consumer culture theory

CONSUMER CULTURE THEORY

RESEARCH IN CONSUMER

BEHAVIOR

Series Editor: Russell W. Belk

Vols 1–10: Research in Consumer Behavior

RESEARCH IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR VOLUME 11

CONSUMER CULTURE

THEORY

EDITED BY

RUSSELL W. BELK

York University, Ontario, Canada

JOHN F. SHERRY, Jr.

University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Amsterdam – Boston – Heidelberg – London – New York – Oxford

Paris – San Diego – San Francisco – Singapore – Sydney – Tokyo

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CONTENTS

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS ix

INTRODUCTION xiii

THEORY/AGENCY

CONSUMER CULTURE THEORY (AND WE REALLY

MEAN THEORETICS): DILEMMAS AND

OPPORTUNITIES POSED BY AN ACADEMIC

BRANDING STRATEGY

Eric Arnould and Craig Thompson 3

WORKING TO CONSUME THE MODEL LIFE:

CONSUMER AGENCY UNDER SCARCITY

Marie-Agne`s Parmentier and Eileen Fischer 23

THE MATERIAL SEMIOTICS OF CONSUMPTION OR

WHERE (AND WHAT) ARE THE OBJECTS IN

CONSUMER CULTURE THEORY?

Shona Bettany 41

SERVICE-DOMINANT LOGIC AND CONSUMER

CULTURE THEORY: NATURAL ALLIES IN AN

EMERGING PARADIGM

Eric J. Arnould 57

v

FESTIVITY

POSTMODERN CONSUMPTION AND THE HIGH￾FIDELITY AUDIO MICROCULTURE

John D. Branch 79

GLOCAL ROCK FESTIVALS AS MIRRORS INTO THE

FUTURE OF CULTURE(S)

E. Tac-li Yaziciog˘lu and A. Fuat Firat 101

COMEDY OF THE COMMONS: NOMADIC

SPIRITUALITY AND THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL

John F. Sherry, Jr. and Robert V. Kozinets 119

GLOBALITY

CONSUMING THE DEAD: WAITING FOR BLESSINGS

IN A JAVANESE CEMETERY

Kevin Browne 151

A HEAVY BURDEN OF IDENTITY: INDIA, FOOD,

GLOBALIZATION, AND WOMEN

Jenny Mish 165

CONSUMPTION AND CLASS DURING AND AFTER

STATE SOCIALISM

Katherine Sredl 187

vi CONTENTS

IDENTITY

HAPPINESS, CONSUMPTION, AND BEING

Carolyn Costley, Lorraine Friend, Emily Meese,

Carl Ebbers and Li-Jen Wang

209

SUDDENLY MELUNGEON! RECONSTRUCTING

CONSUMER IDENTITY ACROSS THE COLOR LINE

Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Donald Panther-Yates 241

REAPING IDENTITY MEANINGS FROM AN

AGRARIAN PAST: SOUTHERN HARVESTERS OF

COMMERCIALLY CULTIVATED REGIONAL

HERITAGE

Kelly Tian and Craig Thompson 261

MEMBRANE OF THE SELF: MARKETING,

BOUNDARIES, AND THE CONSUMER￾INCORPORATED SELF

Eugene Halton and Joseph D. Rumbo 297

ARTISTRY

CULTURE AND CO-CREATION: EXPLORING

CONSUMERS’ INSPIRATIONS AND ASPIRATIONS

FOR WRITING AND POSTING ON-LINE FAN

FICTION

Clinton D. Lanier, Jr. and Hope Jensen Schau 321

MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY AND ART

CONSUMPTION

Mohammadali Zolfagharian and Ann T. Jordan 343

Contents vii

COMMUNITY

DYNAMICS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: THE

ROLE OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATIVE

GENRES IN ONLINE COMMUNITY EVOLUTIONS

Anat Toder Alon and Fre´de´ric F. Brunel 371

HOW BRAND COLLECTING SHAPES CONSUMERS’

BRAND MEANINGS

Cele C. Otnes and Eliana N. Shapiro 401

LIVING FOR ‘‘ETHICS’’: RESPONSIBLE

CONSUMPTION IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Nil Ozcaglar-Toulouse 421

POETRY

YOU ARE GETTING SLEEPY

Eugene Halton 439

SFO

John Schouten 441

PHILOSOPHER’S THWART BAG

John Sherry 443

‘‘ON THE CIRCLE OF CONSUMPTIONy’’

George M. Zinkhan 445

viii CONTENTS

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Anat Toder Alon Boston University School of

Management, Boston, MA, USA

Eric Arnould Norton School of Family and Consumer

Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson,

AZ, USA

Russell W. Belk Schulich School of Business, York

University, North York, Ontario M3J

1P3, Canada

Shona Bettany University of Bradford School of

Management, Bradford, UK

John D. Branch Stephen M. Ross School of Business,

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI,

USA

Kevin Browne InterSource Research and Consulting,

LLC, Cambridge, WI, USA

Fre´de´ric F. Brunel Boston University School of

Management, Boston, MA, USA

Carolyn Costley Waikato Management School,

Department of Marketing, Hamilton,

New Zealand

Carl Ebbers Waikato Management School,

Department of Marketing, Hamilton,

New Zealand

A. Fuat Firat University of Texas-Pan American,

Edinburg, TX, USA

Eileen Fischer Schulich School of Business, York

University, North York, Ontario, Canada

ix

Lorraine Friend Waikato Management School,

Department of Marketing, Hamilton,

New Zealand

Eugene Halton Department of Sociology and Program in

American Studies, University of Notre

Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

Elizabeth C. Hirschman School of Business, Rutgers University,

New Brunswick, NJ, USA

Ann T. Jordan College of Public Affairs and Community

Service, University of North Texas,

Denton, TX, USA

Robert V. Kozinets Schulich School of Business, York

University, North York, Ontario, Canada

Clinton D. Lanier, Jr. Department of Marketing, College of

Business Administration, University of

Nebraska-Lincoln, NE, USA

Emily Meese Waikato Management School,

Department of Marketing, Hamilton,

New Zealand

Jenny Mish University of Utah, David Eccles School

of Business, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Cele C. Otnes Department of Business

