Buy This Book is an important contribution to the history and understanding of consumption and advertising. This book brings together an outstanding collection of writing on the study of advertising, consumer practices and the future directions of research.
Advertising and Consumption constitutes an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers and students. The essays are based on new textual and ethnographic research and engage with existing theoretical and historical work to form a volume which is a challenging companion to studies in this field.

Goods are imbued with meanings and uses by their producers. When they are exported, they can act as a means of communication or domination. However, there is no guarantee that the intentions of the producer will be recognized, much less respected, by the consumer from another culture. This guide to the cultural implications of the globalization of a consumer society addresses topics ranging from the clothing of colonial subjects in South Africa and the rise of the "hypermarket" in Argentina, to the presentation of culture in international tourist hotels. Through their examination of cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation of the representation of "otherness" and identity, the contributors show how the increasingly global flow of goods and images challenges the very idea of the "cultural border" and creates new spaces for cultural invention.

Goods are imbued with meanings and uses by their producers. When they are exported, they can act as a means of communication or domination. However, there is no guarantee that the intentions of the producer will be recognized, much less respected, by the consumer from another culture. Cross-Cultural Consumption is a fascinating guide to the cultural implications of the globalization of a consumer society. The chapters address topics ranging from the clothing of colonial subjects in South Africa and the rise of the hypermarket in Argentina, to the presentation of culture in international tourist hotels. Through their examination of cultural imperialism and cultural appropriation of the representation of otherness and identity, Howes and his contributors show how the increasingly global flow of goods and images challenges the very idea of the cultural border and creates new spaces for cultural invention. Marian Bredin, Concordia University, Constance Classen, Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago, Mary Crain, University of Barcelona, Carol Handrickson, Marlboro Colleg

As the "information superhighway" moves into the home through interactive media, enhanced telecom services, and hybrid appliances, interest continually grows in how consumers adopt and use Information Technology (IT), the strategies IT marketers use to reach consumers, and the public policies that help and protect consumers. USE COPY FROM THIS POINT ON FOR GENERAL CATALOGS... This book presents a unique collection of papers dealing with the demand side issues of new information technologies in the home. The contributors are from business, academia, and the public policy sector and represent many disciplines including communication, marketing, economics, psychology, engineering, and information systems.
This book provides one of the best introductions to complex issues such as:
* business forces that will shape "Home IT" of the future;
* industry structure of the future "Infotainment" mega-business;
* factors affecting consumer adoption and use of IT;
* international differences in the management of the IT sector; and
* public policies that will shape the deployment and use of IT.

Digital Food Activism is a new edited volume that investigates how digital media technologies are transforming food activism and consumers' engagements with food, eating, and food systems. Bringing together critical food studies, economic anthropology, digital sociology, and science and technology studies, Digital Food Activism offers innovative multi-disciplinary analyses of food activist practices on social media, mobile apps, and hybrid online and offline alternative spaces. With chapters that focus on diverse digital platforms, food-related issues, and geographic locales, this volume reveals how platforms, programmers, and consumers are becoming key mediators of the mandate of food corporations and official governing actors. Digital Food Activism thereby suggests that emerging forms of activism in the digital era hold the potential to reshape the ethics, aesthetics, and patterns of food consumption.

This revised version of Kaela Jubas' award winning dissertation focuses on contemporary shopping practices, analyzing the ways concerned shoppers think about globalization, consumption, and their personal effect on the status quo. By using numerous examples from modern advertising, interviews with self-described "radical" shoppers, and selected quotes from scholars and experts, Jubas delves into questions of social justice, environmental awareness, and consumer identity -- all demonstrated by individual choices made at the checkout counter. Employing a variety of qualitative research techniques and complex and counterintiuitive cultural theory, Jubas's study will interest those in adult education, cultural studies, consumer research, and qualitative inquiry.

Three hundred years ago people made most of what they used, or got it in trade from their neighbours. Now, no one seems to make anything, and we buy what we need from shops. Gifts and Commodities describes the cultural and historical process of these changes and looks at the rise of consumer society in Britain and the United States. It investigates the ways that people think about and relate to objects in twentieth-century culture, at how those relationships have developed, and the social meanings they have for relations with others.

Using aspects of anthropology and sociology to describe the importance of shopping and gift-giving in our lives and in western economies, Gifts and Commodities:
* traces the development of shopping and retailing practices, and the emergence of modern notions of objects and the self
* brings together a wealth of information on the history of the retail trade
* examines the reality of the distinctions we draw between the impersonal economic sphere and personal social sphere
* offers a fully interdisciplinary study of the links we forge between ourselves, our social groups and the commodities we buy and give.

