Creating the cautious consumer : Marketing managerialism and bio-power in health consumption

• This study examines the power and potential of marketing in the proliferation of health discourses in society. More specifically, drawing on a Foucauldian bio-political framework, it undertakes a discourse analysis of a commercial weight-loss program and the service marketing managerialism it actualizes, focusing on the interactions between service workers and consumers. The study contributes to recent discussions concerning the governmentality of marketing and its effects on consumer well-being by showing how people are invested in identity work in which the body becomes a site of collective control in consumer culture. The study reveals how service marketing is infused with bio-power, which simultaneously spurs people to lose weight and constructs them as cautious consumers that embody increased levels of self-care, control, anxiety and stress. Finally, it is argued that this continuous creation of bodily distress functions as a key mechanism of the contemporary market economy under neoliberal capitalism.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

critical marketing

service

health consumption

bio-power

the body

macromarketing

företagsekonomi

Business Administration

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)