Russell Belk

York University · Schulich School of Business

This special issue of Cadernos EBAPE.BR sought to provoke a reflection focused on uncertain consumption practices in an uncertain future. While prior marketing and consumer research has explored consumer practices framed by an institutionalized, known, and more or less predictable context, the set of articles approved in this edition reveals differ...

Resumo Esta edição especial do Cadernos EBAPE.BR buscou provocar uma reflexão focada em práticas de consumo incertas em um futuro incerto. Enquanto pesquisas anteriores de marketing e consumo têm explorado práticas de consumo circunscritas em um contexto institucionalizado, conhecido e mais ou menos previsível, o conjunto de artigos aprovados nesta...

Just as the mythical Greek Titan Prometheus created humans and brought them the technology of fire, the biohackers studied here seek to recreate humanity and bring us technologies that make us god-like. In this paper, we explore how and why biohackers have been integrating technologies into their bodies. Drawing on Transhumanism, biohacking, and co...

his paper examines what the use of augmented reality (AR) makeup mirror means to consumers, focusing on experiential consumption and the extended self. The study uses a multimethod approach involving netnography and semi-structured interviews. Findings indicate the importance of imagination and fantasy and the (in)authenticity of the self in the A...

Purpose This paper examines what the use of an augmented reality (AR) makeup mirror means to consumers, focusing on experiential consumption and the extended self. Design/methodology/approach The authors employed a multimethod approach involving netnography and semi-structured interviews with participants in India and the UK ( n = 30). Findings T...

This is an ethnography among poor migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. This study offers insights into how the poor accumulate sacrificial money through sufferings and self-abnegation, and earmark it for consumption in Kerala. The hardships endured to earn the sacrificial money transform it into a sacred object. The phenomena of accumula...

Let the mind be free to express and heart care and feel for the people, be the proud citizen by serving the country and the globe! With this thought let me wish a "Very Happy Republic Day" to all the citizens of India. With the same thought, we worked on a paper related to narrative selves where users express their thoughts and views across the s...

The unraveling of the notions of self and the extended manifestations has immensely helped the scholars and practitioners alike, in deciphering the deeper meanings of consumption. However, while the basic tenets of the existing conceptualizations of self are still relevant, the possessions and expressions comprising the extended self-have been movi...

This paper contributes to business ethics by focusing on consumption that is characterized by normative violence. By drawing on the work of Judith Butler this study of kajer lok—a female subaltern group of Indian domestic service providers—and their higher status clients shows how codes of status-based consumption shaped by markets, class, caste, a...

The digital era has led to the extension of self into virtual space, resulting in changes to consumption patterns. The existing academic landscape in this area focuses on Western perspectives, in the context of early-stage digital interventions. However, the dynamic digital world demands a constant exploration to understand the corresponding influe...

Dominant perspectives on technology adoption and consumption tend to be cognitive, instrumental, and individualistic. We offer a desire-centered, future oriented and culturally grounded alternative model called the Disenchanted Enchantment Model (DEM). Drawing on historical evidence and revised interpretations of theories of enchantment and disench...

This book critically examines marketization: a phenomenon by which market processes are institutionalized and marketing increasingly pervades all areas of our everyday life. It presents a number of theories, frameworks and empirical studies highlighting how the phenomenon of marketization affects the 21st-century consumer. The book also contests th...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the meaning, in both local and international context, of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), the first international exhibit of contemporary art in India. Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), which administers the KMB, identifies art as a means for transforming society, with a mission to bring global contem...

Consumer technology theorists have explored technology consumption primarily through a de-linked, individualistic lens. We augment existing theories on technology consumption by widening the scope of the theorizing lens to include the role of class-based societal domination on consumption by the oppressed. We show that the poor respond to oppressio...

Five heretical field researchers celebrate human subjectivity in a fractured journey toward St. Augustine Catholic Church in the heart of Tremé in September 2015. They populate their diverse pentagonal thoughts with Mary Douglas’ negotiated concepts of purity and pollution, rituals and symbols as a counterweight in their backpacks. Some are inspire...

