Robin Canniford

University of Melbourne | MSD · School of Business and Economics

Assemblage and actor-network theories explain how markets and consumption are constituted by heterogeneous resources that form part-whole relations at various scales. Marketing and consumer research studies that use these theories, however, often retain human-centred scales and units of analysis, such that objects and forces that exist at unfamilia...

“Enabled theorizing” is a common practice in marketing scholarship. Nevertheless, this practice has recently been criticized for constraining the creation of novel theory. To advance this conversation, we conduct a grounded analysis of papers that feature enabled theorizing with the aim of describing and analyzing how enabled theorizing is practice...

How surfing appeals to a global market by offering an antidote to urban life and culture. How this antidote paradoxically serves to distract consumers from ecological agendas.

How bad taste is used to reclaim identity, cultural resources, and community against the forces of marketization, gentrification and commercialisation.

Nosenography is a theoretical and methodological commitment to uncover the presences and practices of smell, an often-ignored sensory feature of market and consumption spaces. Drawing on prior social science theorizations of smell as well as contemporary sensory marketing practices, we develop a framework to understand how smell features in spatial...

Purpose Digital technologies are changing the ways in which the meanings and identity of both consumers and brands are constructed. This research aims to extend knowledge of how consumer-made “selfie” images shared in social media might contribute to the destabilization of brands as assemblages. Design/methodology/approach Insights are drawn from...

As the old adage goes, “If you don’t shit, you die”, yet despite the surety of excretion extending from the meal, the matter is almost universally missing from accounts of cooking and eating. In this chapter we reflect on the absence of excrement in relation to studies of meals. In so doing we point out the symbolic and material orders of ordure to...

Purpose – This study aims to explore: consumer experiences of intense moral dilemma arising from identity multiplicity conflict, expressed in the marketplace, which demand stark moral choices and consumer response to intensely felt moral tension where their sense of coherent moral self is at stake. Design/methodology/approach – The authors gathere...

Consumer-cultural research has never been a more exciting and relevant area of study. As the contributors to this volume illustrate, the practices, materials and discourses of markets and consumption are proliferating in manners that blur conceptual boundaries commonly established between consumers and technology, objects and subjects; production a...

The purpose of this article is to evaluate and advance tools that marketing and consumer researchers have recently gathered from assemblage and actor–network theories. By distinguishing between two different styles of applying these theories we explain that a ‘representational’, interventionist and problem-solving mode has come to dominate existing...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to map advertising agency practitioners’ mental models of creativity. Design/methodology/approach – Following the grounded theory paradigm, twenty-eight depth interviews were conducted with advertising agency executives. Findings – Complementing earlier studies in advertising creativity, we discover an integra...

Purpose – Studies of marketplace cultures emphasize the benefits of communal consumption and explain the ways that brand managers can leverage subcultures and brand communities. The ephemeral and often non‐commercial nature of consumer tribes means that they are more difficult to manage. This paper, aims to suggest that a necessary pre‐requisite fo...

Prior consumer research theorizes nature as an ideal stage for romantic consumption experiences by framing nature as external to culture. The same studies, however, problematize this framing by highlighting the consumer-cultural resources through which nature is harnessed and interpreted. Through an ethnography of surfing culture, this article theo...

This article introduces the concept of 'poetic witness', a method of performing and presenting research that acknowledges the constellations of multiple objects, emotions and forces that constitute everyday consumption life worlds. This possibility is enabled through methodological processes of poetic transcription and poetic translation, which are...

Various studies highlight the importance of discourses in consumer culture, yet fewer explore the historical development of these phenomena. This paper examines a long-view of the meanings and uses of primitive discourse in consumer culture. An investigation of the changing representation of indigenous Hawaiian surfing within Euro-American culture...

This paper reviews concepts of marketplace community, and considers the strategic opportunities and challenges communities present to marketers. Current attempts to operationalise consumer tribes by marketing consultants appear to conflate consumer tribes with brand communities. Alternative guidelines to foster specifically tribal approaches are co...

Purpose – This conceptual chapter clarifies concepts of marketplace community. Methodology/Approach – Through a review of selected CCT studies, the chapter explores and reviews theories of subcultures of consumption, brand communities and consumer tribes. Findings – Subcultures of consumption, brand communities and consumer tribes exhibit divergent...

This paper explores and investigates multi-disciplinary perspectives on excrement in order to fertilise the ground on which new consumer research agendas may be cultivated. We begin by illustrating the symbolic power and affective conditioning that attends excrement, explaining the veil of secrecy that history has draped over our bodily functions....

Through pleasure, a foundational concept in consumer behavior, we offer an analysis of the history, development, and experience of clubbing, the postcursor of rave and the contextual focus of this article. On the basis of a 5-year study primarily involving participant observation and interviewing, we present an analysis of how the clubbing experien...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to question the taken for granted assumptions that underpin a liberal or lay view of consumer empowerment implicit to this special edition. In particular, the idea that it benefits consumers to have more choice is questioned. Design/methodology/approach – The key constructs of Michel Foucault – disciplinary p...

Purpose – Traditional notions of culture have become unicorns: assumed creatures of the past, whose authenticity seems increasingly doubtful. It is required of us to rethink the boundaries of culture and social science; to develop our understanding of interdependency and instability in cultural life. In order to incorporate possible discourses, the...