Craig Thompson
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Marketing, Faculty Member
Research Interests:
Critics of political consumerism argue that it perpetuates a neoliberal belief that complex societal problems are best redressed through the market-coordinated choices and actions of socially responsible consumers. However, such critiques... more
Critics of political consumerism argue that it perpetuates a neoliberal belief that complex societal problems are best redressed through the market-coordinated choices and actions of socially responsible consumers. However, such critiques overlook how neoliberalism is actually enacted in particular socio-cultural contexts and the variegated ideological effects that result. To redress this gap, we analyze the “actually existing neoliberalism” manifest in a Slow Food network. This discursive system presents an intersection between a neoliberal discourse of passionate entrepreneurialism and a politicized therapeutic ethos that traces to the organization’s historical roots in Italian leftist politics. Through this actually existing neoliberalism, Slow Food enthusiasts constitute themselves as ethical agents who are sharing their passion and helping others gain autonomy from the corporate controlled, industrialized food system. This ideological framing buttresses the ethical authority of...
Research Interests:
This research analyzes the cultural contradictions of authenticity as they pertain to the actions of consumers and marketers. The authors’ conceptualization diverges from the conventional assumption that the ambiguity manifest in the... more
This research analyzes the cultural contradictions of authenticity as they pertain to the actions of consumers and marketers. The authors’ conceptualization diverges from the conventional assumption that the ambiguity manifest in the concept of authenticity can be resolved by identifying an essential set of defining attributes or by conceptualizing it as a continuum. Using a semiotic approach, the authors identify a general system of structural relationships and ambiguous classifications that organize the meanings through which authenticity is understood and contested in a given market context. They demonstrate the contextually adaptable nature of this framework by analyzing the authenticity contradictions generated by the cultural tensions between “conscious capitalism”—a market logic that encompasses both global brands and small independent businesses, such as a farm-to-table restaurant or an organic food co-op—and the elitist critique. The Slow Food movement provides a case study...
Research Interests:
Critics of political consumerism argue that it perpetuates a neoliberal belief that complex societal problems are best redressed through the market-coordinated choices and actions of socially responsible consumers. However, such critiques... more
Critics of political consumerism argue that it perpetuates a neoliberal belief that complex societal problems are best redressed through the market-coordinated choices and actions of socially responsible consumers. However, such critiques overlook how neoliberalism is actually enacted in particular socio-cultural contexts and the variegated ideological effects that result. To redress this gap, we analyze the ''actually existing neoliberalism'' manifest in a Slow Food network. This discursive system presents an intersection between a neoliberal discourse of passionate entrepreneurialism and a politicized therapeutic ethos that traces to the organization's historical roots in Italian leftist politics. Through this actually existing neoliberalism, Slow Food enthusiasts constitute themselves as ethical agents who are sharing their passion and helping others gain autonomy from the corporate controlled, industrialized food system. This ideological framing buttresses the ethical authority of the Slow Food movement by countering the cultural condemnation that its politicized taste practices are elitist affectations.
The twin pillars of big data and data analytics are rapidly transforming the institutional conditions that situate marketing research. In response, many proponents of culturalist paradigms have adopted the vernacular of 'thick data' to... more
The twin pillars of big data and data analytics are rapidly transforming the institutional conditions that situate marketing research. In response, many proponents of culturalist paradigms have adopted the vernacular of 'thick data' to defend their vulnerable position in the marketing research field. However, thick data proselytising fails to challenge several outmoded ontological assumptions that are manifest in the big data myth and it situates socio-cultural modes of marketing thought in a counterproductive technocratic discourse. In building this argument, I first discuss the relevant historical continuities and discontinuities that have shaped the big data myth and the thick data opportunism. Next, I argue that culturally oriented marketing researchers should promote a different ontological frame-the analytics of marketplace assemblages-to address how big data, or more accurately its socio-technical infrastructure, produces new kinds of emergent and hybrid market structures, modes of social aggregation, consumption practices, and prosumptive capacities.
This research analyzes the cultural contradictions of authenticity as they pertain to the actions of consumers and marketers. The authors' conceptualization diverges from the conventional assumption that the ambiguity manifest in the... more
This research analyzes the cultural contradictions of authenticity as they pertain to the actions of consumers and marketers. The authors' conceptualization diverges from the conventional assumption that the ambiguity manifest in the concept of authenticity can be resolved by identifying an essential set of defining attributes or by conceptualizing it as a continuum. Using a semiotic approach, the authors identify a general system of structural relationships and ambiguous classifications that organize the meanings through which authenticity is understood and contested in a given market context. They demonstrate the contextually adaptable nature of this framework by analyzing the authenticity contradictions generated by the cultural tensions between "conscious capitalism"-a market logic that encompasses both global brands and small independent businesses, such as a farm-to-table restaurant or an organic food coop and the elitist critique. The Slow Food movement provides a case study for analyzing how consumers, producers, and entrepreneurs who identify with conscious capitalist ideals understand these disauthenticating, elitist associations and the strategies they use to counter them. The authors conclude by discussing implications of the analysis for theories of authenticity and for managing the authenticity challenges facing conscious capitalist brands.