Incorporating Illouz’s theory of emotions, this study examines how specific emotions drive consumption, as embodied by escalating conflicts between Hong Kong and the PRC luxury consumers. When affluent Mainlanders pursue status signifiers via consumption of relatively affordable luxury goods in Hong Kong, local residents’ disdain triggers a nexus o...

Purpose: In this paper, we focus on the mythic nature of the anonymous Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Drawing on ideas from Foucault and Barthes on authorship, we analyze the notion of the absence of the author and how that sustains the brand. Design/methodology/approach: Based on interview data, participant observation, archival data, and a ne...

Purpose: This paper uses performance theory to explore how wine-tourism experiences are orchestrated by wine tour guides to encourage engagement of consumers. It describes how such orchestration is built on material elements such as landscapes, architecture, vineyards, production facilities, and wine tastings. Design/methodology/approach: A multi-l...

Although the consumer culture field has addressed the role of ritual processes in consumption, no research has yet identified how connoisseur consumers, through ritual practices, establish and manipulate their distinction from other consumers. Drawing on key concepts from ritual theory, this research addresses the role played by ritual in connoisse...

In spite of the rise of big data and the ease with which online experiments and surveys may be conducted, there is more need than ever for qualitative advertising research. This review considers both the methods and findings of such research. It focuses on the role of qualitative analyses in revealing how ads are “read” by consumers. Methodological...

The consumer perception of how products gain the status of necessities is characterized by complexity, laden with idiosyncratic consumer experiences, and driven by personally relevant historical developments. This study pushes the theoretical boundaries of understanding consumer necessities by reaching beyond the classification of products into tra...

Arnould and Rose raise some interesting issues regarding my sharing paper (Belk 2010). We agree on some points, but I find that most of their contentions are misguided and are based on misunderstandings of the original paper, social science, the extended self, and the theory of the gift. Their alternative offering of mutuality is also perplexingly...

Your first sale of a big idea! Certain transformations are with us forevermore while others are rather micro happenings that we soon are unable to recall. This special issue includes research into 32 different categories of transformations. The articles here are valuable for marketers and consumers. Understanding transformation processes contribute...

While there has been considerable study of conspicuous consumption in marketing, no research has investigated conspicuous consumption of religious products. In this paper, we argue that consumers may need to demonstrate their association and support for a religion in part by the purchase, use and display of religious products. We explore consuming...

When social and economic conditions change dramatically, status hierarchies in place for hundreds of years can crumble as marketization destabilizes once rigid boundaries. This study examines such changes in symbolic power through an eth-nographic study of a village in North India. Marketization and accompanying privatization do not create an indep...

Your first family pet! Your first kiss! Your first real job! Your first day of college! Your induction into whatever! Your first sale of a big idea! Certain transformations are with us forevermore while others are rather micro happenings that we soon are unable to recall. This special issue includes research into 32 different categories of transfor...

Although existing scales assess perceptions of money per se, none capture the mental and emotional experiences that the corporal quality of the payment mode generates. Historical and sensory associations with payment modes generate differential cognitive and emotional sensitivity in mental accounts, and influence the type, value and amount of produ...

Prior consumer research has addressed the encounter between global brands and styles versus local cultures through the concepts of glocal hybridity, post-assimilationist resistance, and the de-stigmatization of local practices in the face of competition from global consumer culture. Based on fieldwork with college women in the Arab Gulf states we d...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the 1985-1991 project called “The Consumer Behavior Odyssey”, including a retrospective assessment of its context and role in influencing consumer research paradigms. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on personal recollections, introspective fieldnotes from the Odyssey and various pub...

Sharing is a phenomenon as old as humankind, while collaborative consumption and the “sharing economy” are phenomena born of the Internet age. This paper compares sharing and collaborative consumption and finds that both are growing in popularity today. Examples are given and an assessment is made of the reasons for the current growth in these prac...

