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This paper explores the construction of meaning in consumer culture through a synthesis of two scholarly streams within the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) body of knowledge: semiology and phenomenology. Semiology represents consumer culture as a web of meanings-studying cultural meanings as socially agreed-upon structures. By contrast, phenomenology represents the interpretation and personalization of cultural meanings by consumers-focusing on meanings that emerge from individual lived experience. Combining these two approaches results in a framework that excavates meanings at both the cultural level and the individual level, inviting them into a figure-ground relationship. This relationship between levels of analysis illuminates how meaning in consumer culture is constructed, and how cultural meanings come to constitute a sense of normalcy in modern societies. As all marketing activity is culturally situated, understanding meaning in consumer culture provides an alternative way to understand value in marketing. Keywords Consumer culture theory • Marketing meanings • Phenomenology • Semiology • ValueConsumer culture is a web of meanings. Meanings are sensemaking devices that communicate and orient individuals' interpretations of text, concepts, and actions. In marketing, meanings provide sense-making orientations in contexts of marketplace exchange and drive both firm and consumer behavior (Kadirov & Varey, 2011;Pinson, 1998). In modern societies, meaning can hardly be separated from marketplace activity (Slater, 2015).Given the influence of meaning in marketing, how can marketers develop an understanding of meanings in consumer culture? Where do these meanings come from, and how do meanings evolve (or not) over time? Such questions require an understanding of how cultural meaning is constructed. And questions of meaning in marketing are perfectly suited for the work of Consumer Culture Theory.Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) "refers to a family of theoretical perspectives that address the dynamic relationship between consumer actions, the marketplace, and cultural meanings" (Arnould & Thompson, 2005: 868). CCT research

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