Woolworths and Wales: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of the Loss of a Local Brand (original) (raw)
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History Compass, 2008
Using the anti-chain store movement as a case study, this article explores the relationship between the local and the national in the twentieth-century politics of consumption. It shows that independent merchants in the 1920s and 1930s articulated a potent form of localist politics. They believed that this politics was crucial both to the nation and to national well-being. Historians who work on the relationship between the state and consumption, it argues, have not paid sufficient attention to this mode of localist politcs, in which the local was embedded in the national. Localist attachments, identities and movements are too often ignored, or treated as if they are not related to national level developments. This tendency can at least in part be explained by the surprising persistence in current historiography of a cosmopolitan form of liberalism deeply (and perhaps unduly) suspicious of 'the local'.
Iconic Brands A Socio-Material Story
Journal of Material Culture, 2010
This article takes the story of a monument to a Soviet brand of cheese as a starting point for discussing the socio-material practices that underlie the elevation of some brands to iconic status in the post-Soviet context. While the literature on iconic or ‘symbolically dense’ brands primarily focuses on shared meanings and ideas that iconic goods come to stand for, we argue that a material perspective provides a richer and more nuanced understanding of this consecration process. Accordingly, we consider the manifold material forms and practices through which the iconic status of some Soviet goods is constituted and identify (perceived) material constancy, monumentalization and legal codification as three main realms through which the transcendent socio-cultural values of these brands are contested and established. We take the story of a monument to a brand as a challenge to bringing the notion of materiality into a more explicit and dynamic relationship with signification, thus moving from the separation of the two notions. Such a move, we suggest, helps elaborate the role of iconic consumer goods in re-constructing social bonds, community identities and ideology.
Expanding the boundaries of brand communities: the case of Fairtrade Towns
European Journal of Marketing
Purpose This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their role in brand co-creation, through empirical and theoretical contributions derived from researching the marketing dynamics operating within a successful but atypical form of brand community, Fairtrade Towns (FTT). Design/methodology/approach The paper reflects a pragmatic application of Grounded Theory, which captured qualitative data from key “insiders”, with a particular emphasis on FTT steering group members and their role as “prosumers”. Data were gathered via ethnographic involvement within one town and semi-structured interviews with participants in others. Findings FTTs, as brand communities, demonstrate elements of co-creation that go beyond the dominant theories and models within the marketing literature. They operate in, and relate to, real places rather than the online environments that dominate the literature on this subject. Unusually, the interactions between brand marketers a...
Localism and the community shop
Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit, 2013
There has been considerable interest in recent years in the establishment of community retail enterprises; local shops owned and run by the local community often as an alternative to the closure of the last privately-owned shop in the area. Government efforts to give local communities more rights and powers, including a community right to bid for ‘assets of community value,’ would seem to offer new opportunities for such enterprises. However, there are more barriers to the establishment and continued running of these enterprises than might appear at first sight. Community retail enterprises often need specific support from local and national organisations tailored to the different stages in their development if they are to fulfil their potential.
The chapter authored by Maxime Felder and Loïc Pignolo proposes a comparative analysis of shopping streets in three different French-speaking cities: Geneva, Paris and Brussels. The research draws on a strong line of research in urban sociology and urban studies on consumption in the city, including a comparative perspective. Sharon Zukin, for instance, has been working on this issue for several years (Zukin et al , 2009; Zukin, 2012; Zukin, Kasinitz & Chen, 2015) In this text, the shops are viewed as “key elements of the objectification of a place identity”, where it can be negotiated and manufactured. Through observation, formal encounters and interviews with shop owners, shopkeepers and shop users, the authors build a story of each street, mobilising buildings, everyday practices, representations and the context and history of surrounding neighbourhoods. In each street, we get to know some businesses and some local actors In all the portrayed cases, the authors argue, shops are fundamental elements of the narratives about local identity, constituting physical markers of its different aspects. Felder and Pignolo share with the reader three ways in which shops may be interpreted as the “bricks-and-mortar of place identity”: as material components of the streetscape, designed by the owners whose decisions can affect the street’s look and feel; as symbolic means used to objectify place identity, and finally by allowing or restricting interpretations, through their mere presence. Some shops might not cohere with a certain attempt to make sense of a place, and thus force the person or group to adjust the narrative and corresponding practices. The authors conclude by asserting that shops help narratives on place identity to retain coherence and stability, suggesting, however, that not all shops have the same urban influential capacities.