The Internet has opened up a new era in sharing. There has also been an explosion of studies and writings about sharing via the Internet. This includes a series of books, articles, and web discussions on the topic. However, many of these apparent cases of sharing are better characterized as pseudo-sharing-commodity exchanges wrapped in a vocabulary...

This ethnographic study in Qatar and United Arab Emirates addresses a particular Islamic consumptionscape as well as a related commodified practice: that of Arab hospitality. This much vaunted Arab virtue is examined in three contexts: home hospitality, commercial hospitality, and hospitality toward foreign guest workers and visitors. We find that...

The extended self was proposed in 1988. Since it was formulated, many technological changes have dramatically affected the way we consume, present ourselves, and communicate. This conceptual update seeks to revitalize the concept, incorporate the impacts of digitization, and provide an understanding of consumer sense of self in today’s technologica...

In this introductory editorial we briefly discuss anti-consumption research and society, the focus of this special issue of the Journal of Macromarketing. We then introduce the four peer reviewed articles and two invited commentaries that comprise the special issue, and conclude with future research opportunities.

Purpose – Multinational companies (MNCs) entering developing markets face cultural, language, and other barriers to understanding consumers. Ethnographic consumer insights research offers the best means of understanding needed product innovations and adaptations for these markets. This paper aims to focus on these issues. Design/methodology/approa...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bring together the thoughts and opinions of key members of the Journal of Islamic Marketing's ( JIMA ) Editorial Team, regarding the recently branded phenomenon of Islamic marketing – in the interests of stimulating further erudition. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopted an “eagle eye” method to i...

Although prior literature has emphasized marketplace participants' co-construction mostly in terms of symbolic, oral, or emotional aspects of a consumption experience, there has not been much attention paid to potential concerns around success, failure, strategies, risk, dependence, and competition involved. This article, by building on the existin...

Purpose The purpose of this review is to offer a summary of visual and projective research methods that have been applied or may be applied fruitfully in an Asian context. Examples are provided and a delineation of the strengths and weaknesses of the methods is made. Design/methodology/approach This is a review article covering a number of differe...

Based on an ethnographic study of American garages, we develop a model of the roles that liminal spaces perform in the management of possessions and their meanings. We find that the garage serves as a transitional space that links the useful and useless, female and male, clean and dirty, sacred and profane, and past, present, and future. We also pr...

We study conflicting notions of modesty and vanity in the Arab Gulf region by focusing on contemporary female adornment practices and the tensions underlying them. The standard of modest traditional dress that women are expected to adhere to in Gulf countries is intended to conceal their sexuality and promote public virtue. Nevertheless, emerging b...

This article adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative. This research shows that e-Choupal, an Indian BOP initiative, is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking, which is inadequately reconciled by the neoliberal gov...

Through a naturalistic inquiry, we interpret shopping malls in India as post-colonial sites in which young consumers deploy the West in an attempt to transform their Third World identities. Shopping malls in former colonies represent a post-colonial hybridity that offers consumers the illusion of being Western, modern, and developed. Moreover, cons...

Southern white masculinity is often said to be distinctive. Scholarly treatments of the subject attribute the characteristics of conservatism, patriotism, independence, racism, a disdain for centralized authority and a tendency toward violence to southern white men (see e.g., Friend 2009; Watts 2008). The crucible for these traits is usually said t...

In this volume, you will find a selection of consumer culture theory based research in consumer behavior. All were presented at the seventh conference on consumer culture theory held at Saïd Business School, Oxford University in August 2012. The papers in this volume were selected by the editors based on reviewer feedback on the qualities of these...

In this roundtable, we question the ways in which the 'sacred' is distinct from spirituality, and ask whether the broadening of the concept has resulted in a reduction of its analytical power. The session will benefit all those interested in the sacred and spirituality in consumer behavior.

