Consumer Culture Theory

Consumer Culture Theory

1. Research Programs

   • Consumer Identity Projects
     • Consumers use brands and hyperlinks to create multiple nonlinear cyber self-representations without necessarily sacrificing the idea of an integrated self
   • Marketplace Cultures
     • Consumers as culture producers
   • Mass-Mediated Marketplace Ideologies and Consumers' Interpretive Strategies
     • Channel and reproduce consumers' thoughts and actions in such a way as to defend dominate interests in society
   • The Sociohistoric Patterning of Consumption
     • Institutional and social structures that affect consumption (class, community, ethnicity, gender)

2. Key Points

   • Historical roots in calls for consumer researchers to broaden their focus to investigate the neglected experiential, social, and cultural dimensions of consumption in context
   • Strong bond between consumers, marketplace and cultural meanings

3. Facts

   • Many consumers' lives are constructed around multiple realities and that they use consumption to experience realities that differ dramatically from the quotidian
   • Explores how consumers actively rework and transform symbolic meanings encoded in advertisements, brands, retail settings, or material goods to manifest their particular personal and social circumstances and further their identity and lifestyle goals
   • Qualitative data and an array of related data collection and analysis techniques have been quite central to CCT
   • Focuses on the experiential and sociocultural dimensions of consumption that are not plainly accessible through experiments, surveys, or database modeling