifying practice.     

Ad agencies

This article highlights advertising agencies as marketplace icons. The role of ad agencies in creating iconic brands can sometimes be obscured, yet ad agencies are central to how the contemporary marketplace works. While ad agencies are no longer the hegemonic instance of consumer culture that they were from the 1950s to the 1990s, they have adapted to today's democratic advertisingscape by shepherding cultural content produced elsewhere to market. Ad agencies have remained the engine behind significant shifts in consumer culture, such as the warming of relations between music and advertising, by acting as the ‘midwife’ between art and commerce, facilitating new cultural practices in the process.     

Cases in Advertising. Burton,Philip Ward and Richard Sandhusen. Columbus,Ohio: Grid Publishing,Inc., 1981

Abstract

Advertising, consumerism and consumer psychology are very much in the public eye these days and teachers, teaching advertising and marketing courses, see themselves, and are seen by others, as torn between opposing polar orientations. A survey of one group of teachers of advertising and advertising-related courses shows most such teachers orienting their courses, predominantly, toward the interests of the market place “professionals” rather than that of the general public. Yet humanistic and social conscience considerations would seem to demand the opposite. Several alternative, possible positions are considered and a practical, ethically supportable position is indicated.     

An examination of the values that motivate socially conscious and frugal consumer behaviours

This article extends social psychological research on the motivations for sustainable consumption from the predominant domain of ecologically conscious consumer behaviour to socially conscious and frugal consumer behaviours. A UK‐based survey study examines relationships between socially conscious and frugal consumer behaviours and Schwartz's value types, personal and socio‐political materialism, and demographics among the general public. Socially conscious consumer behaviour, like its ecological counterpart, appears to be an expression of pro‐social values. In contrast, frugal consumer behaviour relates primarily to low personal materialism and income constraints. As such, it does not yet represent a fully developed moral challenge to consumerism.     

论中国当代的消费主义文化——以电子产品的消费为例

在当下中国,在外来文化特别是商业文化的冲击下．传统的消费文化发生了很大变化,其内涵也越来越深刻。首先,电子产品以其独特之处以及其在消费市场所构成的特别消费现象,成为中国当代消费主义文化的基本态势,商品作为某种特定的符号意义进行生产消费。其次,传媒和中国当代消费主义文化的联系更加紧密,时尚在促进文化交流、活跃市场经济方面的作用越来越巨大,但也造成国人消费观念的畸形发展。再次,传媒在影响中国当代消费主义文化的同时也带来了积极变化：传统媒体信息传播方式发生改变,媒体对消费个体单向度的信息灌输变成了有消费者参与的信息传播的双向互动过程,特别是互联网的普及,个人在信息的选择上拥有了更多的自主性。     

Bio-politicizing consumption: neo-liberal consumerism and disembodiment in the food marketplace

How consumerism proliferates in society is central to consumer culture studies, yet little research has examined the power of consumerist discourses in shaping consumption at the intersection of marketing with State regulation. Drawing on Foucault's notions of governmentality and bio-power, a discourse analysis is conducted of food date labeling regulation. The study problematizes how labeling actualizes a form of neo-liberal consumerism within manufacturing and retail in which consumption is enacted as a site of bio-political control. Labeling, it is argued, fosters unsustainable excess consumption in the name of life and health of people by temporalizing and standardizing consumption, as well as disembodying the marketplace as an area for knowledge creation in consumption. Accordingly, the study discusses two processes “bio-politicizing” consumption that seek to dispense responsibility and re-distribute embodied consumption competence. Finally, it highlights the potential in people to resist such consumerism by developing alternative subjectivities and embodiments in the marketplace.     

The Effects of Vertical Individualism on Status Consumer Orientations and Behaviors

Values have been shown to explain advertising response and consumer behavior. Expanding the individualism–collectivism cultural framework, this research primarily focuses on the vertical individualism (VI: emphasizing independence and competition) value given its prevalence in the U.S. culture. Results of a survey among a national U.S. sample (a pilot study) showed that VI values were positively related to status consumer orientations, including tendencies to be brand conscious, buy branded products, and shop at upscale retail establishments. Moreover, in two experiments, the causal impact of VI values on status consumer orientations and behavior was demonstrated. Specifically, Study 1 showed that participants who were primed with VI values via a campus scenario (vs. control) indicated higher ratings of status consumption, brand‐buying behavior, and brand consciousness. Study 2 revealed further that an incidental exposure to a news story reflecting VI values (vs. horizontal collectivism values emphasizing cooperation and interdependence) influenced participants’ choices of a pen. Theoretical contributions to the study of values, advertising, and consumer orientations and practical implications for marketing are discussed.     

