“Going natural”: Black women’s identity project shifts in hair care practices

Hair care, a seemingly mundane consumption practice, is packed with sociocultural meanings and constitutes an important realm of identity work for consumers. Drawing upon existing literature on consumer identity projects, this paper investigates the experiences of urban, Black women in Kenya as they disengage from the normative practice of altering their natural hair texture using chemical straighteners (a practice that conforms to Eurocentric beauty ideals of straight, flowing hair), and adopt the non-normative hair care practice of “going natural,” in which they embrace their natural hair texture and hairstyles. This paper traces the historical, sociocultural, and political events that underpin the normative ideology associated with the identity marker of natural Black hair, and how this ideology influences the women’s “going natural” experience. Findings reveal tensions that emerge in the women’s identity project disengagement and reconstruction process, and how the women navigate their position as they reimagine their embodied identity quest.     

Best for baby? Framing weaning practice and motherhood in web-mediated marketing

The aim is to illustrate how web marketing frame commercial baby food as a value-adding part of weaning practice and discuss how various ways of framing relate to contemporary mothering ideals. Drawing on “practice” and “frame analysis,” we illustrate how four baby food producers’ web marketing frame commercial baby food and weaning as “medical,” “fun” or “convenient.” The analysis shows that the web material offers a range of images and ideals that could function as discursive resources in mothers’ everyday feeding practices, while at the same time providing a good fit with several, rather than one specific mothering ideal. Besides adding to our knowledge on mothering this work illustrates the role that marketing play in configuring consumer practices. As a form of representation of consumer practice marketing involves a range of images offering discursive resources and supports consumers in negotiating actual and ideal practices linked to cultural ideals on consumption.     

Covert distinction: how hipsters practice food-based resistance strategies in the production of identity

This paper reveals the processes by which food is used to express resistance to the mainstream and perform identity work within the hipster community of consumption. Based on the findings of a qualitative investigation, several resistance strategies involving food emerged: Vegetarian choices; Brand choices and avoidances; and Decommodification practices. We discuss how these strategies are framed by hipsters' discursive distaste for the commercial food marketing system but are, in practice, operationalised as subtle ways to achieve proper representation of their collective identity within the marketplace. Mundane consumption emerges as motor-force in allowing these consumers to surreptitiously maintain distinction and to protect their within-group identity from mainstream co-optation. We conclude by suggesting that the inconspicuous nature of mundane consumables such as food and alcohol products allows for idiosyncratic shared community performances that are covert and difficult for broader social currents to detect and co-opt.     

A processual theory of green identity formation: the case of young environmentalists in Australia

Using image‐elicited, depth interviews, this qualitative study explores green consumption practices among 20 young environmentalists, aged between 18 and 25 years, in an Australian city with a view to examine how various identity formations reside in their narratives. The study's findings strongly support the applicability of Cherrier and Murray's four‐stage processual theory of identity (sensitization, separation, socialization, striving) to understand young environmentalist's formation of a green identity. The study also develops an emergent processual theory of green identity formation, which encompasses four main stages of control, create, compromise and customize. Each stage corresponds to how the young environmentalists position and negotiate their formative green identities, including first enacting control about their identity; creating their new identity in relation to existing green identity projects; compromising their new identity as it is practiced and socialized in their lives; and finally, customizing their identity as they frame, situate and align personal, social and cultural influences about consumption and their identity. The findings inform green policy makers and institutions working towards building a green consumer society involving young consumers.     

Consuming counterfeit: A study of consumer moralism in China

The consumption of counterfeits is a central theme in understanding consumer moralism. While some studies on marketing have highlighted the consumption motives and socio‐economic factors behind this seemingly unethical phenomenon, research on the subjective experiences of consumers and the cultural concerns about the consumption of counterfeits is lacking. The aim of this article is to gain a better understanding of how consumers construct and negotiate their moralistic identities through engaging in counterfeit consumption. We also examine how consumers utilize counterfeit goods as symbolic resources to echo, or even reproduce, the entrenched Chinese social relationships and marketplace ideological conditions. Our findings suggested that the research participants attempted to make sense of their counterfeit consumption behaviour by infusing the moralistic meanings drawn from the Chinese socio‐cultural value orientation. The study concludes that the moral identity work and counterfeit consumption practices are interwoven in a web of multiple discourses and resources available in the contemporary marketplace under the overarching consumer moralism framework.     

Food consumption and political agency: on concerns and practices among Danish consumers

Increasingly ordinary individual consumers are expected to perform some kind of societal or political agency. In the debates about political consumption it is a recurrent topic to what degree consumption practices can be seen as political practices and how many consumers perform such practices. The aim of this article is to empirically qualify the demarcation of the political in individual consumer activities by integrating the concept of political agency in the definition of political consumption. On the basis of empirical results from a representative survey among food consumers in Denmark, the article suggests that by supplementing the criteria of consumers performing specific consumption activities with a criteria of consumers expressing political agency, a more precise empirical delimitation of political consumption can be achieved. Three groups of food consumers are identified: those who perform political consumption practices; those who perform politicized consumption practices; and those who vocalize the discourse of political consumerism.     

