Papers by Soren Askegaard
Nordic Consumer Culture, 2019
The purpose of this study is to explore the dimensions of Nordic regionality through advertisemen... more The purpose of this study is to explore the dimensions of Nordic regionality through advertisementbased narratives of Finnishness. Building from theory on myth, this study responds to the call for more research that reflects "greater sensitivity to place and history" in operationalizing regionally based marketing and consumer research (Chelekis & Figueiredo, 2015, p. 321). Through an interpretive inquiry of print advertisements that invoke the idea of Finnishness, we find mythical portrayals of Finnishness in advertising appeal to, reinforce, and extend a collective sense of national and cultural identity. Advertisements also leverage national symbolism and implied domestic product origins to propagate localist, protectionist, and regionalist narratives with moralistic undertones. A final major theme explicated is the mythical portrayal of a rustic lifestyle of the past, which enables Finnish consumers to regain a material connection with a "paradise lost" of traditional Finnishness. Appeals to international consumer segments also use idyllic imagery from the Finnish countryside and nature in the form of an "exotic other." We discuss implications of our analysis for theorizations of mythologies and their relationships with regions and cultural strategy.
ACR Asia-Pacific Advances, 2002
Handbook on Place Branding and Marketing, 2017
The purpose of this study is to explore the dimensions of Nordic regionality through advertisemen... more The purpose of this study is to explore the dimensions of Nordic regionality through advertisement-based narratives of Finnishness. Building from theory on myth, this study responds to the call for more research that reflects “greater sensitivity to place and history” in operationalizing regionally based marketing and consumer research (Chelekis and Figueiredo, Regions and Archipelagos of Consumer Culture: A Reflexive Approach to Analytical Scales and Boundaries. Marketing Theory, 15(3), 321–345, 2015). Through an interpretive inquiry of print advertisements that invoke the idea of Finnishness, we find that mythical portrayals of Finnishness in advertising appeal to, reinforce, and extend a collective sense of national and cultural identity. Advertisements also leverage national symbolism and implied domestic product origins to propagate localist, protectionist, and regionalist narratives with moralistic undertones. A final major theme explicated is the mythical portrayal of a rusti...
Social Science Research Network, 2003
Desire is the motivating force behind much of contemporary consumption. Yet consumer research has... more 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 inquiries into daily discourses in three cultures (the United States, Turkey, and Denmark), we develop a phenomenological account of desire. We find that desire is regarded as a powerful cyclic emotion that is both discomforting and pleasurable. Desire is an embodied passion involving a quest for otherness, sociality, danger, and inaccessibility. Underlying and driving the pursuit of desire, we find self-seduction, longing, desire for desire, fear of being without desire, hopefulness, and tensions between seduction and morality. We discuss theoretical implications of these processes for consumer research.
Advances in Consumer Research, 2003
MAPP Working Papers, 1999
... patterns in the two cultures, special meanings linking certain types of consumer behaviour to... more ... patterns in the two cultures, special meanings linking certain types of consumer behaviour to one ... or the other, and expectations for the future development of a Greenlandic consumer society ... p> 4. Food consumption in Greenlandic food culture was organised around experience ...
Grounded on the dialectical interplay of Italian fashion context, this study develops an institut... more Grounded on the dialectical interplay of Italian fashion context, this study develops an institutionalized concept of seduction that aims at overcoming a neglect of this notion in consumer research. We analyze data of both fashion consumers and fashion professionals with focus on processes of seduction and auto-seduction, and we conclude by drawing attention to the broader consequences of theorizing seduction in a marketing context.
Marketing Theory, 2011
This paper argues for an epistemological positioning of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) research be... more This paper argues for an epistemological positioning of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) research beyond the lived experience of consumers. CCT, it is argued, brought sociocultural context to consumer research, not least through the introduction of existential phenomenology as a paradigm for CCT studies. However, it is time to expand the contextualization of lived consumer experiences with another contextualization, this time the one of systemic and structuring influences of market and social systems that is not necessarily felt or experienced by consumers in their daily lives, and therefore not necessarily discursively expressed. There is a need to take into consideration the context of context. We therefore suggest an epistemology for CCT that explicitly connects the structuring of macro-social explanatory frameworks with the phenomenology of lived experiences, thereby inscribing the micro-social context accounted for by the consumer in a larger socio-historical context based on the ...
ACR North American Advances, 2008
Journal of Business Research, 2017
This special issue explores the role of portion sizes in food consumption, and the ways in which ... more This special issue explores the role of portion sizes in food consumption, and the ways in which portion sizes may be used to regulate or reduce consumption. The papers address three sub-themes: consumer responses to portion sizes, the effect of partitioning a portion, and portion size cognitions and perceptions. This collection of papers is offered to assist both researchers and practitioners better understand how portion size affects food consumption. More importantly, the papers are offered so as to encourage and enable marketers to contribute positively in the fight against the growing prevalence of obesity.
Uploads
Papers by Soren Askegaard
In addition to the relationship between religion and consumption, the ritual dimension of consumer behaviour has received attention since Rook’s (1985) seminal discussion of consumption rituals, and Wallendorf and Arnould’s (1989) seminal work on Thanksgiving consumption rituals. Consumption rituals have evoked interest not just within consumer research but in a number of adjacent disciplines with focal interest on an array of ritual types (for one excellent collection, see Otnes and Lowrey 2004). One particular ritual that has hitherto received less attention from consumer researchers is the religious ritual of circumcision practiced notably in Jewish and Islamic communities.