Non‐white readings of whiteness

This paper explores the status of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and uses that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy. Using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK, I explore how the circulation of rhetoric in the advertising industry functions as one form of mediation performed by advertising practitioners. I argue that practitioners’ role should not be understood solely in terms of a mediation between producer and consumer; instead, their role should be conceived in terms of a negotiation between multiple “regimes of mediation”, including that of the relationship between advertising agencies and their clients. Agencies perform commercial relationships, bringing them into being and constantly redefining them. Attending to these multiple modes of mediation opens up questions about the status of advertising, the role of cultural intermediaries, and the relationship between production and consumption, economy and culture.     

Some Institutional Aspects of Advertising

Abstract

According to the author, the public's attitude toward advertising is very low. Virginia H. Knauer. Special Assistant to the President for Consumer Affairs, discusses some of the reasons for this consumer outlook and how some advertisers have overcome consumer objections.     

Materialism,Religion, and Implications for Marketing—An Ethnographic Study of Nichiren Buddhism

The pursuit of material pleasures, construed as symbolizing consumer culture, is often at odds with religion. Hence for consumers for whom religion is important, there may be a quandary reconciling religious values, such as simple living and modest possessions with living in today's society awash with the ideology of consumerism with its abundance of goods and propaganda of the materialistic good life. This study explores how consumers reconcile religious precepts with materialism in today's consumer culture and society with an ethnographic study of a worldwide Buddhist organization that practices Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism. The study reveals that religion can embrace even the paradoxical entities of consumerism, materialism, and spiritualism; transcend thought duality; and emanate the positive potential intrinsic to all, leading to an individual human revolution with implications for marketing and societal transformation. The researcher hopes to add to the understanding of the religion, consumerism, and materialism linkage.     

From four hundred million to more than one billion consumers: a brief history of the foreign advertising industry in China

As an industry and a form of mass communication, modern advertising was introduced in China from the West at the turn of the century. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed China's first major exposure to foreign advertising and consumer culture. The 1990s may prove to be China's second encounter with global consumer culture through the medium of advertising; only this time, its experience is more massive and far-reaching. This article provides a capsule history of the development of the foreign advertising industry in China within the context of Chinese economy and media.     

Consumption,identity and space‐time

Offering an affirmative reading of work suggesting a strong association between postmodern society and consumer society, this paper provides an account of consumption and identity through an initial consideration of modern and postmodern conceptions of space‐time. Rather than addressing the detail of various critiques of work promulgating a strong association between the postmodern and consumerism; and rather than considering directly the degree of overlap or synonymy of the two terms; the paper works with an understanding of the modern /postmodern distinction that allows the problem (or, rather, aporia) of identity, and its increasingly important relation to consumption, to be brought to the fore. The connections between modernity, postmodernity, space‐time, identity and consumption are shown to possess a strong theoretical coherence‐recognition of which is extremely limited in those critiques expressing incredulity with respect to the association of consumerism and postmodernity, to which this paper obliquely responds.     

Results May Vary: Overcoming Variability in Consumer Response to Advertising Music

Although listening to music seems effortless, it actually involves many separate psychological mechanisms. This article describes and extends the multimechanism framework proposed by Juslin and colleagues, highlighting how the operation of psychological mechanisms leads to two general types of variability in consumer response to advertising music. First, the risk of between‐consumer variability (individual differences) in musical response is moderate or high for most mechanisms, and it often depends on each individual's particular history of exposure to music (listening biography). Second, within‐consumer variability occurs when different mechanisms have contrasting effects, so that an individual consumer's musical response is often mixed (e.g., guilty pleasures, bittersweet feelings, pleasurable sadness). Both types of variability can negatively impact advertising objectives (message reception, recall, acceptance, brand attitudes, etc.). The article offers preliminary suggestions for how marketers can use a multimechanism approach to successfully incorporate music in commercials and reduce the risk of unanticipated consumer responses. It ends with proposals for further research.