A cosmopolitan return to nature: how combining aesthetization and moralization processes expresses distinction in food consumption

This article investigates how foodies' adoption of New Nordic Food enables them to combine aesthetic and moral cosmopolitanism ideals. It demonstrates that consumers integrate aesthetic and moral cosmopolitan discourses through two complementary processes: the re-aesthetization of nature and the re-moralization of the exotic. These processes combine in a cosmopolitan interest for one of the last unexplored foreign contexts: nature. The findings of this article contribute to existing research by showing that moral cosmopolitanism reflects a more individualized and less engaged form of consumption than ethical consumption. They illustrate how urban consumers perform distinction in contexts where nature is the most exotic unexplored context, highlighting further the reterritorialization of global cosmopolitan consumption, where food trends can only be consumed authentically in their context of origin. Finally, this article shows how moral cosmopolitanism can support consumers who acknowledge the need for ethical consumption yet struggle with its adoption.     

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.     

Perceptions that matter: perceptual antecedents and moderators of healthy food consumption

Unhealthy eating patterns present in most Western countries pose a serious threat to economic welfare and have severe consequences for the health and quality of life of the individual consumer. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model for understanding how health authorities and marketers can affect consumption of healthy food – and ultimately body mass index (BMI) – by addressing perceptual antecedents of consumers' involvement and health competencies. A qualitative (n = 16) pilot study and a consumer panel survey (n = 599) assisted in completing this task. The obtained structural equation modelling results confirmed that increasing consumers' competencies concerning healthy food consumption may improve the healthiness of their food behaviour, and ultimately reduce their BMI. Notably, these effects may occur even for consumers who perceive healthy food consumption to be a challenge. Our results also revealed that it may be problematic to improve health competencies for food consumers who are less involved in healthy food consumption. However, our study shows that two perceptual factors, ‘personal food identity’ (the extent to which consumers believe that their health identity is linked to their food behaviour) and ‘unhealthy food taste belief’ (the extent to which consumers believe that unhealthy food is more enjoyable and tastier than healthy food), may assist health authorities and marketers in increasing consumers' involvement in healthy food consumption.     

Running wild in the marketplace: the articulation and negotiation of an alternative food network

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we examine how actors within what we conceptualise as an emerging wild food alternative network are navigating through the foodscape to find alternatives to homogenous and standardised food products. Drawing on data from different research engagements with wild food consumers and producers over the last decade in Canada, we use the context of wild foods to explore how the ‘alternative’ is being articulated and negotiated. Inspired by scholarly work exploring the pedagogical promise of food, we also explore the transformational potential of the ‘alternative’ – how bringing wild foods to the table can both inspire and teach consumers about sustainability and alternative consumption practices. We conclude with directions for future marketing research on alternative food networks.     

Studying food tastes among young adults using Bourdieu's theory

The purpose of this study was to study the relationship between social position and food tastes. The empirical data stem from a survey carried out in 1991 on 703 people aged 23–26 years. Bourdieu's theory of the relationship between social position and consumption was used as a theoretical framework. Bourdieu attacks the position often expressed by economists that consumers are similar in most respects except for their economic capital. He introduced the concept ‘cultural capital’ when describing different consumption practices and emphasizes the relationship between gender and food tastes. The social position variables in this study include economic and cultural capital, and gender. Participants were asked to evaluate exotic, healthy, filling, inexpensive and traditional food. Two dimensions of food orientations were observed: food as form and food as function. Economic capital was of importance concerning the costs of food and its filling functions. Groups rich in cultural capital were more interested in healthy and exotic food and less interested in filling food than those possessing less cultural capital. Women were more concerned about healthy food than men. Cultural capital had an independent effect when economic capital was constant.     

Fast‐food addiction and anti‐consumption behaviour: The moderating role of consumer social responsibility

This study aims to understand the drivers of fast‐food addiction and the role of consumer social responsibility (CSR) on the relationship between fast‐food addiction and anti‐consumption. Due to growing health concerns, an increasing number of consumers have been avoiding the consumption of fast food. Based on a sample of 539 respondents, all pertaining to generation Y in Pakistan, this study tests a model including addiction and anti‐consumption behaviour. Empirical results provide strong evidence that individual and sociocultural factors together with advertising practices influence consumers’ fast‐food addiction. Results also reveal that CSR moderates the relationship between fast‐food addiction and anti‐consumption behaviour. Interestingly, the present study pioneers the discussion on how addiction can drive anti‐consumption. The findings can help public policy makers and managers to understand consumers’ anti‐consumption tendencies and help promote healthier consumption habits.     