Buying Local Food: Shopping Practices, Place, and Consumption Networks in Defining Food as “Local”
Annals of The Association of American Geographers, 2010
Increasing awareness and concern with global climate change has led to a push to identify local food consumption as a way to reduce food miles and help preserve the environment. The journey from farm to fork is rarely a simple connection between farmer and consumer but involves a range of different actors and agents, located in different places and at different socioeconomic scales. The result is a confusing array of meanings that can be attached to food items considered to be local (e.g., local supplier, local producer, local commodity chain, local cultural product). This research explores the ways that retailers seek to sell local food, ways that this term is understood by consumers, and ways that consumers negotiate these differences. The research employs a case study methodology and draws on interviews with producers and white, middle-class consumers located in West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. Shopping is a skilled activity and the local is revealed as a complex intersection of provisioning decisions and practices that household food buyers undertake in the context of food availability and the racialized and classed marketing strategies of retailers, which in turn makes problematic the food miles concept for political mobilization.
Branding Australia. The Commercial Construction of Australianness
This dissertation presents the results of a doctoral research about commercial nationalism in Australia, analysing the construction of Australianness in consumer culture. Although previous studies have considered this phenomenon as relatively new, this thesis proposes to understand commercial nationalism as a historical process characterised by the intersection of nationalism and consumer culture in practices related to nation-making, the creation of national symbols and the defining of national identities. Based on this definition, the thesis argues that commercial nationalism has played an important role in the construction of Australia in three ways: facilitating synergies between public and private organisations, commodifying national symbols and nationalising commodities, and mediating the construction of national identities and citizen participation through consumerism. This argument is developed through a case study research analysing concrete manifestations of commercial nationalism in three periods of Australian history. The first period corresponds to the first half of the twentieth century, when Australian nationalism was characterised by a strong connection to Britain. This part of the thesis presents a case study of a buy Australian-made campaign called the “Great White Exhibition Train”. It demonstrates that this and other buy-Australian campaigns were important for advancing the agendas of British-Australian nationalism, specifically for making Australia a new nation within the British Empire. The next period corresponds to the second half of the twentieth century, a time when Australian nationalism was detached from British influences and the nation started a makeover aimed at reinventing its national identity. This period is analysed through a case study mapping out the process by which Vegemite came to be considered, in spheres of popular and official culture, a symbol of this new national identity. This part of the thesis shows how Vegemite and other bread spreads have materialised historical issues and debates surrounding the idea of Australianness. The third period is located in contemporary times, when Australia is redefining its identity on the basis of the local and following the principles of neo-localism. This part presents two case studies. The first analyses two corporate campaigns in which Australian supermarkets, Woolworths and Coles, incorporated nationalism in their corporate cultures and became involved in the advancement of nationalist agendas in the marketplace. It shows how supermarkets claim to be contributing to national development by assuming a series of national causes as their own responsibility. The second case examines the nation-branding campaign, “There’s nothing like Australia”, and explains how Australians citizens were enlisted as co-creators of commercial imaginaries of Australianness on the internet. It explains how the organisations behind the campaign claim to be constructing a democratic and authentic image of Australia that is based on the knowledge and experiences of local citizens. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of commercial nationalism in the historical construction of Australianness. This discussion identifies specific trends related to the integration of consumer culture in nation-making projects, the creation of national symbols, and the defining of national identities, and explains a series of shifts in the actors, things and practices involved in these processes.
Hijacking culture: the disconnection between place culture and place brands
Town Planning Review, 2015
This article argues that the dominant understanding of culture within place branding is inadequate and leads to disconnection between local culture and the place brand. The article discusses significant tensions arising from an evident oversimplification of the relationship between place brands and culture. This relationship is reconstructed through a re-appreciation of its complexity and reciprocity. The article provides a refined appreciation of the role of place brands in the production of culture as well as of the cultural nature of place brands and explores the implications of such thinking. Synergies are found in clarifying the formation and function of place brands as cultural phenomena, and, particularly, in understanding the link that culture provides between locals, their place and its brand. The simultaneous consideration of culture in, for and of the place and the related analytical, strategic and participatory aspects of place branding are highlighted as resolutions to the evident tensions.