Administration, University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL

61820, USA

Nil Ozcaglar-Toulouse Universite´ de Lille 2, GERME research

center, Lille, France

Donald Panther-Yates DNA Consulting, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Marie-Agne`s Parmentier Schulich School of Business, York

University, North York, Ontario, Canada

Joseph D. Rumbo Department of Sociology and

Anthropology, James Madison

University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA

x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Hope Jensen Schau Eller College of Management, The

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

John Schouten Pamplin School of Business, University of

Portland, Portland, OR, USA

Eliana N. Shapiro Department of Advertising, University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana,

IL, USA

John F. Sherry, Jr. Department of Marketing, Mendoza

School of Business, University of Notre

Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

Katherine Sredl Institute of Communications Research,

Department of Advertising, University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana,

IL, USA

Craig Thompson University of Wisconsin, Madison,

WI, USA

Kelly Tian Department of Marketing, College of

Business, New Mexico State University,

Las Cruces, NM, USA

Li-Jen Wang Waikato Management School,

Department of Marketing, Hamilton,

New Zealand

E. Tac-li Yaziciog˘lu Istanbul Technical University, Mac-ka

Istanbul, Turkey

Geroge Zinkhan University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

Mohammadali

Zolfagharian

Prior to August 2007

Department of Marketing and Logistics,

University of North Texas, Denton,

TX, USA

From August 2007

Department of Management, Marketing

and International Business College of

Business Administration, University of

Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX, USA

List of Contributors xi

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INTRODUCTION

This volume includes a selection from the papers, poems, and photo essays

presented at the inaugural Conference on Consumer Culture Theory held in

August 2006 on the campus of Notre Dame University. What we had hoped

might become a regular conference to be held every two years, proved to be

so popular that it is becoming an annual event. The second conference will

take place in May 2007 at York University.

Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) is an interdisciplinary field that com￾prises macro, interpretive, and critical approaches to and perspectives on

consumer behavior. Relative to its maturity and diffusion as a sphere of

interest in the discipline of marketing, it has accounted for a disproportionate

number of the prize-winning articles published in the flagship Journal of

Consumer Research, and is increasingly represented in other top venues

including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, and

the Journal of Retailing. The number of social scientists outside of marketing

who conduct CCT research is large and growing. These researchers may

publish books in their home disciplines, and claim the pages not only of their

own flagship journals but also in such specialized venues as the Journal of

Consumer Culture, Journal of Material Culture, and Consumption, Markets

and Culture. The enterprise is flourishing, and has reached the point where a

regular research conference has become inevitable.

Several years ago, (and after innumerable corridor conversations at sister

conferences) a strategy session with many of the thought leaders in the CCT

area of marketing and consumer research was held at the University of

Wisconsin, to help provoke the field’s next stage of development. The group

determined that one prudent course of action would be to launch an al￾ternating series of meetings – one devoted exclusively to training, the other

exclusively to research presentations – that would provide the impetus to

future growth. With sponsorship from a number of sources (including the

Marketing Science Institute and the Association for Consumer Research),

the first Workshop on Qualitative Data Analysis was conducted at the

University of Nebraska in 2005, under the able direction of Eric Arnould.

This conference was devoted entirely to training doctoral students and jun￾ior faculty in the methods and analytics of CCT. The cognate conference

xiii

held in August 2006 at Notre Dame was a celebration of substantive

research by a multinational, multidisciplinary, multigenerational group of

scholars and practitioners that seeks to contribute to theory.

Presenters at this conference hailed from over 40 universities, 12 coun￾tries, several corporations, and numerous disciplines. Forty-eight papers

and four videos received spirited discussion that consistently ran overtime

and spilled into the hallways, lunches, and dinners of the conference. Poetry

was posted and a series of videos were shown continuously as well. Several

communal meals provided a less formal opportunity to talk shop and plot

more gatherings. From the feedback we received, participants were stim￾ulated by some interesting new knowledge, some productive new ideas for

future research, some solid new options for collaborative work, and an even

greater enthusiasm for the prospects of our collective enterprise.

We are grateful to the more than 80 reviewers of the 100 submissions

to the conference. We especially appreciate the service of Sandra Palmer,

Administrative Assistant at Notre Dame, as well as Robert Drevs, Phillip

Corporon, Caitlin Schaefer, and Corrine Palmer. For their support, finan￾cially and otherwise, we give thanks to Dean Carolyn Woo (Mendoza

College of Business, University of Notre Dame) and Dean Jack Brittain and

Bill Moore (David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah).

Russell W. Belk

John F. Sherry, Jr.

Editors

xiv INTRODUCTION