In the Family Way: Bringing a Mother-Daughter (Matrilineal) Perspective to Retail Innovation and Consumer Culture

Abstract

Davies A and Fitchett, J.A. (2015) "In the family way: bringing a mother-daughter (matrilineal) perspective to retail innovation and consumer culture" Environment and Planning A, 47 (3): [727][728][729][730][731][732][733][734][735][736][737][738][739][740][741][742][743] In the family way: bringing a mother-daughter (matrilineal) perspective to retail innovation and consumer cultureHere we apply the multi-level narrative approach of critical oral history to develop intergenerational narratives that show how social change in consumer culture is produced and enacted through family interrelations. The research uses intergenerational storytelling to describe the experiences and memories of women as mothers and daughters in families. Places and practices around provisioning, budgeting, cooking, childcare and domestic labour provide the setting in which the dialectics of family and gender are transformed and enacted through evolving family signatures. Families develop enduring myths which function as a means of organising and making sense of consumption. The oral histories show how family signatures operate and proliferate, how they are shaped by retail innovation and change and how they become structured into everyday practices, attitudes and family norms. This further demonstrates that family is important to understand the relationship between individuals and consumer culture.

Changing role of women in the Irish society: an overview of the female consumer

“…Marketing has had a strong interest in intergenerational transmission of consumer behaviours, attitudes and values, which are seen as vital in long-term brand value and consumer socialisation (Davies et al, 2013). However, a cutting-edge research drawing on three generations of British women revealed how consumer behaviour within the family is shaped by intergenerational continuities and discontinuities (Davies and Fitchett, 2015). The research demonstrated how family identities are formed through negotiated efforts, everyday consumption practices and retail innovations (Davies and Fitchett, 2015).…”

“…However, a cutting-edge research drawing on three generations of British women revealed how consumer behaviour within the family is shaped by intergenerational continuities and discontinuities (Davies and Fitchett, 2015). The research demonstrated how family identities are formed through negotiated efforts, everyday consumption practices and retail innovations (Davies and Fitchett, 2015). Considering the rapid and dramatic changes taking place in the Irish environment, research into the intergenerational dynamics that are shaping consumer behaviour can provide useful insights to academics and marketing practitioners alike.…”

Relational dialectics: researching change in intercultural families

“…Epp and Price (2008) consider families as comprising bundles of relational identities, which moderate the socialisation of central family practices. These relational, interactionist notions of the family have allowed consumer researchers to illuminate sibling relations (Kerrane et al, 2015), intergenerational consumption (Karanika and Hogg, 2016;Davies and Fitchett, 2015) and senior families (Huff and Cotte, 2016). Researchers have also focussed on different formulations of family identity and how it is negotiated across cultural settings (Edirisingha et al, 2015;Wong and Hogg, 2013).…”

Let me tell you our story: On how women in my family disrupt menstrual tales in the process of telling stories.

“…Intergenerational storytelling implies at least three generations: grandparents, parents, and their children (Davies & Fitchett, 2015). Each generation, according to Jürgen Reulecke, "makes its decisions based on the rich experience it is carrying forward and that which it has accumulated itself," provoking stimulating changes in how stories are told (Reulecke, 2008, p. 124).…”

“…On the one hand, mothers transmit to their daughters various types of canonical stories that provide a sense of the structures of sex/gender subordination. On the other, daughters internalize them as their own and often transfer them to their own daughters (Davies & Fitchett, 2015). As such, daughters are frequently influenced by their mothers stories, "either mimicking or by actively resisting them" (Davies & Fitchett, 2015, p. 729-30) within a generation system.…”