We report the findings of a qualitative study of Qatari homes in the Arab Gulf. We identify the significance of privacy and gender segregation as anchors for identity, both national and religious. Maintaining these anchors seems to help Qataris resolve cultural tensions and conflicts to which they feel subjected. We show that the emphasis on these...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report findings of an ethnographic study of homes in the Arab Gulf country of Qatar. The authors' analysis and contribution focuses on resolving the tension between privacy and hospitality in Qatari homes in the context of identity threats posed by an influx of Western modernity and its implications to market...

Purpose – We use data from the United States and Finland, a literature review, and historical analysis to understand the concept and role of cool within global consumer culture. Methodology/approach – This is a conceptual review and qualitative analysis of data from depth interviews, journals, and online discussion groups in two U.S. locations and...

Possessions are central to our sense of self. For better or for worse, our possessions help to tangibilize our past, our present, and perhaps our future. They may even provide a type of immortality when they remain attached to our identity after our death. Shallow materialism has been found to be harmful, but there is another sense in which our tre...

Many consumers profess to want to avoid unethical offerings in the marketplace yet few act on this inclination. This study investigates the nature of the rationales and justifications used by consumers to make sense of this discrepancy. The data was collected via in-depth interviews across eight countries. The respondents were presented with three...

Pentecostalism is an American creation that has been exported to various parts of the world. Its message of hope is produced and promoted by churches that are led by religious entrepreneurial salespeople who create value for customers through the use of marketing techniques that facilitate the blending of the local and the global; the sacred and th...

The anthropomorphism of brands, defined as seeing human beings in brands (Puzakova, Kwak, and Rosereto, 2008) is the focus of this study. Specifically, the research objective is to understand the ways in which brands are rendered humanlike. By analyzing consumer readings of stories found on food product packages we intend to show how marketers and...

Using qualitative research methods this article explores the relationship between the point-of-purchase brand rhetoric and the consumers' reading of the poetry of packaging. The findings emphasize the myth-making function of commercial storytelling, identify the consumer as co-creator of marketplace myths, and theorize the process of myth-making as...

Sharing is a fundamental consumer behavior that we have either tended to overlook or to confuse with commodity exchange and gift giving. Sharing is a distinct, ancient, and increasingly vital consumer research topic that bears on a broad array of consumption issues ranging from sharing household resources versus atomized family possessions to file...

Houses are rich symbols representative of culture, self and identity (Marcus 1995). The current research provides a comparative perspective on Arab-Islamic (Qatari) and Western values as encoded in the home and use of spaces within it. Our ethnographic study involved observation and in-depth interviews with twenty four middleclass home-owning Qatar...

In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opp...

This chapter focuses on ways in which marketers promote or use envy to sell products. Marketing strategies often take advantage of envy in order to create desires in consumers to obtain products associated with admired or envied sources. Sometimes the strategies are explicit through the use of celebrity models linked to a product; the resulting env...

Cultivation analysis suggests that television influences local cultures through its complex repertoire of images and narratives, which constitute a representation. Through a discursive analysis of television content in India we contend that rising material aspirations and consumer culture are significantly influenced by this medium. Dialectics of t...

China's ideological transition from a communist country toward a consumer society provides an unprecedented context in which to explore the rise of consumerism in a contemporary society. We examine how advertising appropriates a dominant anticonsumerist political ideology to promote consumption within China's social and political transition. We sho...

China's current experiences with globalism, localism, and advertising can be informed by a consideration of earlier encounters with these forces in Shanghai of the 1930s. In this paper, we examine a popular advertising medium of the time: the poster ad, or yuefenpai. These ads are analyzed semiotically, with a focus on the different ways in which t...

Consumers are increasingly searching for beautiful memories. Memory is not solely the work of the mind retrieving a "true" past. People represent their unique past to (re)construct their identity and seek social links with others who share the remembered events. Through visual analysis of the web posting of war photographs by Vietnam veterans, this...

Research in international advertising has often taken a dichotomized approach, as exemplified by the global standardization vs localization debate. It is assumed under the standardization approach that the globalization process will absorb different national cultures into a global commercial culture, such that standardized advertising should be pre...