Circumcision is an ethnically and religiously distinctive mark on the body (Silverman 2004, p. 425). It is a common practice among male Muslims around the world because it is considered a sunnah (the habits, words, and practices of the prophet Mohammed). In Turkey, a Muslim-majority country with strong cultural links to Islam, circumcision is not specific to religious families. Instead, it is a widespread cultural practice that signifies the promotion from childhood to manhood (see Sev’er 2012). Therefore, regardless of the family’s devotion (from atheists or non-practicing Muslims to devout Muslims), male Muslim children are circumcised. This surgical procedure is celebrated with relatives and friends as a day or a two-day party, called circumcision ceremony. For circumcision ceremonies, invitation cards are sent to relatives and friends, and the boy’s bed and family house are decorated with ornaments. It is also a tradition for boys to wear special costumes and headpieces at circumcision ceremonies. The traditional circumcision costume consists of a shirt, pants, and a cap combined with a headpiece and a sceptre; however, with the advancement of textile industry and increasing number of producers in the country, various styles are now offered, such as bahriyeli (naval officer) uniform and şehzade (Ottoman prince) outfit, which consists of a long overcoat embroidered and decorated with feather, harem pants, a sceptre, and a turban.
Despite the social and cultural importance of circumcision in Turkish society and a wide variety of circumcision costume styles and the other circumcision related consumption objects (such as invitations cards and ornaments) offered in the Turkish market place, studies focusing on social and cultural aspects of circumcision are limited (see Akkayan 2010, Kırımlı 2010). Furthermore, there is no research examining the notion of circumcision ritual in terms of consumption and the market place.
This study explores consumption objects related to circumcision ceremonies, i.e. circumcision costumes, accessories, invitation cards, and ornaments, offered in the Turkish marketplace and also sold online in numerous countries around the world, and investigates the intersection and interplay of various concepts and ideologies, including faith, tradition, masculinity, market offerings, and consumption, within the marketplace and circumcision ceremony itself. In order to pay respect to the context of context (Askegaard and Linnet 2011), we expand on the discussion on the relation between religion and consumption, and insert it in the contemporary Turkish political and cultural scene of nationalism and militarism. In particular, we investigate the phenomenon using a critical perspective on Neo-Ottomanism, a political, religious and cultural wave of resurrecting values and policies of the pre-Kemalist Ottoman period (Sözen 2010) that also has had an impact outside the Turkish realm (Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi 2013).
References
Akkayan, Taylan (2010), “Bedenin Kültürel Gerekçelerle Sakatlanması ve Söğüt’te Sünnet”, Antropoloji, 24, 37-68.
Askegaard, Søren and Jeppe T. Linnet (2011), “Towards an Epistemology of Consumer Culture Theory: Phenomenology and the Context of Context”, Marketing Theory, 11(4), 381-404.
Belk, Russell W., Melanie Wallendorf and John F. Sherry Jr. (1989), “The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy on the Odyssey”, Journal of Consumer Research, 1-38.
Cleveland, Michel, Mark Laroche and Ranim Hallab (2013), “Globalization, Culture, Religion, and Values: Comparing Consumption Patterns of Lebanese Muslims and Christians”, Journal of Business Research, 66(8), 958-67.
Hirschman, Elisabeth C. (1983), “Religious Affiliation and Consumption Processes: An Initial Paradigm”, Research in Marketing, 6, 131-70.
Izberk-Bilgin, Elif (2012), “Infidel Brands: Unveiling Alternative Meanings of Global Brands at the Nexus of Globalization, Consumer Culture, and Islamism”, Journal of Consumer Research, 39(4), 663-87.
Kırımlı, Yüksel (2010), “Yetişkin Olmaya İlk Adım [Sünnet]”, Antropoloji, 24, 19-35.
Kozinets, Robert V. (2001), “Utopian Enterprise: Articulating the Meanings of Star Trek’s Culture of Consumption”, Journal of Consumer Research, 28(1), 67-88.
Kraidy, Marwan M. and Omar Al-Ghazzi (2013), “Neo-Ottoman Cool: Turkish Popular Culture in the Arab Public Sphere”, Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture, 11 (1), 17-29.
O'Guinn, Thomas C. and Russell W. Belk (1989), “Heaven on Earth: Consumption at Heritage Village, USA”, Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (2), 227-38.
Otnes, Cornelia C. and Tina M. Lowrey, eds. (2004). Contemporary Consumption Rituals: A Research Anthology. Oxford: Taylor & Francis.
Rook, Dennis (1985), “The Ritual Dimension of Consumer Behavior”, Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 251-64.
Sandıkçı, Özlem and Güliz Ger (2010), “Veiling in Style: How Does a Stigmatized Practice Become Fashionable?”, Journal of Consumer Research, 37(1), 15-36.
Sev’er, Aysan (2012), “Male Circumcision: Sharpening the Phallus, Constructing Masculinities, Some Implications for Men and Women”, Women’s Health and Urban Life, 11 (2), 64-87.
Silverman, Eric K. (2004), “Anthropology and Circumcision”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 419-45.
Sözen, Ahmet (2010), “A Paradigm Shift in Turkish Foreign Policy: Transition and Challenges”, Turkish Studies, 11(1), 103-23.
Wallendorf, Melanie and Eric J. Arnould (1991), “‘We Gather Together’: Consumption Rituals of Thanksgiving Day”, Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (1), 13-31.