Brands- Putting perspectives into perspective
(2012) FEKN90 20121Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- The passive consumer is dead. At least according to rapports, articles and books published during the last ten to fifteen years. Due to several shifts in the consumer landscape, the consumers are now more connected than ever and interact with each other in a new multi-way eco system.
This change has led to that the applicability of the Brand Management perspective is questioned when it comes to understanding brands. Researchers within the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective argue that the traditional management view is obsolete and cannot capture several important aspects of brands in relation to the new active consumer.
Taking standpoint in a phenomena that are studied within both the research perspectives, namely how consumers... (More) - The passive consumer is dead. At least according to rapports, articles and books published during the last ten to fifteen years. Due to several shifts in the consumer landscape, the consumers are now more connected than ever and interact with each other in a new multi-way eco system.
This change has led to that the applicability of the Brand Management perspective is questioned when it comes to understanding brands. Researchers within the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective argue that the traditional management view is obsolete and cannot capture several important aspects of brands in relation to the new active consumer.
Taking standpoint in a phenomena that are studied within both the research perspectives, namely how consumers understand brands, we have evaluated what perspective that it is the most suitable one when studying how consumers are participating in the formation, in the contemporary consumer landscape. By using focus groups, that allowed us to both capture characteristics of the new consumer landscape and shift between techniques used within both the perspectives, we were able to derive data that could be analysed from both the perspectives.
The results revealed that cultural and social factors were important explanations when studying how consumers where participating in the formation of brand understandings. Since the foundation of the Brand Management perspective did not allow for these factors to be captured, using this perspective in this case would not be the best alternative. Instead, using the CCT perspective helped us to capture and analyse data that was more congruent with the contemporary consumer landscape. Besides, the Brand Management perspective does not acknowledge the consumer as an active participant when it comes to the understanding that is shared among consumers. However, the CCT perspective did allow for this and due to this fact we could reveal that the consumers actually were participating.
Concluding that the CCT perspective is the more suitable alternative has led us to make important implications. Our results clearly emphasise that fact that it is important to always question the choice of perspective when analysing a specific phenomena, partly because it has a huge impact on what knowledge that can be produced and partly because changes in the surroundings might have undermined its adequacy. In other words, doing things as they always have been done is unwise and could result in distorted results, misleading future research and decisions. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/2541562
- author
- Bergling, Anna LU and Fridh, Mattias
- supervisor
-
- Sofia Ulver LU
- organization
- course
- FEKN90 20121
- year
- 2012
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Brand Management, Consumer Culture Theory, brands, research perspective, active consumers.
- language
- English
- id
- 2541562
- date added to LUP
- 2012-08-13 14:40:47
- date last changed
- 2012-08-13 14:40:47
@misc{2541562,
abstract = {{The passive consumer is dead. At least according to rapports, articles and books published during the last ten to fifteen years. Due to several shifts in the consumer landscape, the consumers are now more connected than ever and interact with each other in a new multi-way eco system.
This change has led to that the applicability of the Brand Management perspective is questioned when it comes to understanding brands. Researchers within the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective argue that the traditional management view is obsolete and cannot capture several important aspects of brands in relation to the new active consumer.
Taking standpoint in a phenomena that are studied within both the research perspectives, namely how consumers understand brands, we have evaluated what perspective that it is the most suitable one when studying how consumers are participating in the formation, in the contemporary consumer landscape. By using focus groups, that allowed us to both capture characteristics of the new consumer landscape and shift between techniques used within both the perspectives, we were able to derive data that could be analysed from both the perspectives.
The results revealed that cultural and social factors were important explanations when studying how consumers where participating in the formation of brand understandings. Since the foundation of the Brand Management perspective did not allow for these factors to be captured, using this perspective in this case would not be the best alternative. Instead, using the CCT perspective helped us to capture and analyse data that was more congruent with the contemporary consumer landscape. Besides, the Brand Management perspective does not acknowledge the consumer as an active participant when it comes to the understanding that is shared among consumers. However, the CCT perspective did allow for this and due to this fact we could reveal that the consumers actually were participating.
Concluding that the CCT perspective is the more suitable alternative has led us to make important implications. Our results clearly emphasise that fact that it is important to always question the choice of perspective when analysing a specific phenomena, partly because it has a huge impact on what knowledge that can be produced and partly because changes in the surroundings might have undermined its adequacy. In other words, doing things as they always have been done is unwise and could result in distorted results, misleading future research and decisions.}},
author = {{Bergling, Anna and Fridh, Mattias}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Brands- Putting perspectives into perspective}},
year = {{2012}},
}