Identity, Ethnicity and Gender: Using Narratives to Understand their Meaning in Retail Shopping Encounters

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which two women (Sweetie and Desiree) experience a dissatisfying retail encounter. Citing data derived from memory-work methodology, we illustrate how stories can be used to gain a detailed insight into the complexity of consumption experiences and give voice to women consumers. By allowing women to write about, and critically reflect on their experiences, we show how consumers attach meaning to retail encounters and how we, as researchers can offer alternative interpretations of consumer behavior to those commonly reported in the literature. In this paper we use memories of "nasty" retail encounters to illustrate how social constructs related to identity, such as ethnicity and gender, have meaning in shopping experiences. Because of the new understandings possible via this method, we argue for using reflexivity in our research and analyses informed by feminism.

Socio‐cultural retailing: what can retail marketing learn from this interdisciplinary field?

“…They play a part in making products and services meaningful to us, and are thereby implicated in deciding what counts as "the good life" (Brodin 2007, Peñaloza 1999, Arnould et al 2001. Retail practice and spaces are involved in defining the beauty ideal and gender roles (Pettinger 2004, Pettinger 2005, and they sometimes work to reproduce racism and class oppression (Friend andThompson 2003, Houssay-Holzschuch andTeppo 2009). However, retail practices and spaces can also be used to express love (Miller 1998), work to promote sustainable consumption (Fuentes 2011), or simply be a way to enjoy oneself (Bäckström 2011).…”

“…Most (not to say all) of the studies reviewed above use qualitative interpretive methods. Ethnographic methods (Peñaloza 1999, Sherry et al 2001, Miller 1998, critical semiotic readings (Gottdiener 2000b, Goss 1993 and narrative analysis (Cassinger 2010, Friend andThompson 2003) are just a few of the different qualitative methods used within the field of socio-cultural retailing.…”

“…Malls and other retail spaces are often used as social spaces where relationships are maintained and in which sociability plays an important role (Haytko andBaker 2004, Sandikci andHolt 1998). Also, shopping is often connected to the enactment of gender roles Crewe 1998, Pettinger 2005) and can furthermore be a way to renegotiate ethnic identities and categories , Friend and Thompson 2003, Houssay-Holzschuch and Teppo 2009, Varman and Belk 2012.…”

“…So, although there certainly are studies of smaller, more mundane retail sites and shopping phenomenon (e.g. Friend and Thompson 2003), and even some early studies of what could be called "alternative retail spaces" (e.g. Sherry 1990, McGrath et al 1993, Belk et al 1988), this research is characterized by a preoccupation with large and spectacular retail sites.…”

Images of responsible consumers: organizing the marketing of sustainability

“…In the sociocultural literature, consumers are commonly seen as identity seekers who use products, and their consumption is seen as a communication device to signal all kinds of identity markers (see, e.g., Aldridge 2003, Arnould and Thompson 2005, Friend and Thompson 2003, Goulding et al 2002, Holt 1997. This literature also stresses the active and often creative role that consumers have.…”