Whilst Kozinets’ approach was on loyalty and segmentation, Moisander and Valtonen see customer research from profoundly cultural perspective that is based on assumption that we live in culturally constituted world that largely takes place through market.
The approach grounds heavily on social constructivism: social phenomenon such as consumption is developed in social contexts and the meaning comes to existence through the social institutions that give it meaning within in a culture. In this context, consumers, marketers and the marketplace are seen as producers of culture. In this Circuit of Culture also institutional forms, marketing discipline and knowledge play crucial role.
The very idea of the approach is to produce cultural knowledge this joint cultural production. To analyze the marketplace by how cultural, social and material realities are produced, maintained, contested, negotiated and transformed through market place processes by the actors. Thus the theory is also essentially qualitative and interpretative.
Before going to each actor’s role in the production, let’s have a look on Moisander’s and Valtonen’s revised concept of culture.
What is culture?
Culture refers to systems of representation through which people make sense of their everyday life. These systems include institutionalized discourses that constitute the conditions for people to think, talk and act; and everyday discourses through which meaning along with cultural artifacts are produced and through which people e.g. express themselves and exert power on others in social life. The former is also produced and negotiated through the latter.
Culture permeates all of society and the meanings are continuously re-produced. It is network or system of embedded practices and representations (text, images, talk, and codes of behavior) or a system of that shape every aspect of social life. Cultural narratives, citing culturally shared meanings, norms and values give sense of structure and security in consumer’s life.
What is particular about cultural approach on marketing is that it shifts from brand performing to meanings of what the brand actually stands for. When the focus moves from material properties to symbolic properties, the analysis approaches what product/service actually offers and how it affects customers’ life.
Forces of culture
Culture is produced through symbolic processes and practices of production and consumption. Marketer constructs meanings by creating images, narratives and fantasies around products/brands whereas consumer make use of, appropriate and give value to products/brands and symbolic meanings attached to them in rituals and practices of everyday life.
Marketer can be seen as the new middleman or mediator or culture. Marketer’s crucial role lays in connecting production to consumption and shaping products according to market expectations. Marketer also functions as significant shaper of taste (creating new wants, needs and consumption-oriented lifestyles). Moisander and Valtonen remind that this link can be real or rather specious through marketing functions. Meaning is not just produced through design, ads and marketing but also through the use to which consumers put these products in the practice of their everyday life. Consumers are seen as active players that constantly re-work the meaning that they consume.
Whereas Kozinets saw that marketers should treat community members as partners of promotion and distribution, the cultural approach questions whether culture could be managed. According to Moisander and Valtonen, consumers should not be studies as autonomous subjects or postmodern independent consumers but rather they should be studies with marketers together in dialogue as producers of culture.
Even though the power has been shifting from marketers to consumers, by no means is the relation between actors equal. The broad range of marketers is powerful cultural gatekeeper on deciding what is supplied and offered. Thus many of the consumer choices are largely pre-determined as gatekeepers narrow down the options. However, each group has their own role to reflect on in the system of representation where wants, meanings, ideas, norms and values associated with market place behavior are discursively produced.
The cultural approach on marketing focuses heavily on cultural structures and structures in use. The dynamics of consumption is seen more complex than the relation between products/brands and social status or extended self. Products/brands are seen as cultural artifacts, resources and carriers of meaning and culture orients social life through narratives, myths, issues taken-for-granted, role expectations and especially through implicit values, norms and relations of power they involve. Prducts/brands can deliver powerful cultural myths in tangible form. The myths that products/brands embody prescribe an ideology with moral imperatives and a vision for the community to aspire to, thus giving people a sense of structure in life
Everyone can understand that gifts are inevitably related to interpersonal relationships. Consumption activities also play vital role in structuring seasonality and time: beer can be interpreted to symbolize “free time” and finally to embody the myth of Western freedom. And in broader concept, the riot over Australians’ Boxing Kangaroo flag during Winter Olympic Games 2010 demonstrates well that products/brands embody strong cultural icons and myths. A flag representing fair play was ordered to take out from Aussie teams’ accommodation and later the occurrence got manifested in the figure of Boxing Beaver by Canadians.
How to approach culture?
The cultural approach on marketing highlights the cultural complexity of market environments that are increasingly multicultural and global. To accomplish a better understanding of the cultural contingency and complex market phenomena, shared cultural meanings and social relations are established. Analytics of cultural practice (ACP) focuses on individual and psychological research and can provide conceptual tools for gaining better understanding of the cultural complexity of the marketplace and for reflecting own role among with structures and other actors.
Moisander and Valtionen note that marketers seem to need to improve their ability to recognize and understand the prevalent symbols, myths, images, values and cultural narratives of the culture of their target markets to carry out successful, innovative, socially responsible and customer-oriented marketing strategies.
Target markets are within contemporary communities (tribes) that can be characterized as shifting gatherings of emotionally bonded people and they exist in no other form but the symbolically and ritually manifested commitment of their members. Thus virtual space as well can be seen momentary home for the tribe to gather symbolism to reaffirm the values of tribe. The primary marketing task is to support the tribe in its very being (tribal belonging) practices through which tribe is brought to in being. Supporting is the approach over controlling when consumers are taken as cultural co-developers over “target group”.
As discussed earlier, the marketing focus is moving from use value to symbolic value. In addition to this, understanding the linking value seems to be the ability of future marketer in our cultural universe. Linking value is product’s contribution to establishing and/or reinforcing bonds between individuals not between product and customers.
Conclusions
Cultural approach is vital in today’s multi-cultural and global market space .The cultural approach on marketing’s focus highlights that online societies are just one medium within whole culture. Thus it is obvious that marketing must intersect all the social spaces of culture by participation and the use of meanings and myths. This is obvious also in the notion of linking value.
With the support of communications theories Moisander and Valtonen call for discourse analysis to reflect the reality construction that is constructed through systems of representation. It is also great tool for increasingly powerful consumer communities to reflect their own role and update conceptions from the one of victim of capitalism. Thus approach calls actors to activate and take part as loyalty approach changes to creation.
Being in joint cultural production, on the other hand, also means that company must see the tribe as company’s network or even seeing itself as part of the tribe. This furthermore means that marketers must lower company boundaries. As Kozinets noted, networks are build given things away even though in this case the approach of is more in information and meaning sharing rather than top-down free sample campaigns. What I find myself questioning is that is business world ready to open up? On the flip side of the coin companies’ attempts to harness joint culture to business means has aroused a lot of controversy. And on the other hand, are consumers ready to revise their role and really to reflect their lifestyles?
What kind of resources in money terms does it require to really understand and participate in the Circuit of Culture? Companies still need and want to evaluate content in commercial terms (e.g. ratings for movies) when the case in reality is in qualitative affects (the meaning of going to movies, the meaning of the specific movie/genre in consumers' life).
References:
References:
E-Tribalized Marketing? The Strategic Implications of Virtual Communities of Consumption
Kozinets, Robert V. 1999 European Management Journal, Vol. 17 (3) 253-267
Moisander, J. and Valtonen A. 2005, 1-20, Sage Publicications
No comments:
Post a Comment