Professor Richard Elliott
Richard Elliott’s work in consumption centres on questions of identity, symbolism and brands.In advertising research he is concerned with the co-construction of advertising meaning by an active audience. These research themes are being developed in these current projects:
ESRC-funded project: The Evolution of Brand Consciousness: Retail Change and Intergenerational Factors. To understand the development of consumer culture we need to know when and indeed how brands moved from functional markers of quality and performance to become the important symbolic, emotional and social resources that are reported by consumers today. This study grounds an understanding of the development of brand consciousness in the lived experience of women by using oral history techniques which are new to the study of consumer culture.
Interpretive Communities, Open and Closed Texts and Advertising Meaning. An empirical application of Reader-Response, Restricted/Elaborated codes and Semiotic theories to the interpretation of advertising meaning. Exploring commonalties and differences in interpretation by gender and by social class.