Accumulation of possessions is a common phenomenon in an affluent society such as the United States. People increasingly share a common ideology that more is better, thus legitimizing acquiring ever more stuff. The dramatic accumulation of possessions and the limitation of organization skills among individuals create frustration and panic in managi...

Sharing is an alternative form of distribution to commodity exchange and gift giving. Compared to these alternative modes, sharing can foster community, save resources, and create certain synergies. Yet outside of our immediate families, we do little sharing. Even within the family, there is increased privatization. This article addresses impedimen...

The relational framing perspective on taboo exchanges addresses a number of issues that have also been the subjects of considerable interpretive research and theorizing. This commentary highlights interpretive work on gift giving, love, sacredness, purity, and boundaries as it pertains to exchange taboos. It suggests that there is a ritual and mora...

This study of the meanings of possessions displayed in the offices of employees in a high technology firm suggests extensions to the concept of extended self. Work self and home self contend for dominance in these displays. Employees must decide which aspects of the self belong to the domain of work and which belong elsewhere. In these ongoing nego...

Consumer ethics are an understudied but important counterpart of business ethics. In this study we use qualitative methods and video ethnography to examine consumer beliefs and behaviors in eight countries, including both affluent and poor nations in Europe, North America and Australasia. Using depth interviews and projective methods, informants ad...

Products and services promoted on a global scale raise issues of globalism that are more superficial than the issues raised by the globalization of world holidays. It is one thing to have an Ikea and a KFC in the city, and conceivably quite another thing to have Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Halloween. Holidays like these have more complex cultur...

An implicit assumption in advertising content analysis, as well as in studies of advertiser intent, is that what an ad says, or what its creator intends for it to convey, is also what it means to consumers. The presence of global images and foreign appeals in advertising is thus often incorrectly taken as evidence that local culture is becoming glo...

Desire is the motivating force behind much of contemporary consumption. Yet consumer research has devoted little specific attention to passionate and fanciful consumer desire. This article is grounded in consumers' everyday experiences of longing for and fantasizing about particular goods. Based on journals, interviews, projective data, and inquiri...

Theory on identity negotiations posits that a person's identity-construction project ceases upon death. We tested this proposition using death-ritual consumption experiences of consumers in Asante, Ghana, West Africa. We found that bereaved Asante consumers engage in conspicuous ritual consumption in pursuit of newer social identities for their dec...

Globalism has been examined in consumer research primarily as an advertising or marketing issue rather than in terms of impacts on personal and cultural identity. In investigating Chinese "readings" of global and local advertising, we find that consumers use advertising to interrogate personal and national identities. They exhibit a longing for glo...

Since Zimbabwean independence in 1980, a small percentage of the black population has become wealthy. This paper and a companion video explore the consumption patterns of members of this new black elite in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Given the violent war of independence and the avowedly socialist objectives of the new government, one expectation might...

Accounts for materialism are examined based on qualitative research in Romania, Turkey, the USA, and Western Europe. Various spontaneously offered accounts reconcile the discrepancy between the belief that materialism is bad and materialistic consumption behavior and aspirations. These accounts include justifications - passionate connoisseurship, i...

According to Abraham Maslow’s (1954) well-known hierarchy of needs, as humans we satisfy our lower-order bodily needs for food, shelter, clothing, and some measure of safety before we become concerned with the more symbolic social and psychological needs for love, esteem, and self actualization. Although Nevis (1983) has suggested that a somewhat d...

Modern mountain men form temporary consumption enclaves focused on reen‐acting the 1825–40 fur‐trade rendezvous held in the Rocky Mountain American West. In the process, they become part of a transient consumption community predicated on invented traditions and the invocation of a mythic past to create and consume fantastic time and space. Based on...

On the basis of short-term, qualitative fieldwork, the authors provide a culturally embedded portrait of AIDS knowledge, attitudes, and risk-taking behaviors in prostitute patronage by students and tourists in the most heavily HIV-infected region of Thailand. The authors find that the mix of cultural values, rituals, sex roles, and emotions in this...