Examining Iran's recent history through the double lens of domesticity and consumer culture, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran demonstrates that a significant component of the modernization process in Iran advanced beyond political and public spheres. On the cusp of Iran's entry into modernity, the rules and tenets that had traditionally defined the Iranian home began to vanish and the influx of new household goods gradually led to the substantial physical expansion of the domestic milieu. Subsequently, architects, designers, and commercial advertisers shifted their attention from commercial and public architecture to the new home and its contents. Domesticity and consumer culture also became topics of interest among politicians, Shiite religious scholars, and the Left, who communicated their respective views via the popular media and numerous other means. In the interim, ordinary Iranian families, who were capable of selectively appropriating aspects of their immediate surroundings, demonstrated their resistance toward the officially sanctioned transformations. Through analyzing a series of case studies that elucidate such phenomena and appraising a wide range of objects and archival documents-from furnishings, appliances, architectural blueprints, and maps to photographs, films, TV series, novels, artworks, scrapbooks, work-logs, personal letters and reports-this book highlights the significance of private life in social, economic, and political contexts of modern Iran. Tackling the subject of home from a variety of perspectives, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran thus shows the interplay between local aspirations, foreign influences, gender roles, consumer culture and women's education as they intersect with taste, fashion, domestic architecture and interior design.

`Consuming Technologies provides an important contribution ... it raises significant issues with regard to the complexities inherent in the introduction of new technologies transforming our interpersonal environment.' - European Journal of Communication

Few applied disciplines are more sensitive to cross-cultural issues than marketing and consumer psychology. The chapters prepared for this volume reflect awareness of both similarities and differences within and across cultures. They include analyses of methodological issues, theoretical investigations of cultural and social values and their implications for marketing specialists, studies of gender- and sub-culture specific advertising, and investigations of advertising efforts in several different international markets. The scholars and advertising professionals who contributed these chapters will have much to say to consumer psychologists and marketing specialists alike.

This book, edited and authored by a group of scientists experienced in European cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research in the field of consumer food perceptions, sensory evaluation, product image and risk research, delivers a unique insight into decision making and food consumption of the European consumer. The volume is essential reading for those involved in product development, market research and consumer science in food and agro industries and academic research. It brings together experts from different disciplines in order to address fundamental issues to do with predicting food choice, consumer behavior and societal trust into quality and safety regulatory systems. The importance of the social and psychological context and the cross-cultural differences and how they influence food choice are also covered in great detail.

The chapters in this volume have been selected from the best papers presented at the 8th Annual Consumer Culture Theory Conference held at the home of University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ in June 2013. The theme of the conference was Building Community Across Borders. The diverse interpretive research and theory represented in this volume provides the reader with intellectually stimulating opportunities to examine the intersections between a variety of theories and methods that represent the cutting edge in consumer research. These studies draw on an array of qualitative methodologies including ethnography, netnography, narrative and visual analysis, phenomenology, and semiotics. The substantive topics represent crucial issues for our times including understanding and navigating cultural diversity and cultural perspectives on co-creating market value.

There are more people over 50 than ever before, with numbers likely to continue to rise. They are wealthier, healthier and happier than our old stereotypical images lead us to believe, yet this segment of the market is under-researched. In Understanding the Older Consumer, Barrie Gunter provides a detailed examination of the demographic, behavioural and psychological profiles of this group. He shows that without the responsibilities of loans and child raising and with better financial provision than in previous years, the over-50s represent a powerful spending force. In order to reach this group, marketers need to know how best to target advertising and respond to the changes that have occurred. Understanding the Older Consumer provides a wealth of information on older people's lifestyles and leisure, their interest in the mass media, their perceptions of advertising and their shopping preferences that will be invaluable to students of marketing, media and social psychology.

The study of consumption in social life is growing. Moving from being a relatively unimportant part of the processes of production, distribution, and exchange, questions of how people consume and to what ends now occupy center stage. Today's capitalism is exemplified by a global arena of consumption in which distance is no obstacle to distribution and ownership. Equally, social distinctions that accompanied classically "modern" forms of consumption are now more complex and fluid than classifications of "high" and "popular" culture allow.This book addresses the rise of consumer culture and the various attempts to explain and account for it. It considers the view that a particular generational framework was formed in the post-war period and has been carried on into the early twentieth century with particular consequences for the experience of later life. The rise of individualism, of mass consumption, leisure and lifestyles have been accompanied by the democratization of social forms and for many a corrosion of community and social cohesion. The text highlights how understanding is gained from examining the generational habits that developed in tandem with the rise of mass consumption.Drawing on historical perspectives and comparative studies, the book addresses social change with reference to generation effects and conflict. Having set the scene in terms of the literature on consumption, lifestyles and generational change, the volume poses key questions in relation to the transformation of later life that are addressed in turn by the contributors. This is a key volume as we enter the second decade of a new century.