This study analyzes CrossFit as a marketplace culture that articulates several key dimensions of reflexive modernization. Through this analysis, we illuminate a different set of theoretical relationships than have been addressed by... more
This study analyzes CrossFit as a marketplace culture that articulates several key dimensions of reflexive modernization. Through this analysis, we illuminate a different set of theoretical relationships than have been addressed by previous accounts of physically challenging, risk-taking consumption practices. To provide analytic clarity, we first delineate the key differences between reflexive modernization and the two interpretive frameworks-the existential and neoliberal models-that have framed prior explanations of consumers' proactive risk-taking. We then explicate the ways in which CrossFit's marketplace culture shapes consumers' normative understandings of risk and their corresponding identity goals. Rather than combatting modernist disenchantment (i.e., the existential model) or building human capital for entrepreneurial competitions (i.e., the neoliberal model), CrossFit enthusiasts understand risk-taking as a means to build their preparatory fitness for unknown contingencies and imminent threats. Our analysis bridges a theoretical chasm between studies analyzing consumers' proactive risk-taking behavior and those addressing the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty induced by the threat of uncontrollable systemic risks.
This essay gives closer historical consideration to the unprecedented disciplinary impact of Belk's (1988) conceptualization of the extended self. This canonical article initially appeared to be another flashpoint in the paradigmatic... more
This essay gives closer historical consideration to the unprecedented disciplinary impact of Belk's (1988) conceptualization of the extended self. This canonical article initially appeared to be another flashpoint in the paradigmatic conflict between positivist and interpretivist consumer researchers. However, Belk's portrayal of consumers as agentic actors who produce their own identities through a network of possessions and symbolic artefacts proved to be highly compatible with interdisciplinary trends toward a more holistic and socio-culturally situated understanding of consumer behavior. Accordingly, Belk's "extended self" created an ontological bridge between interpretivist studies of consumers' co-constituting relations to the socio-material world and consumer psychologists' quest to expand their research interests beyond the study of rational decision making processes. While some marketing historians have suggested that the extended self's seminal influence derives from its generative "vagueness," I propose that its transformational effects on the broader field of consumer research trace to a genius of mythopoesis and a genius of timing. I then discuss how the logic of ontological reconfiguration, manifest in Belk's conceptualization, can foster more synergistic and innovative inter-paradigmatic dialogues between consumer culture theory (CCT) and consumer psychology.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Business and Mobilization
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Abstract Purpose This paper reflects on the development of Consumer Culture Theory, both as a field of research and as an institutional classification, since the publication of Arnould and Thompson (2005). Methodology/approach This paper... more
Abstract Purpose This paper reflects on the development of Consumer Culture Theory, both as a field of research and as an institutional classification, since the publication of Arnould and Thompson (2005). Methodology/approach This paper takes a conceptual/historical orientation that is based upon the authors’ experiences over the course of the 10-year CCT initiative (including numerous conversations with fellow CCT colleagues). Findings The authors first discuss key benchmarks in the development of the CCT community as an organization. Next, the authors highlight key intellectual trends in CCT research that have arisen since the publication of their 2005 review and discuss their implications for the future trajectories of CCT research. Originality/value The paper by Arnould and Thompson (2005) has proven to be influential in terms of systematizing and placing a widely accepted disciplinary brand upon an extensive body of culturally oriented consumer research. The CCT designation has also provided an important impetus for institution building. The 10-year anniversary of this article (and not incidentally the CCT conference from which the papers in this volume hail) provides a unique opportunity for the authors to comment upon the broader ramifications of their original proposals.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
A number of influential gender theorists contend that men suffer from a pandemic crisis of masculinity in their work and family roles that they seek to assuage through the compensatory consumption of phallic symbols. We critique this... more
A number of influential gender theorists contend that men suffer from a pandemic crisis of masculinity in their work and family roles that they seek to assuage through the compensatory consumption of phallic symbols. We critique this conventional view through a cultural analysis of the consumption practices of a group of men who fit the stuck-in-the-middle socio-economic profile commonly associated with the crisis of masculinity. We first discuss the ideological structure of phallic masculinity. Then, in our analysis, we find that our men’s everyday consumption practices construct a specific socio-cultural articulation of phallic masculinity whereby its internal paradoxes are leveraged as a means to produce desirable experiences and self-identifications. We further show how men adapt feminine practices as a revitalizing retreat, which we conceptualize as a form of gender tourism.
