Lecture 5- Marketplace Culture Flashcards
(27 cards)
The social consumer
it the idea that consumption is never just individual- it’s shaped by social relationships, cultural normal, group identities, and power structures.
Re-tribalization of Society
The process where individuals in postmodern societies form fluid, emotionally-driven micro-groups (or “neo-tribes”) based on shared lifestyles, rituals, and symbolic consumption—replacing traditional mass consumer culture with more fragmented, community-based identities.
🔑 Key Features:
Identity formed through shared passions (e.g., music, fashion, wellness)
Rituals and symbols more important than logic or function
Often supported by brands and digital platforms
Consumer Tribe
A heterogeneous group of people motivated to consume collectively by a shared passion.
Often short-lived collective experiences, such as running, in-line skating or surfing, but their intensity generates a shared subjectivity - also know as ”we-ness” - that can be used by marketers as an anchor for analysis and action.
(e.g. crossFitters, ravers)
Brand Communities
Collective consumption that revolves around a specific brand.
A common interest in a specific brand rather than a shared passion that is not brand-focused.
(e.g lego, pokemon)
Brand Publics
Similar to brand communities insofar as they are organized around a central brand.
*In comparison to brand communities, the relationship to the central brand is more fleeting for brand publics
*Social media platforms provide tools like hashtags that allow consumer-generated content to be aggregated, which allows consumers to see content without interaction.
(e.g. tiktok make up trends, viral brand challenges)
Collective Re-appropriation
Through consumption activities consumers can change the meanings of commercial brands to foster their personal identity projects or other collective identity project.
People reappropriate products and services for their own purposes.
(e.g. timberland boots: originally marketed as utilitarian worker, for construction workers and outdoorsy types in U.S) in the 1990s, Black youth and hip-hop artists as fashion statements– not for hiking, but for urban style street and coolness
Linking Value
The value that comes not just from the product itself, but from the social bonds and identity ties it helps create
Co-creation
Consumers and brands collaboratively shape meaning, identity, and experience—not just top-down from the brand.
Religion, Spirituality & Consumption
Markets aren’t just selling us stuff—they’re also offering spiritual experiences, moral values, and even rituals.
Religion and spirituality are not outside the market—they’re woven into it.
4 types of Marketers relationship with religion
1 Religion Dominated
2 Religion Included
3 Religion Accommodating
4 Religion Insentive
Religion Dominated
Specializing in products and services linked to specific religious values, beliefs and practices
Religion Included
Not offering products or services linked to religion/spirituality, but still e.g., displaying sacred objects in their premises, adjust their business hours and holiday periods to allow employees to observe religious functions or duties, and give to religious organizations as part of their CSR initiatives.
Religion Accommodating
Acknowledge and adapt to the multiple religious beliefs of a heterogenous clientele
Religion Insensitive
Using religious arts, icons, artifacts, and symbols of commercial purposes in their market offerings of promotional campaign in ways that are offensive to religious consumers.
What do marketers and consumption have to do with religion and spirituality?
Marketers and consumption mediate, commodify, and reframe religion and spirituality by turning them into marketable experiences, products, and identities.
Consumers use the market to perform spiritual identity work, while marketers appropriate or accommodate religious values and symbols to appeal to specific groups. This shapes how religion is practiced, represented, and legitimized in consumer culture.
Glocalization of Marketplace Culture
Glocalization is the process by which global marketplace influences are adapted, negotiated or transformed by local consumers and cultures
Glocalization = Global brand + Local cultural adaptation
The term glocalization captures the simultaneous presence of both views, where cultural homogenization and heterogenization co-shape on another. (homogenization and heterogenization)
Glocalization (Robertson, 1992) explains how consumers and brands blend global and local elements. Examples include:
*K-pop (global pop + Korean aesthetics)
*AmericanYoga (fitness-oriented adaptation of Indian spiritual practice)
*Cola-Turka (a nationalist alternative to Coca-Cola - remember Consumer Jihad
Global consumer culture
is shaped by intensified flows of people, media, finance, technology, and ideas, often leading to Westernized consumer norms (e.g., McDonaldization)
Homogenization
Perspective views globalization as creating uniformity, dominated by Western corporations, ideologies, and consumer lifestyles
Heterogenization
Perspective emphasizes cultural diversity and local adaptations. Consumers respond with resistance, reappropriation, or hybridization of global products.
Hybridity
When global + local elements blend into something new.
The product or brand may look global, but it feels local.
🧋 Example: Starbucks in China becomes a quiet study space with green tea lattes — not a fast, on-the-go coffee spot.
What is the difference between Glocalization and Cultural Hybridity in consumer culture?
🌐 Glocalization
= When a global brand adapts its products, services, or messages to fit local tastes or cultural norms.
🧩 It’s about adjusting the global to feel local.
🧑🍳 Usually brand-led, with input from local context.
✅ Localized version of something already global.
Example:
McDonald’s Philippines adding rice or spaghetti to their menu to suit local taste.
🌏 Cultural Hybridity
= When global and local cultural elements blend into something new and unique.
🌀 It’s about fusion, not just adjustment.
👥 Often consumer-led or socially emergent.
✅ Creates a hybrid identity or cultural form.
Example:
The chicken + spaghetti combo becomes part of Filipino fast-food identity — not just McDonald’s adjusting, but a new meaning being created.
🎯 TL;DR:
Glocalization = Adaptation
Hybridity = Creation
Hybrid Cultural Products arise through processes of:
-Deterritorialization
-Reterritorialization
-Tensionsinhybridproducts
Deterritorialization
Deterritorialization is the process where cultural meanings, products, or practices are lifted out of their original local context and circulate globally, often losing their original meaning or function.
🧠 Example:
Yoga: Once a deeply spiritual, meditative practice rooted in Indian religious traditions — deterritorialized into a global fitness/wellness routine, often disconnected from its original cultural context.
Taco Tuesday in Sweden: Mexican food culture gets lifted out, adapted, and consumed in a totally different context, often without a connection to its origins.
Reterritorialization
Reterritorialization is the process where a deterritorialized cultural practice or product gets re-embedded into a new local context, often with new meanings, uses, or identities.
Bubble Tea (Boba): Originating in Taiwan (local cultural context) → deterritorialized and spread globally → reterritorialized in the U.S. or Europe as a Gen Z fashion drink, social trend, or TikTok aesthetic — not just a traditional beverage.
Yoga in LA: After being deterritorialized from India, it gets reterritorialized as part of wellness culture in California — tied to fitness, self-care, and lifestyle branding.
