Eating the Rainbow: The Changing Trend of Food Porn from a CCT Perspective
(2018) BUSN39 20181Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- This thesis explores the way in which the changing trend of food porn recently reveals itself on Instagram. Its purpose is to investigate the trend and its changing meaning in the prevalent digital age. By examining the food porn trend from a consumer culture theory (CCT) perspective, which focuses on the meaning of consumption goods within our consumer culture and therefore opens up new ways of investigation, the thesis seeks to enlighten the trend with regards to its cultural meaning and growing influence in the contemporary marketplace. The thesis challenges existing meanings of food porn, and provides new, explorative insights for the research on food’s symbolic meaning within CCT, as well as for existing, mostly quantitative online... (More)
- This thesis explores the way in which the changing trend of food porn recently reveals itself on Instagram. Its purpose is to investigate the trend and its changing meaning in the prevalent digital age. By examining the food porn trend from a consumer culture theory (CCT) perspective, which focuses on the meaning of consumption goods within our consumer culture and therefore opens up new ways of investigation, the thesis seeks to enlighten the trend with regards to its cultural meaning and growing influence in the contemporary marketplace. The thesis challenges existing meanings of food porn, and provides new, explorative insights for the research on food’s symbolic meaning within CCT, as well as for existing, mostly quantitative online food porn literature. Further, it contributes to the understanding of the food porn phenomenon on Instagram, which can be important for social media marketers as well as governmental health initiatives. A predefined CCT framework by Arnould and Thompson (2005) is applied in order to guide the empirical material collection and analysis of the study of this thesis. By applying a two-part qualitative method, composed of a qualitative content analysis and CCT based in-depth interviews with Instagram food influencers, revelation trends of the changing food porn trend on Instagram were identified. The findings revealed that the changing food porn trend, lately being characterised by a healthy, aesthetic, and positive image, revealed itself through identity creation, the foodie culture as subculture, food porn as global communication channel, as well as food bloggers as mediators and food porn as publics mediation. These results were seen to be in line with the previously established theoretical framework. Additionally, it was found, that the food porn trend on Instagram moreover includes the consumers’ emotional involvement, which was explained by their hedonistic engagement within the marketplace. The findings are visualised in a modified framework which investigates them from a CCT perspective, based on both the established framework as well as additionally explored theory from the field of consumer culture related works. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8945476
- author
- Merlevede, Marie Christin LU and Ku, Hsin-Erh LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BUSN39 20181
- year
- 2018
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- CCT, Food Porn, Foodie, Consumer Trend, Social Media, Instagram, Health, Aesthetics, Hedonism
- language
- English
- id
- 8945476
- date added to LUP
- 2018-06-28 14:41:50
- date last changed
- 2018-06-28 14:41:50
@misc{8945476,
abstract = {{This thesis explores the way in which the changing trend of food porn recently reveals itself on Instagram. Its purpose is to investigate the trend and its changing meaning in the prevalent digital age. By examining the food porn trend from a consumer culture theory (CCT) perspective, which focuses on the meaning of consumption goods within our consumer culture and therefore opens up new ways of investigation, the thesis seeks to enlighten the trend with regards to its cultural meaning and growing influence in the contemporary marketplace. The thesis challenges existing meanings of food porn, and provides new, explorative insights for the research on food’s symbolic meaning within CCT, as well as for existing, mostly quantitative online food porn literature. Further, it contributes to the understanding of the food porn phenomenon on Instagram, which can be important for social media marketers as well as governmental health initiatives. A predefined CCT framework by Arnould and Thompson (2005) is applied in order to guide the empirical material collection and analysis of the study of this thesis. By applying a two-part qualitative method, composed of a qualitative content analysis and CCT based in-depth interviews with Instagram food influencers, revelation trends of the changing food porn trend on Instagram were identified. The findings revealed that the changing food porn trend, lately being characterised by a healthy, aesthetic, and positive image, revealed itself through identity creation, the foodie culture as subculture, food porn as global communication channel, as well as food bloggers as mediators and food porn as publics mediation. These results were seen to be in line with the previously established theoretical framework. Additionally, it was found, that the food porn trend on Instagram moreover includes the consumers’ emotional involvement, which was explained by their hedonistic engagement within the marketplace. The findings are visualised in a modified framework which investigates them from a CCT perspective, based on both the established framework as well as additionally explored theory from the field of consumer culture related works.}},
author = {{Merlevede, Marie Christin and Ku, Hsin-Erh}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Eating the Rainbow: The Changing Trend of Food Porn from a CCT Perspective}},
year = {{2018}},
}