Research Interests:
<p>Consumer researchers have tended to equate consumer moralism with normative condemnations of mainstream consumer culture. Consequently, little research has investigated the multifaceted forms of identity work that consumers can... more
<p>Consumer researchers have tended to equate consumer moralism with normative condemnations of mainstream consumer culture. Consequently, little research has investigated the multifaceted forms of identity work that consumers can undertake through more diverse ideological forms of consumer moralism. To redress this theoretical gap, we analyze the adversarial consumer narratives through which a brand-mediated moral conflict is enacted. We show that consumers’ moralistic identity work is culturally framed by the myth of the moral protagonist and further illuminate how consumers use this mythic structure to transform their ideological beliefs into dramatic narratives of identity. Our resulting theoretical framework ex- plicates identity-value–enhancing relationships among mythic structure, ideological meanings, and marketplace resources that have not been recognized by prior studies of consumer identity work.</p
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Business, Marketing, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture, and 15 morePsychology, Economics, Cultural Sociology, Countercultural Studies, Consumption, Consumer Behavior, Interpretive research methodology, Contemporary Social Theory, Pierre Bourdieu, Consumer Culture, Consumer Research, Tourism, Cooptation, Consumer, and Hipsters
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Business, Marketing, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture, and 15 morePsychology, Economics, Cultural Sociology, Countercultural Studies, Consumption, Consumer Behavior, Interpretive research methodology, Contemporary Social Theory, Pierre Bourdieu, Consumer Culture, Consumer Research, Tourism, Cooptation, Consumer, and Hipsters
Research Interests: Business, Marketing, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Sociology of Culture, and 15 morePsychology, Economics, Cultural Sociology, Countercultural Studies, Consumption, Consumer Behavior, Interpretive research methodology, Contemporary Social Theory, Pierre Bourdieu, Consumer Culture, Consumer Research, Tourism, Cooptation, Consumer, and Hipsters
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article analyzes Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a form of ethical consumerism organized by a nexus of ideological discourses, romantic idealizations, and unconventional marketplace practices and relationships. Our analysis... more
This article analyzes Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a form of ethical consumerism organized by a nexus of ideological discourses, romantic idealizations, and unconventional marketplace practices and relationships. Our analysis explicates the aspects of CSA that enable consumers to experience its pragmatic inconveniences and choice restrictions as enchanting moral virtues. We conclude by assessing the societal implications that follow from these localized marketplace relationships and their ideological distinctions to the modes of enchantment that are constituted in postmodern cathedrals of consumption.
Research Interests:
1 This study introduces the concept of the hegemonic brandscape to analyze a particular nexus of marketplace dynamics. The cultural discourses that surround Starbucks and the servicescape structures that the so-called Starbucks revolution... more
1 This study introduces the concept of the hegemonic brandscape to analyze a particular nexus of marketplace dynamics. The cultural discourses that surround Starbucks and the servicescape structures that the so-called Starbucks revolution has established as the linchpins of a desirable coffee shop experience exert a systematic influence on the socio-cultural milieu of local coffee shops, regardless of whether these shops are positioned as countercultural havens or a third-place hangout for middle-class professionals. We identify ...
Research Interests:
In fields ranging from moral philosophy (Etzioni 1988) to social psychology (Gergen 1991) to women's studies (Gilligan et al 1990; Radway 1984), the Cartesian focus on individual level experiences is being broadened to address the... more
In fields ranging from moral philosophy (Etzioni 1988) to social psychology (Gergen 1991) to women's studies (Gilligan et al 1990; Radway 1984), the Cartesian focus on individual level experiences is being broadened to address the communal nature of human existence and meaning. One prominent manifestation of this trend is the increasing theoretical attention now being directed to the influences that the desire for communal ties and feelings of interpersonal connectedness exerts upon consumption behaviors (Fischer and Arnould ...
