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- Molander, Susanna, 1965-
(författare)
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Mat, kärlek och metapraktik : En studie i vardagsmiddagskonsumtion bland ensamstående mödrar
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The everyday dinner usually involves a number of different and sometimes conflicting ambitions that may include striving for self-fulfillment and striving to care for one’s family and society at large. To understand the consumption that occurs in connection with these ambitions, consumer researchers must understand the context surrounding the everyday dinner. In this dissertation theories of practice are utilized as a conceptual framework to emphasize the importance of context.Theories of practice have gained renewed interest within the field of consumption. Yet, Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) has neglected practice theories’ ability to operationalize the consumption context. The aim of this dissertation is to develop further CCT’s practice perspective to increase the understanding of the consumption context and thereby better understand consumption as a social and cultural phenomenon. An ethnographic approach is employed to identify what practices operate within a complex consumption situation such as the everyday dinner among single mothers; how these practices incorporate consumption in their strivings and how the different practices operating within the consumption situation interact with one another.This new approach comes to the conclusion that mothering, defined as a meta-practice, dominated the consumption situation and organized the other practices involved. A meta-practice is one with major influence over consumption and thus a type of practice consumption researchers should look for. Furthermore in Western society consumption situations, like the everyday dinner, seem to be especially important when it comes to anchoring meta-practices and thereby the social order. A preliminary characterization of the meta-practice is proposed as consisting of four different traits: I) its impact on the social order; II) its generalizability, density and superiority; III) its regulation and IV) its stability or slow change. However, more studies are necessary to explore these characteristics further.
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| 2. |
- Östberg, Jacob
(författare)
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What's Eating the Eater? Perspectives on the Everyday Anxiety of Food Consumption in Late Modernity
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Consumers today are constantly showered with a vast array of different messages about what and how they should and should not eat in order to lead a healthy life. This bombardment has escalated over the last decades as various actors, such as representatives from the medical community and public policy makers, have increasingly stressed the connections between individuals’ food consumption habits and the state of their health. On top of this, food producers are trying to capitalize on the increased focus on health by developing, or repositioning, products that cater to the health conscious market segments. These developments lead to a situation where consumers are faced with various different, and sometimes contrasting, groups of experts that tell them what they are supposed to do. This dissertation looks at how consumers navigate between and make use of the available cacophony of different voices of food and health. The emerging picture is one of consumers reflexively incorporating bits and pieces of this expert knowledge of food consumption and health into their day-to-day lives. However, the consumers are also plagued by an everyday anxiety, as they feel unable to determine whether they are really able to make sense of the incoming expert information or not. Furthermore, the picture includes consumers constantly having to deal with a nagging sense that they are not able to live according to the norms they have set up for themselves.
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| 3. |
- Uggla, Henrik, 1965-
(författare)
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Managing the brand-association base : exploring facets of strategic brand management from the imaginary organization perspective : based on a semiotic study on the ASSESS CD-ROM by American Skandia
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the present thesis is twofold. The first goal is to contribute to the understanding of collaborative facets of Strategic Brand Management of a brand identity in relation to the partner base from the perspective of a coordinating leader brand in the imaginary organization. The other goal is to further explore the degree of visibility and the separateness of different source associations within a collaborative brand management context. The thesis explores how American Skandia creates brand associations and market presence without being in the possession of strong brand identity and brand recognition in the domestic American market for individual retirement savings through multi manager variable annuities. Drawing on semiotic marketing methodology, a product conceptualization analysis was made based on the contents of ASSESS, a CD-ROM sales-support device launched by the American Skandia insurance corporation. The empirical data analysis followed a three-step procedure: a pragmatic, a semantic and a syntactic analysis. The pragmatic analysis explored the direction of meaning from the American Skandia brand towards its users. The pragmatic analysis was conducted through sign-type categorization of the performing actors in the ASSESS CD-ROM into symbol, icon and index. The semantic analysis explored the relationship between ASSESS (i.e., the signifier) and its contents (i.e., the signified). The signs observed in the ASSESS system contain pictures and presentations of American Skandia employees (i.e., leader brand), partners in money management (i.e., partner brands) and external academic tax and stock experts (i.e., endorsers). Finally, the syntactic analysis focused on the organization of meaning between brands and endorsers in the system (i.e., the relationship among signifiers). The outcome of the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic analysis is presented through a conceptual model of the organization of brand associations at the intersection between a leader brands identity (i.e., own brand associations), the equity of partner brands (i.e., partner brand associations) and the equity of legitimate and culturally embedded meaning structures (i.e., institutionalized associations). The association-based model indicates an alternative order of brand management, beyond monolithic brand identity management. An order where the positioning of leader-brand meaning emerges from the organization and internalization of cultivated meaning through the use of partner brands (icons) and endorsers (index) in relation to the partial externalization of American Skandia's brand identity (symbol).
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