No abstract

No abstract

We explore the slow disappearance of the postmodern critique that challenged mainstream marketing and emphasised the importance of locating phenomena in their wider social, political and historic contexts to expose embedded power relationships and ideologies. After an initial overview of how postmodernism impacted on theorising in consumer research, we highlight how it reached saturation point, with many of its ideas accepted into mainstream marketing. Following this claimed demise of the postmodern critique, we review the proliferation of post-postmodern proposals and speculate from where the next theoretical direction will originate. As part of this analysis, we focus on a group of theorists who are giving communism a renaissance and consider how these ideas can help us critique and reimagine consumer culture theory.

is Senior Lecturer in Management at the Queen's University of Belfast. She has considerable business experience in the market research industry and in management consultancy. Her research interests lie in market research and feminist issues in marketing. She designs computer-based teaching and learning materials and publishes in such outlets as ALT-J and the British Journal of Educational Research on the ways these can enhance the learning experience. Pauline Maclaranis Professor of Marketing at De Montfort University, Leicester. Prior to becoming an academic she worked in industry for many years, initially in marketing positions and then as a founder partner in her own business, a design and marketing consultancy. Her main research interests are feminist perspectives and gender issues in marketing; and the Utopian dimensions of contemporary consumption, particularly in relation to the festival marketplace.Abstract Following Belk's (1991) Consumer Behaviour Odyssey, the authors suggest the need for a new odyssey, one that focuses on consumers in virtual worlds. In this paper the authors discuss the relevance of virtual communities for marketers and how ethnographic research methods can be adapted to the online environment. The unique methodological problems, opportunities and ethical dilemmas for researchers are considered that online ethnography raises before an exploration of how discourse analysis can assist in the interpretation of data collected online.

No abstract