Director – Dr Avi Shankar
Avi Shankar’s work uses social theory to critique marketing practices and consumer culture. More generally he is also interested in how producer – consumer interactions are developing and how these can be researched to reflect the lived experience of those involved. These themes are evident in the following projects:
ESRC funded seminar series in Critical Marketing that brought together scholars from all over the world to examine marketing’s role and influence in society.
Consumer Tribes is a co-edited selection of papers that examines the role and importance of the behaviour of groups of people driven by a shared passion or ethos, typically for a brand or leisure practice. Consumer tribes are often active and enthusiastic in their consumption, sometimes in the extreme and are poised to become the new marketers of the 21st century. As such consumer tribes are at the leading edge of blurring the production consumption divide. This is a major issue for consumer researchers and marketers who look at consumer agency and the way marketplace communities are performing and operating.
Pleasure in Consumer Culture is an under-theorised area that seeks to explore how pleasure manifests itself in marketplace cultures as bio-social phenomena.