The literature of marketplace behaviour, long dominated by economic and psychological discourse, has matured in the last decade to reveal the vast expanse of consumption activity not adequately addressed – in either theoretical or empirical perspective - by the discipline's favoured approaches. The lived experience of consumption in cultural and historical context, rendered in a fashion that is both intellectually insightful and authentically evocative, and that recognizes the dynamics of accommodation and resistance that characterize the individual's relationship with the market, is the central interpretive thrust of an emerging interdisciplinary field inquiry broadly labelled "consumer culture theory." In this volume, some of the leading scholars of this field explore in great empirical detail and theoretical depth the relationships that the consumer has developed both with goods and services and with the stakeholders that animate markets. Beginning with an examination of the underpinnings of cultural inquiry, the focus then shifts to specific consumption venues. Analyses of advertising in personal, critical and historical perspective, examination of lifestyle trends from dwelling practices of transnational nomads and regimes of personal training to genetic testing and gambling, interpretations of the dynamics of brand loyalty and corporate image management, and investigation of family consumption rituals are among the topics explored in ethnographic and humanistic perspective.

[Selected papers and poetry presented at the Consumer Culture Theory Conference held at the York University in Toronto, Ontario in 2007.].

Outlining the key themes, concepts and theoretical areas in the field, this book draws on contributions from prominent researchers to unravel the complexities of consumer culture by looking at how it affects personal identity, social interactions and the consuming human being. A field which is characterised as being theoretically challenging is made accessible through learning features that include case study material, critical reflection, research directions, further reading and a broad mix of the types of consumers and consumption contexts including emerging markets and economies. The structure of the book is designed to help students map the field in the way it is interpreted by researchers and follows the conceptual mapping in the classic Arnould & Thompson 2005 journal article. The book is organised into three parts - the Consumption Identity, Marketplace Cultures and the Socio-Historic Patterning of Consumption. Insight is offered into both the historical roots of consumer culture and the everyday experiences of navigating the contemporary marketplace. The book is supported by a collection of international case studies and real world scenarios, including: How Fashion Bloggers Rule the Fashion World; the Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial; Professional Beer Pong, Military Recruiting Campaigns, The World Health Organization and the Corporatization of Education. The go-to text for anyone new to CCT or postgraduate students writing a CCT-related thesis.

*NOW FULLY UPDATED AND EXPANDED WITH SIX NEW CHAPTERS* Over the past forty years, Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) has emerged as a distinctive field of study that synthesizes diverse subjects such as anthropology, cultural studies, marketing, political theory and sociology to provide new insights into consumers’ relationships to the marketplace and the influence of commercial action on culture. This book, edited by leading scholars in CCT, contains contributions by many of its leading researchers, and distills this interdisciplinary field into a concise accessible overview for students and early career researchers. It describes the key themes, concepts and theoretical areas of CCT; explains why they are useful in understanding consumption and marketplace phenomena; and shows how they can be applied to a wide range of research contexts. Drawing on real-world scenarios, reflective tasks and international case studies to help aid theoretical understanding and critical thinking, the text is designed to support a course in CCT, supplement related study, and guide undergraduate and postgraduate students in writing a CCT-related dissertation/thesis. It is the go-to text for anyone who is curious about, new to CCT, or looking for an integrative compendium of CCT research and its implications. Eric J. Arnould is Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the Aalto University Business School, Finland. Craig J. Thompson is the Churchill-Bascom Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. David Crockett is Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois Chicago, USA. Michelle F. Weinberger is Associate Professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA.

The Oxford Handbook of Consumption consolidates the most innovative recent work conducted by social scientists in the field of consumption studies and identifies some of the most fruitful lines of inquiry for future research. It begins by embedding marketing in its global history, enmeshed in various political, economic, and social sites. From this embedded perspective, the book branches out to examine the rise of consumer culture theory among consumer researchers and parallel innovative developments in sociology and anthropology, with scholarship analyzing the roles that identity, social networks, organizational dynamics, institutions, market devices, materiality, and cultural meanings play across a wide variety of applications, including, but not limited to, brands and branding, the sharing economy, tastes and preferences, credit and credit scoring, consumer surveillance, race and ethnicity, status, family life, well-being, environmental sustainability, social movements, and social inequality. The volume is unique in the attention it gives to consumer research on inequality and the focus it has on consumer credit scores and consumer behaviors that shape life chances. The volume includes essays by many of the key researchers in the field, some of whom have only recently, if at all, crossed the disciplinary lines that this volume has enabled. The contributors have tried to address several key questions: What motivates consumption and what does it mean to be a consumer? What social, technical, and cultural systems integrate and give character to contemporary consumption? What actors, institutions, and understandings organize and govern consumption? And what are the social uses and effects of consumption?

In the post-socialist countries, the subject of consumption has not received sufficient attention from the perspective of Consumer Culture Theory. The opinion has long prevailed among the majority of social scientists from this region that consumer society and consumptive behaviour is a socially destructive phenomenon and one of the main causes of problems in contemporary society. This impression has prevented them from scrutinizing the symbolic dimension of consumption and led them to a critical analysis of the social causes and environmental consequences of excessive consumption. The examination of symbolic aspects of consumer culture or the mutual interaction of culture and marketing communication, for example, have remained outside the realm of academic interest. The absence of comprehensive academic interest in the topic of consumer culture does not, however, mean that consumer culture is not a subject of research. Such research, instead, takes place outside of the sphere of the university in the commercial sector and is primarily focused on issues of how to successfully sell products and services. Due to competitive concerns, commercial research into consumer culture has led to the privatization of its results, which runs contrary to the ideal of science as an open and critical project. The goal of this book is to create a counterbalance to this “science in the shadows” and overcome the mutual distrust between the academic and commercial spheres and make possible the transfer of recent discoveries between the two parties. This publication is dedicated to the exploration of three areas of consumer culture: research on consumer culture and consumer behaviour in post-socialist countries (especially in the Czech Republic), new developments in the theory of consumer culture and innovative methodological approaches to its research and, finally, to recent criticism of consumer culture and consumerism. It emerged from the collaboration of a team of authors made up of leading European researchers in the field of consumer culture, such as Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University), Franz Liebl (Berlin University of the Arts) and Rainer Gries (University of Vienna), as well as promising young scholars from the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Sweden, Serbia, Poland and Portugal. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sociology, cultural studies, marketing and market research.

In this book, one of the leading social theorists and cultural commentators of modern times, turns his gaze on consumption. George Ritzer, author of the famous McDonaldization Thesis, demonstrates the irrational consequences of the rational desire to consume and commodify. He examines how McDonaldization might be resisted, and situates the reader in the new cultural spaces that are emerging in society: shopping malls, casino hotels, Disneyfied theme parks and Las Vegas -- the new `cathedrals of consumption' as he calls them. The book shows how new processes of consumption relate to globalization theory. In illuminating discussions of the work of Thorstein Veblen and the French situationists, Ritzer unearths the roots of problems of consumption in older sociological traditions. He indicates how transgression is bound up with consumption, through an investigation of the obscene in popular and postmodern culture.