2010/08/26 by Zeynep Arsel, Craig J. Thompson · 3 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Social and Cultural Dynamics #Wine Industry and Tourism #Mythology #Consumption (sociology) #Cultural capital #Identity (music) #Devaluation #Marketing #Field (mathematics) #Sociocultural evolution #Sociology #Value (mathematics) #Business #Capital (architecture) #Advertising #Aesthetics #Social science #Computer science #Anthropology #History
paper · doi:10.1086/656389
openalex publication_date 2010/08/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
Marketplace myths are commonly conceptualized as cultural resources that attract consumers to a consumption activity or brand. This theoretical orientation is prone to overstating the extent to which consumers' identity investments in a field of consumption are motivated by an associated marketplace myth. We provide a theoretical corrective to this tendency by investigating consumers who have become vested in a commercially mythologized consumption field through an incremental process of building social connections and cultural capital. For these consumers, the prevailing marketplace myth is experienced as a trivialization of their aesthetic interests, rather than as a source of identity value. In response, they employ demythologizing practices to insulate their acquired field-dependent social and cultural capital from devaluation. Our findings advance theorizations concerning marketplace myths and consumer identity work and explicate the sociocultural forces that deter consumers from abandoning a consumption field that has become culturally associated with undesirable meanings.