Interdiscursive Readings In Cultural Consumer Research

The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call for a return to Foucault is issued via a critical engagement with the so-called practice-turn. This re-turn does not seek to reconstitute venerably Foucauldianism, but to theorize ‘inters-’ as vanishing points that challenge the integrity of discrete cultural orders in non-convergent manners. The propounded interdiscursivity approach is offered as a reading strategy that permeates the contemporary cultural consumption phenomena that are scrutinized in this book, against a pan-consumptivist framework. By drawing on qualitative and mixed methods research designs, facilitated by CAQDAS software, the empirical studies that are hosted here span a vivid array of topics that are directly relevant to both traditional and new media researchers, such as the consumption of ideologies in Web 2.0 social movements, the ability of micro-celebrities to act as cultural game-changers, the post-loyalty abjective consumption ethos. The theoretically novel approaches on offer are coupled with methodological innovations in areas such as user-generated content, artists’ branding, and experiential consumption.

Global Perspectives in Cross-Cultural and Cross-National Consumer Research deals with several important issues crucial for greater understanding of international and cross-cultural consumer behavior. This understanding in turn can provide international marketers with valuable insights, such as conditions under which globalization may or may not work. The coverage in this book is interdisciplinary in nature, and the chapters discuss several constructs (intermediary variables, processes, and also other environmental influences) related to social, personal, and psychological components or consequences of culture.The book begins with a conceptual model of the effect of culture on consumer behavior, with the components and consequences of the cultural influences clearly identified in terms of social, personal, and psychological factors. The following chapters discuss general issues related to globalization and standardization, present conceptual approaches to propositions relating to multicultural contexts, and address consumer complaining behavior and responses to advertising. There are five chapters on empirical and methodological studies conducted in specific pairs of countries, with data obtained from Canada, Denmark, Japan, Germany, Poland, Romania, and the United States. In presenting readers with new information, Global Perspectives in Cross-Cultural and Cross-National Consumer Research spans these specific topics: the nature of cultural influence on consumer behavior globalization versus customization of international marketing strategy individualism versus collectivism right versus left symbolism product involvement consumer response to information technology interdependent versus independent cultures The contributors are well-known scholars in the international/cross-cultural marketing field; their chapters present state-of-the-art developments in this area. The coverage of the material is interdisciplinary in nature and is likely to benefit a broad audience, especially academic researchers in international or cross-cultural consumer research and librarians of research-oriented schools, universities, or organizations.

This volume addresses some of the most important conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges and opportunities with which the sister disciplines of semiotics and discourse analysis are mutually confronted in the context of considering new avenues of cross-disciplinary application to distinctive branding research streams. In continuation of the collective volume 'Handbook of Brand Semiotics' (Kassel University Press, 2015), which sought to consolidate relevant scholarship and to identify the main territories that have been established at the cross-roads between branding and semiotic research, the current 'Advances in Brand Semiotics & Discourse Analysis' aims at accomplishing further strides in critical areas, such as the exigency for reconsidering the aptness of existing semiotic theories in the face of the radically shifting co-creative landscape of digital branding, the benefits of systematically micro-analyzing brand communities’ discourses by drawing on CAQDAS programs, the combination of big data analytics with discourse theory in corpus analysis, and the epistemological issues that emerge while combining discourse analysis with time-hallowed marketing qualitative and quantitative research methods. At the same time, the volume hosts a resourceful blend of empirical studies and novel conceptual frameworks in burgeoning streams, such as place, heritage, culinary, personal, and political branding.

Global Perspectives in Cross-Cultural and Cross-National Consumer Research deals with several important issues crucial for greater understanding of international and cross-cultural consumer behavior. This understanding in turn can provide international marketers with valuable insights, such as conditions under which globalization may or may not work. The coverage in this book is interdisciplinary in nature, and the chapters discuss several constructs (intermediary variables, processes, and also other environmental influences) related to social, personal, and psychological components or consequences of culture. The book begins with a conceptual model of the effect of culture on consumer behavior, with the components and consequences of the cultural influences clearly identified in terms of social, personal, and psychological factors. The following chapters discuss general issues related to globalization and standardization, present conceptual approaches to propositions relating to multicultural contexts, and address consumer complaining behavior and responses to advertising. There are five chapters on empirical and methodological studies conducted in specific pairs of countries, with data obtained from Canada, Denmark, Japan, Germany, Poland, Romania, and the United States. In presenting readers with new information, Global Perspectives in Cross-Cultural and Cross-National Consumer Research spans these specific topics: the nature of cultural influence on consumer behavior globalization versus customization of international marketing strategy individualism versus collectivism right versus left symbolism product involvement consumer response to information technology interdependent versus independent cultures The contributors are well-known scholars in the international/cross-cultural marketing field; their chapters present state-of-the-art developments in this area. The coverage of the material is interdisciplinary in nature and is likely to benefit a broad audience, especially academic researchers in international or cross-cultural consumer research and librarians of research-oriented schools, universities, or organizations.

