In my short summary of the day I noted that we (the academics that make up the informal group that is ECCG) might be well placed to work at the margins of consumer research because we are in fact very much at the margins of the academy. We work in a new university that has only recently declared any interest in research (and is yet to follow up its stated aims with the sorts of working practices that colleagues at more established institutions enjoy). We also work in a media school and in a group that is highly interdisciplinary. In many ways we simply haven’t yet learnt to practice consumer research in ‘normal’ ways. We are poor at the game. Some of us don’t really ‘get’ the fuss about the JCR, for example. Others don’t really aim to ‘be someone’ in consumer research. I don’t think many of us have a 3-year publishing plan either. And we don’t really know how to maximise our RAE results (or care to find out, even though we did do better than expected). We spend little time and effort looking for commercial applications for our work either. Perhaps we are poor researchers? Or perhaps we simply enjoy researching the things that interest us, and that stand out as worth further investigation? We do this using the methods that seem ‘right’ to us (or just fun to us) rather than those that are preferred by top journals.
As I thought about these things after the Margins of Marketing seminar I think I felt more strongly that research should be an aesthetic experience – that we are better off for our rather amateurish approaches. We held the session because we wanted to. We wanted to discuss our ideas and hear what others had to say. We didn’t worry about a paper on a CV, or about research profiles and outcomes. We just wanted a space to enjoy academic discussion. And I think that is what we got. This should enrich both our research and our teaching.
A few things stand out to me from the day though. These are fragments that stick in my mind but that I can’t easily locate to one presentation or discussion. I suspect for others different themes will have emerged and if I were to write this tomorrow I might think of something different.
Firstly, I think one significant aspect of the margins of consumer culture (and even of emerging consumer cultures) is that the quick jump to see life as consumption is an error. This point was made by several people on the day, I think. For me Fromm’s humanism came to mind. I wonder if consumer research too quickly presents a ‘having’ frame of reference (for researcher as well as participant) that results in the over-emphasis of consumption in everyday life. So maybe everyday practices are a better focus and it is from these that we may start to see commodities and services as both props and providers of scripts that people may use to enact life. Here of course we may also see resistance in the unusual and unexpected ways in which individuals use market offerings to manage relationships, work, family life, citizenship, etc. And we may also see technology as a particular focus for new practices to emerge.
Secondly I though about escape and the possibility of consumption as a source of boredom for individuals. On an intellectual level we critique and review and even complain about consumer cultures, but for many who are unfamiliar with Marxist and/or critical theory and/or who are unaware of the insidious ways in which the market has come to dominate so many aspects of life (and often on the basis of lies and deceit it seems) the market may be simply boring. What do such people imagine then? What are their ‘good lives’ made of if not the trappings of a consumer society? If we are to extend the commentary on emerging consumer cultures to normative calls for other forms of cultures, or even better forms of culture, we should know more about the practices of those ‘spoilsports’ that simply refuse to play consumption games, as well as the ‘cheats’ who refuse to play by the rules..
Finally for now I wondered more about ‘truth’. Enquiry into the history of consumption reveals lies, but actually I wonder if all we really have are competing stories that are either relevant to us, challenging to our understanding of reality, or (most commonly) old and dull and familiar. Metaphors and phenomenologies are two form of story in consumer research that can be enjoyed, but the stories of research projects are just as interesting. These stories seem to get lost in formal presentation but were emphasised during the seminar (especially in the back stage, unrecorded chat). What’s going on there? Books and especially journals are formalising the experience of research to the point where we have lost the complexity and nuance of our own practices perhaps, and in those circumstances how can we hope to present the messy complexity of the people we research? And if we can’t tell interesting stories about individuals who often consume but also frequently don’t and don’t care to, where will new ideas about consumption come from? I don’t mean new theories – we already seem to have too many of those and reach for them to often – I mean new ideas about how to live satisfying lives either within, outside, or on the margins of markets.
4 Comments
June 16, 2009 at 9:26 am
I’m a little less sanguine than Mike in terms of how lucky we are to be amateurs, although I personally no longer buy into the notion of career for me – others do and may well get frustrated after a little time in the amateur league. And, maybe the realization that we carry little weight, are read by ‘the few’ and ‘get nowhere’….might change our view?
But back to the seminar that served to kick-start our research group – what an enjoyable day…Wary though I am of most bands of people (as Daragh referred to, that tension between knowingly being an individual and yet part of some group) I found myself feeling ‘at home’, comfortable, relaxed …and this was a day at work remember!!!
I agree with two of Mike’s overall points, the continuous questioning of the notion of truth and – what I would say is a problem for marketing and consumer research – the unspoken assumption that we are born consumers rather than humans….and all that is missed as a result. The other point that emerged for me, reflecting on the day, was the often peripheral position of marketing & consumption – the conversation was largely about life first, and only then the place for and role of consumption. Of course this probably reflects the constitution of the group – middle class academic types who have never (or rarely) had to work on a factory floor to scrape an existence.
My final reflection is about the format of the day- I was already rather ‘off’ conferences …now I think it will take one hell of a great location to get me back to one!!
June 16, 2009 at 1:25 pm
For me, as a newbie PhD student, the day was useful and enjoyable in several respects. On an intellectual level, it was great to hear the application, connections and debate about and between theories, as well as having access to Mark’s encyclopaedic memory of relevant literature!
It’s always good to hear bright people speak animatedly about their projects and latest thinking, however nebulous. My thinking particularly resonated with Daragh’s notion of ‘marginalising marketing’ in consumer research (which Mike and Richard have picked up on too) which serves to open up and enrich the field in my view (and ties in with my interest in voluntary simplicity of course). It was also a boost to hear that others active in consumer research have not necessarily come from ‘marketing’ backgrounds – I studied Communication previously and somewhere along the line developed a snobbery about marketing and advertising – and hence also question their ‘belongingness’ in the discipline.
So cheers, and lets have another one next year!
June 17, 2009 at 11:43 am
I read with interest even though I’m not into marketing (directly). PR is marginalised also, I believe, in the following ways. It is knocked as a subject worthy of sustained reserach scrutiny by academic snobbery from the old UK unversities. They want the u/g numbers and nothing else. Snobbery in these places means that no PR academics were on the RAE panels. To my knowledge, only one research application has been won by a PR themed proposal. Another reason is that when research universities think of PR, they think propaganda, and say to themselves ‘We’ve done that in politics and communications during the Cold War – end of story’. They are blind to the new impacts on markets, new media, voluntary sectors, public spheres brought on by PR propaganda.
But there is some stirring in the PR bushes. I hear that a group called Radical PR and based on Stirling is doing something similar to you marketing radicals.
Kevin M.
June 19, 2009 at 7:21 am
I don’t consider myself a ‘marketing’ radical – more a radical who just happens to find himself surrounded by marketing & consumption stuff