The everyday intimacy of sleeping: an embodied analysis of intimate practices

Previous consumer research has generated rich knowledge about the dynamics of everyday intimacy. However, what is lacking is an understanding of the role the body plays in intimacy. To redress this gap, we set out to think of consumers’ intimate lives from an embodied perspective. To this aim, we take a practice lens to study the intimate practice of sleeping that offers, we argue, a fruitful context for highlighting the significance of bodily aspects. It also enables us to shed new light on the previously identified emotional, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions that structure and organize intimate practices. Our exploratory study employs a set of sleep-related cultural data to illustrate how consumption in sleeping practices is present in many previously unrecognized ways.     

Digitally enabling sustainable food shopping: App glitches,practice conflicts,and digital failure

New digital food platforms are being launched accompanied with the promise of also promoting more sustainable food consumption. However, despite some success, many of these efforts to digitally reconfigure consumers food practices fail. The aim of this paper is to empirically explore, conceptualize and explain such failures. Taking a practice theory approach, and drawing on a field experiment using the Karma app – an anti-food waste app – the paper shows that the inability of this app to promote a new way of acquiring food is due to glitches - app failures of different sorts - but also practice conflicts. Two types of practice conflicts, practice mismatch and practice competition, make the fostering of a new sustainable food provisioning practice difficult.     

Animating the big middle

A Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective captures the motivating social and cultural contexts of retail patronage and purchase behaviors and the myriad motivating factors behind the retail purchase decision. A CCT perspective complements behavioral decision theory and social cognition research in retailing. For consumers, retailers represent a field in which operant resources interact. In these marketspaces, firms and consumers exert a mutual gravitational pull. Firms compete for a role in the culturally constituted projects that consumers pursue by offering certain resource combinations. A CCT-based approach to retailing strives to account for co-creation, namely, how consumers deploy their own cultural resources, aided by retailer-provided resources, to accomplish the pursuit of their personal identity and communal projects. The paper discusses strategic orientations for retail firms that spring from a resource view, four types of firm supplied operant resources, suggests some mechanisms through which consumers animate cultural resources and their motivations to do so, and offers suggestions for future research.     

Hero brands,brand heroes: How R.M. Williams inspired a cult following and created a shared sense of meaning

Brands become relevant to consumers via storytelling, and archetypal myths in popular culture inform this effect. The hero is an archetype of enduring interest, yet as the marketing literature is replete with heroic undertones, the scope of empirical research is limited and dominated by North American perspectives. To address this shortcoming, this study explores Australian consumer relationships with hero archetypes to provide a contemporary view of how consumers enact brand myths. An in-depth case study of R.M. Williams, an iconic Australian brand, shows the relevance of iconic heroes and reveals how historical archetypes can evolve to address emergent consumer-brand storytelling needs. The study identifies several novel archetypal patterns which contribute to a deeper understanding of how consumers enact brand myths. These archetypes influence consumers in their consumption quests, reconciling social needs and facilitating their immersion in the brand’s story. To improve consumer-brand engagement, marketers must focus on engaging consumers with the brand’s narrative through the strategic use of archetypal myths.     

Coping with multiple identities related to meat consumption

Global meat consumption poses a threat to environmental sustainability and human health. Therefore, moral and health‐related norms connected to eating meat are changing and consumers experience conflicts when choosing between meat and nonmeat options in various situations. To achieve a better understanding of the nature of these conflicts and how consumers cope with them, we study identities related to meat consumption and how they are organized. Identity theories are used as the lens to address the self‐relevance of meat to consumers. Thirteen Danish consumers shared how and why they ate, reduced, or avoided meat in a food‐based photo‐diary and in‐depth interviews, supported by a visualization approach, developed from self‐brand connection methods. Three higher‐order identities (pragmatic idealist, ethical foodie, and healthy hedonist) emerged, governing the consumption, reduction, or avoidance of different meat categories. Identity conflicts between health, moral (e.g., animal welfare), and hedonic concerns were present, but also identity stigma. Coping mechanisms include change of salience and changing patterns of meat consumption. Campaigners promoting a reduction in meat consumption and developers of alternative protein foods can use these insights to target identities and facilitate conflict resolutions. However, more research is needed on how generalizable results are.     

Local consumer well-being in a multicultural marketplace: From conflict to engagement

This study offers a nuanced understanding of how local consumers experience, interpret and acculturate to expatriates' practices within a multicultural marketplace. We adopt Demangeot et al. bridge framework and its marketplace domains (security, visibility, opportunity, utility, intercultural competence and cultural navigability) to unpack locals' consumption patterns and experiences that produce multicultural tensions or multicultural engagement that contributes to locals' well-being. Data were collected via 2 focus groups and 20 in-depth interviews with local consumers in Qatar. The findings offer several theoretical and managerial insights that could enrich the scant literature on acculturation of local minorities within multicultural non-homogenous societies and enhance our understanding of how local consumers engage with culturally different experiences.