Research Interests:
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service. Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all.... more
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service. Information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Additional help for authors is available for Emerald subscribers. Please visit www. emeraldinsight. com/authors for more information.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Representing social realities in a narrative form is central to the interpretive processes by which market‐oriented ethnographies are constructed. In recent years, the process of textualization has shifted from a taken‐for‐granted aspect... more
Representing social realities in a narrative form is central to the interpretive processes by which market‐oriented ethnographies are constructed. In recent years, the process of textualization has shifted from a taken‐for‐granted aspect of the ethnographic enterprise to a central focus of ethnographers&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#x27; reflexive considerations. This shift reflects the realization that textualization poses dilemmas of representation that can not be resolved through additional fieldwork or other methodological procedures. This paper addresses these workbench ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
We offer a genealogical perspective on the reflexive critique that consumer culture theory (CCT) has institutionalized a hyperindividualizing, overly agentic, and sociologically impoverished mode of analysis that impedes systematic... more
We offer a genealogical perspective on the reflexive critique that consumer culture theory (CCT) has institutionalized a hyperindividualizing, overly agentic, and sociologically impoverished mode of analysis that impedes systematic investigations into the historical, ideological, and sociological shaping of marketing, markets, and consumption systems. Our analysis shows that the CCT pioneers embraced the humanistic/experientialist discourse to carve out a disciplinary niche in a largely antagonistic marketing field. However, this original epistemological orientation has long given way to a multilayered CCT heteroglossia that features a broad range of theorizations integrating structural and agentic levels of analysis. We close with a discussion of how reflexive debates over CCT's supposed biases toward the agentic reproduce symbolic distinctions between North American and European scholarship styles and thus primarily reflect the institutional interests of those positioned in th...
Research Interests:
Arnould and Thompson (2005) has proven to be an influential paper in terms of systematizing and placing a widely accepted disciplinary brand upon an extensive body of culturally oriented consumer research. The CCT designation has also... more
Arnould and Thompson (2005) has proven to be an influential paper in terms of systematizing and placing a widely accepted disciplinary brand upon an extensive body of culturally oriented consumer research. The CCT designation has also provided an important impetus for institution building. The ten year anniversary of this article provides a unique opportunity for the authors to comment upon the broader ramifications of their original proposals. The authors first discuss key benchmarks in the development of the CCT community as an
organization. Next, the authors highlight key intellectual trends in CCT research that have arisen since the publication of their 2005 review and discuss their implications for the future trajectories of CCT research.
organization. Next, the authors highlight key intellectual trends in CCT research that have arisen since the publication of their 2005 review and discuss their implications for the future trajectories of CCT research.
Research Interests:
Consumer researchers have commonly analyzed marketplace performances as liminal events structured by context-specific role playing, norms of reciprocity, and cocreative collaborations. As a consequence, this literature remains... more
Consumer researchers have commonly analyzed marketplace performances as liminal events structured by context-specific role playing, norms of reciprocity, and cocreative collaborations. As a consequence, this literature remains theoretically mute on questions related to the sociological disparities that arise when marketplace performances forge relationships between affluent consumers and underclass
service workers: a circumstance becoming increasingly commonplace owing to trends in the service-oriented global economy. To redress this gap, we analyze how such sociocultural differences are manifested and mediated in the provisions of skilled marketplace performances. Building upon Bourdieu’s logic of field analysis, our resulting theoretical framework illuminates a network of structural relations
that reconfigures the asymmetrical distribution of class-based resources between these class factions. Rather than being cooperative endeavors conducive to the formation of commercial friendships, we show that these class-stratified marketplace performances produce interdependent status games, subtly manifested power struggles, and contested forms of symbolic capital.
service workers: a circumstance becoming increasingly commonplace owing to trends in the service-oriented global economy. To redress this gap, we analyze how such sociocultural differences are manifested and mediated in the provisions of skilled marketplace performances. Building upon Bourdieu’s logic of field analysis, our resulting theoretical framework illuminates a network of structural relations
that reconfigures the asymmetrical distribution of class-based resources between these class factions. Rather than being cooperative endeavors conducive to the formation of commercial friendships, we show that these class-stratified marketplace performances produce interdependent status games, subtly manifested power struggles, and contested forms of symbolic capital.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT: This paper offers some reflections on how the neoliberalization of the University has shaped academic habits of mind and the general conduct of consumer research. I discuss how this ideological frame creates discontinuities... more
ABSTRACT: This paper offers some reflections on how the neoliberalization of the University has shaped academic habits of mind and the general conduct of consumer research. I discuss how this ideological frame creates discontinuities between two models of the consumer research process: the collaborative collective and the entrepreneurial, where the latter aligns with neoliberal imperatives. I suggest that a positive discontinuity can be created by cultivating habits of mind that challenge this neoliberalized narrowing of our intellectual horizons through practices of intellectual edge work.
Research Interests:
In this chapter, we aim to describe some of the disciplinary fault lines—to use Alexander and Phillips’s (2001) metaphoric framing of disciplinary tensions—that have shaped the intellectual contours of CCT, profile the primary theoretical... more
In this chapter, we aim to describe some of the disciplinary fault lines—to use Alexander and Phillips’s (2001) metaphoric framing of disciplinary tensions—that have shaped the intellectual contours of CCT, profile the primary theoretical motifs that have defined this pluralistic research tradition, and discuss the intellectual trajectories that are being marked out by recent CCT research. We will conclude by reflecting on the dilemmas and opportunities posed by the fairly rapid institutionalization of CCT.