Currently, 1 out of 10 US citizens lays claim to being targeted in a certain way. Do these allegations signal the onset of mass psychosis, a social epidemic of unheard of proportions or a ubiquitous lived reality that affects millions, yet without any obvious and self-explanatory reasons why? Targeting Culture: Making the Invisible Visible offers a comprehensive social theoretic framework for making sense of a largely invisible threat or for how the invisible may be made visible. By adopting as interpretive platform a critical discourse analytic approach, it dimensionalizes the culture of targeting on three levels, micro, meso and macro. At the same time, the analytic highlights salient legal facets, while suggesting that this complex, multi-act, multi-perpetrator crime of multiple composite causality involving interdiscursive chains between lay and institutional discourses may be effectively addressed on the grounds of a multi-dimensional legal model, such as that of indirect perpetration in organized power mechanisms. In order to facilitate the reader's understanding of the subtle nuances of this new cultural phenomenon, a lavish array of concepts is offered to the reader, spanning various perspectives from the humanities and the social sciences, such as psychoanalysis, microsociology, religious studies, social cybernetics, systems theory, multimodal rhetorical studies, philosophy, cultural studies, legal studies. About the authorGeorge Rossolatos (MSc, MBA, PhD) is an academic researcher, marketing practitioner, and the editor of the International Journal of Marketing Semiotics & Discourse Studies. Major publications include Targeting Culture: Making the Invisible Visible (2019), Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research (2018), Handbook of Brand Semiotics (2015; ed. and co-author), Semiotics of Popular Culture (2015), Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics (2012, 2014), //rhetor.dixit//: Understanding Ad Texts' Rhetorical Structure for Differential Figurative Advantage (2013), Applying Structuralist Semiotics to Brand Image Research (2012), Interactive Advertising: Dynamic Communication in the Information Age (2002; ed. and co-author), plus numerous articles in academic and trade journals. His research interests focus on cultural consumer research/popular culture, branding/advertising, and digital marketing/new media.

Consumer research has traditionally focused on issues of epistemology in the collection and analysis of data. As a consequence, the crisis in representation which has radically reshaped understanding in the social sciences, has, so far, had very little impact on consumer research. This book redresses the balance with an investigation of representation and constructions of 'truth' in consumer research. Subjects covered include: * construction of the researcher and consumer voice * quantitative tools and representation * advertising narratives * poetic representation of consumer experience * the crisis in the crisis concept * consumer-oriented ethnographic research. The essays are written by experts from Britain and the United States and draw on a broad range of theoretical approaches.

Published in cooperation with the Association for Consumer Research "A clearly written and useful work. Their book lays out organizing principles that delineate the underlying epistemologies current in consumer research, providing insightful exposure to philosophical positions and associated research methods for both the experienced researcher and the novice. . . . The book provides insight into current epistemologies and associated methods and is an important resource for all consumer behavior researchers. It should be taken as a starting point for delving into and understanding consumer research, a springboard that directs the researcher to relevant theorists and provides a framework for assessing research perspectives." --Journal of Marketing Research The methodological choices now confronting consumer researchers are daunting. For many years, researchers have wrestled with issues related to the nature of knowledge in the study of consumption phenomena. In Postmodern Consumer Research, Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Morris B. Holbrook examine philosophies and methods of consumer research along an objectivist-subjectivist continuum. First, they present philosophical concepts regarding the origin and content of knowledge relevant to consumer-behavior phenomena. Then, they consider a set of research methods aimed at implementing inquiry from the viewpoint of each particular philosophical perspective. They conclude by discussing criteria for evaluating research conducted using the various methods and argue for increased collegial harmony and temperance. An invaluable contribution to the field, this volume will interest researchers, professionals, and students in the areas of management, qualitative research, organizational studies, and research methods.

Research in Consumer Behaviour presents the latest research, theory and methods in the field of consumer behavior. Consumption is broadly construed to include the processes surrounding the acquisition, use and disposition of consumer goods, services and ideas. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are represented in empirical papers and conceptual papers include differing philosophical orientations. Occasionally special topical volumes devoted to important emerging ideas of consumer research are published. All papers are peer-reviewed. Contributors, readers, and reviewers come from throughout the English-speaking world and from multiple disciplines. These disciplines include marketing, sociology, anthropology, psychology, communications, and others. Papers are accordingly expected to be free of narrow disciplinary jargon and to draw upon the increasingly broad consumer research literature. While papers are often based on a single culture, a global and cultural orientation is expected. The orientation of the series is to advance understanding of consumption issues from a theoretical and societal perspective rather from a more applied managerial perspective. Studies of both macro and micro consumption issues are encouraged as well as issues of significance in both more and less affluent parts of the world. This volume reflects a number of current trends in consumer research. It is interdisciplinary in focus and in the backgrounds of the contributors. The book is cross-cultural by the same criteria, focusing on basic issues such as the nature of consumer desire, development of consumer culture, consumer behavior over the life course, collecting behavior, and effects of consumption on the environment. Recent trends in consumer research methodology (visual elicitation) and focus (sports, art, popular culture) are all reflected.