Consumer choice is regularly taken to be different from other kinds of choice - and not only different , but inferior and relatively trivial. So choosing to have a baby is unlike choosing a new car, and choosing to study a work of great literature is unlike 'merely' consuming a trash novel. In such comparisons, consumption is simple; and its supposed simplicity is necessary to establish the complexity and value of the other, 'higher' category of choice.
Yet if consumer choice were simple, the vast institutional field of 'consumer psychology' would never have developed. Shopping with Freud examines some of the dramatic ways in which the consumer subject was first imagined and analysed by this special area of psychology.
Once the simplicity of the consumerly is seen as a symptom rather than a given, new possibilities for thinking through ethical and other questions of choice emerge. The book looks at the diverse and unexpectedly overlapping ideas of choice and consumer choice deployed in consumer psychology and psychoanalysis, in arguments about the new reproductive technologies, and in arguments about literature and sexuality.

In this wide-ranging selection of papers, distinguished economists, public policy advisers and political theorists contribute to the debate on public goods. The studies cover topics in the conceptualization, classification and stratification of public goods. Also examined are public institutional design, global economic institutions and partnership typologies. Individual papers address the financing, regulatory, organizational and legal aspects relating to services of general interest in Europe. The dynamics of global public good production, including monopolies, patents, scientific uncertainty and market failures, are discussed. Empirical research on the state, profit and non-profit sectors is presented. Providing numerous examples of specific public goods, the contributions also highlight the impact of macroeconomic policies on provision. The book presents a broad diversity of new approaches to global public goods within the framework of mixed economies, beyond the standard economic analysis of public services. Academics, researchers and policymakers in the area of global public goods and services will find this volume of great interest.

From Marcus Collins, strategist to Apple, Nike and Beyoncé, discover the powerful force behind what we buy, what we do, and who we want to be . . . 'Compelling and vivid' – Robert Cialdini, author of Pre-Suasian We all try to influence others in our daily lives. We are all marketers, whether you are a manager motivating your team, an employee making a big presentation, an activist staging a protest or a company executive selling the next big thing. In For the Culture, Marcus Collins argues that the most powerful vehicle for influencing behaviour is true cultural engagement. To inspire communities, we first need to think hard about how we appeal to their values and what we will contribute to their culture. With a deep perspective based on a century’s worth of data, Collins breaks down the many ways in which culture influences behaviour. Using captivating stories from his own life as a top marketer – including spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, working with iTunes and Nike+ on their collaboration, and designing ads for McDonalds – he shows readers how they can do the same. Full of memorable examples, from 1960s hippy culture to the enduring success of Patagonia, For the Culture offers the essential tools for creating lasting engagement and influence. 'Some people seem to intuitively ‘get it.’ Most do not. Collins articulates ‘it’ for the rest of us and provides not just an understanding, but a guide for how to actually engage and influence culture' – Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO, Reddit

"Consuming Tecnologies" opens for analysis some crucial but rarely examined areas of social, cultural and economic life. At its core is a concern with the complex set of relationships that mark and define the place of the domestic in the modern world, and an explanation of the relationship between the domestic and public spheres as they are mediated by consumption and technology. Debate over the commodification and privatization of everyday life has been preoccupied with the impact of technological change on established social structures and cultural values. Yet much of the discussion has lacked any substantive empirical work on the understanding of modern industrial society: on the nature of consumption, and the contradictory significance of the domestic sphere. The contributors address these questions with a series of essays suggesting that in essence, information and communication technologies require us to see them as social and symbolic as well as material objects, crucially embedded in the structures and dynamics of our consumer culture.

This book covers the gamut of topics related to gender and consumer culture. Changing gender roles have forced scholars and practitioners to re-examine some of the fundamental assumptions and theories in this area. Gender is a core component of identity and thus holds significant implications for how consumers behave in the marketplace. This book offers innovative research in gender and consumer behavior with topics relevant to psychology, marketing, advertising, sociology, women's studies and cultural studies. It offers 16 chapters of cutting-edge research on gender, international culture and consumption. Unique to this volume is its emphasis on consumption and masculinity and inclusion of topics on a rapidly changing world of issues related to culture and gender in advertising, communications, psychology and consumer behavior.

