Consumer Culture Theory

Aspectos do consumo

sociocultural

experiential

symbolic

ideological

o artigo apresenta

motivating interests,

conceptual orientations

theoretical agendas

nebulous epithets

relativist

post- positivist

interpretivist

humanistic

naturalistic

postmodern

O que é

Rather, it refers to a family of theoretical perspectives that address the dynamic relation- ships between consumer actions, the marketplace, and cultural meanings.

While representing a plurality of distinct theoretical approaches and research goals, CCT researchers nonetheless share a common theoretical orientation toward the study of cultural complexity that programmatically links their respective research efforts.

ações dos consumidores

mercado

significados culturais

O que a CCT explora

CCT explores the heterogeneous distribution of meanings and the multiplicity of overlapping cultural groupings that exist within the broader sociohistoric frame of globalization and market capitalism.

Thus, consumer culture denotes a social arrangement in which the relations between lived culture and social resources, and between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, are mediated through markets.

consumer culture

The term "consumer culture" also conceptualizes an inter-connected system of commercially produced images, texts, and objects that groups use—through the construction of overlapping and even confiicting practices, identities, and meanings—to make collective sense of their environments and to orient their members' experiences and lives (Kozinets 2001).

Further, consumer culture describes a densely woven network of global connections and extensions through which local cultures are increasingly interpenetrated by the forces of transnational capital and the global mediascape (Appa- durai 1990; Slater 1997; Wilk 1995).

Perhaps most important, CCT conceptualizes culture as the very fabric of experience, meaning, and action (Geertz 1983).

experiência

significado

ação

distributed view of cultural meaning

This "distributed view of cultural meaning" (Hannerz
1992, 16) emphasizes the dynamics of fragmentation, plu- rality, fiuidity, and the intermingling (or hybridization) of consumption traditions and ways of life (Featherstone 1991; Firat and Venkatesh 1995).

While a distributive view of culture is not the invention of CCT, this research tradition has significantly developed this perspective through empir- ical studies that analyze how particular manifestations of consumer culture are constituted, sustained, transformed, and shaped by broader historical forces (such as cultural narratives, myths, and ideologies) and grounded in specific socioeconomic circumstances and marketplace systems.

autores

CCT's philosophy of science foundations and methodological orientations

Anderson 1986, 1988

domain-specific reviews of its substantive contributions

Mick et al. 2004

Sherry 2004

Belk 1995

Arnold and Fischer 1994

Bristor and Fischer 1993

Firat and Venkatesh 1995

Hirschman 1993

Holbrook and O'Shaughnessy 1988

Hudson and Ozanne 1988

Murray and Ozanne 1991

Sherry 1991

Sherry and Kozinets 2001

4 major interrelated research domains that are explored by CCT researchers

consumer identity projects

CCT is an interdisciplinary research tradition that has advanced knowledge about consumer culture (in all its heterogeneous manifestations) and generated empirically grounded findings and theoretical innovations that are relevant to a broad constituency in the base social science disciplines, public policy arenas, and managerial sectors.

3 enduring misunderstandings about CCT

First and foremost among these myths is that consumer culture theorists study particular contexts as ends in them- selves; therefore, the argument goes, CCT contributes little to theory development in consumer research (Lehmann 1999; Simonson et al. 2001).

A second misconception is that the primary differences between CCT and other traditions of consumer research are methodological. [...] Consumer culture theory researchers embrace methodological pluralism whenever quantitative measures and analytic techniques can advance the operative theoretical agenda.

CCT research is misperceived in some disciplinary quarters as a sphere of creative expression, voyeurism, entertaining esoterica. and sonorous introspection of lim- ited relevance to consumer research's broader theoretical projects or the pragmatic interests of managers and policy makers.

marketplace cultures

the sociohistoric patterning of consumption

mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers' interpretive strategies.

In this work, consumers are conceived of as identity seekers and makers.

Consumer culture theorists have turned attention to the relationship between consumers' identity projects and the structuring influence of the marketplace, arguing that the market produces certain kinds of consumer positions that consumers can choose to inhabit.

In contrast to traditional anthropological views of people as culture bearers, consumers are seen as culture producers.

The key research question driving this program of research is this; how does the emergence of consumption as a dominant human practice reconfigure cultural blueprints for action and interpretation, and vice versa?

This stream of CCT research also addresses the ways in which consumers forge feelings of social solidarity and create distinctive, fragmentary, self-selected, and sometimes tran- sient cultural worlds through the pursuit of common con- sumption interests

this genre of CCT builds upon Maffesoh's (1996) ideas on neotribalism.

The third domain that CCT addresses is the institutional and social structures that systematically influence consumption, such as class, community, ethnicity, and gender.

what is consumer society and how is it constituted and sustained?

To address this problematic, consumer culture theorists investigate the processes by which consumption choices and behaviors are shaped by social class hierarchies; gender; ethnicity; and families, households, and other formal groups.

Consumer culture theory ex- amines consumer ideology—systems of meaning that tend to channel and reproduce consumers' thoughts and actions in such a way as to defend dominate interests in society (Hirschman 1993).

What normative messages do commercial media transmit about consumption (Hirschman 1988)?

How do consumers make sense of these messages and formulate critical responses (Hetrick and Lozada 1994; Hirschman and Thompson 1997; Murray and Ozanne 1991; Murray, Ozanne, and Shapiro 1994)?

In this research program, con- sumers are conceived of as interpretive agents whose mean- ing-creating activities range from those that tacitly embrace the dominant representations of consumer identity and life- style ideals portrayed in advertising and mass media to those that consciously deviate from these ideological instructions.

CCT research is fundamentally concemed with the cultural meanings, sociohistoric influences, and social dynamics that shape consumer experiences and identities in the myriad messy contexts of everyday life

CCT researchers investigate how consumers consume across a gamut of social spaces (e.g,, the home, the office, diverse retail settings, the Web, leisure enclaves, tourist sites), frequently making use of multiple data sources and triangulation techniques

Consumer culture theory research shows that many consumers' lives are constructed around multiple realities and that they use consumption to experience real- ities (linked to fantasies, invocative desires, aesthetics, and identity play) that differ dramatically from the quotidian

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