Theories of Consumption explores the concept of consumption from the post-disciplinary perspective of cultural studies. John Storey brings together work that up until now has been located in distinct disciplinary spaces including work on reception theory in literary studies and philosophy; work on consumer culture in sociology, anthropology and history; and work on media audiences (both ethnographic and theoretical) in media studies and sociology. Moving beyond the usual analysis of consumer culture, Storey presents a critical assessment of a range of theoretical approaches to the study of consumption. In doing so, he provides an authoritative overview of a significant selection of research and analysis that has explored consumption as an object of study. This book provides an ideal introduction to consumption for students of media and cultural studies and will also be useful for students within a number of other disciplines such as sociology, history, anthropology, cultural geography and both literary and visual studies.

Consumption research is burgeoning across a wide range of disciplines. The Routledge Handbook on Consumption gathers experts from around the world to provide a nuanced overview of the latest scholarship in this expanding field. At once ambitious and timely, the volume provides an ideal map for those looking to position their work, find new analytic insights and identify research gaps. With an intuitive thematic structure and resolutely international outlook, it engages with theory and methodology; markets and businesses; policies, politics and the state; and culture and everyday life. It will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social and economic sciences.

This book aims to provide comprehensive empirical and theoretical studies of expanding fandom communities in East Asia through the commodification of Japanese, Korean and Chinese popular cultures in the digital era. Using a multidisciplinary approach including political economy, East Asian studies, political science, international relations concepts and history, this book focuses on a few research objectives. In terms of methodology, it is an area studies approach based on interpretative work, observation studies, policy and textual analysis. First, it aims to examine the closely intertwined relationship between the three major stakeholders in the iron triangle of production companies, consumers and states (i.e., role of government in policy promotion). Second, it studies the interpenetration, adaptation, innovation and hybridization of exogenous Western culture with traditional popular cultures in (North) East Asia. Third, it studies the influence of popular cultures and how cultural products resonate with a regional audience through collective consumption, contents reflective of normative values, the emotive and cognitive appeal of familiar images and social learning as well as peer effect found in fan communities. It then examines how consumption contributes to soft cultural influence and how governments leverage on its comparative advantages and cultural assets for commercial success and in the process augment national (cultural) influence. These questions will be discussed and analyzed and contextualized through the case studies of J-pop (Japanese popular culture), K-pop (Korean popular culture or Hallyu) and Chinese popular culture (including Mando-pop and Taiwanese popular culture).

This book documents and examines the history of technology used by consumers to serve oneself. The telephone's development as a self-service technology functions as the narrative spine, beginning with the advent of rotary dialing eliminating most operator services and transforming every local connection into an instance of self-service. Today, nearly a century later, consumers manipulate 0-9 keypads on a plethora of digital machines. Throughout the book Palm employs a combination of historical, political-economic and cultural analysis to describe how the telephone keypad was absorbed into business models across media, retail and financial industries, as the interface on everyday machines including the ATM, cell phone and debit card reader. He argues that the naturalization of self-service telephony shaped consumers' attitudes and expectations about digital technology.

Children are significant consumers of services such as health, welfare, educational institutions and the environment. Alongside this, the marketization of childhood means that children are exposed to advertising and marketing through a wide range of media on a daily basis. Examining key debates on children's power, status and citizenship issues, it considers the wider implications of how consumerism impacts on children's health, well-being and life chances. This timely book explores childhood and consumerism through four key strands: children as consumers of services; children as consumers of space; the link between citizenship and consumption; the influences of the marketization of childhood. Rethinking Children as Consumers will be essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers who are interested in the topic of consumerism across early childhood, childhood, youth and society.

Street vendors are ubiquitous across the world and throughout history. They are part of almost any distribution chain, and play an important role in the marketing of consumer goods particularly to poorer customers. Focusing on the food trades, this multi-disciplinary volume explores the dynamics of street selling and its impact on society. Through an investigation of food hawking, the volume both showcases the latest results from a subject that has seen the emergence of a significant body of innovative and adventurous scholarship, and advances the understanding of street vending and its impact on society by stimulating interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary discussions. Covering a time span of approximately two millennia, from antiquity to the present, the book includes chapters on Europe and Asia, and covers a diverse range of themes such as the identity of food sellers (in terms of gender, ethnicity, and social status); the role of the street seller in the distribution of food; the marketing of food; food traders and the establishment; the representation of food hawkers; and street traders and economic development. By taking a dynamic approach, the collection has enabled its contributors to cross disciplinary boundaries and engage in discussions which extend beyond the limits of their own academic fields, and thus provide a fresh appreciation of this ancient phenomenon.