CONSUMER CULTURE THEORY WORKSHOP
Organizers: Eric Arnould, University of Wyoming, Fleura Bardhi, Northeastern University, Jeff Murray, University of Arkansas
Participating Faculty Mentors: Sammy Bonsu; David Crockett; Nina Diamond; Amber Epp; Eileen Fischer; Paul Henry; Ashley Humphreys; Dannie Kjelgaard; Rob Kozinets; Risto Moisio; Cele Otnes; John W. Schouten; Craig Thompson; Melanie Wallendorf; Xin Zhao; Per Østergaard; Detlev Zwick; Mary Ann McGrath; Markus Giesler
Workshop Theme: The workshop focuses on the analysis, interpretation and presentation of research based on qualitative, interpretive, ethnographic, videographic, netnographic, semiotic, and phenomenological consumer research. Consequently projects of these types are privileged. The intent is to provide a forum for work in early stages (analysis) and completed work (interpretation and representation). Methodological projects will be welcome as well as substantive projects on themes ranging from theoretical to managerially relevant issues. Scholars at any career stage are invited to participate as apprentices in this workshop.
Workshop Schedule
| 5:00 – 9:00 p.m. | Conference Reception and Key Note Speaker: Professor of Marketing & Anne & Max Tanenbaum Chair in Entrepreneurship Eileen Fischer, York University. |
| 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. | Quick Breakfast/ Networking/ Sign-up sheets for one-on-one July 7th/afternoon sessions |
| 9:00 - 12:00 p.m. | Working Sessions in Small groups (2 Faculty Mentors x 3 Workshop Participants)
Coffee and snacks will be available between 10:30 - 11:00 |
| 12:00 - 2:00 | Lunch and Key Note Speakers: Rita Denny and Patty Sunderland, PraticaGroup |
| 2:00 - 5:00 | Assigned one-to-one Sessions (individual 45 min session with faculty mentors; fifteen minute breaks between session) Coffee and snacks will be available between 3:45 - 4:15 |
| 6:30 | Group Dinner @ Mt. Everest Restaurant (630 Church Street Evanston, IL 60201: http://www.mteverestrestaurant.com/feedback.aspx) |
| 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. | Quick Breakfast/ Networking/ Sign-up Sheets for One-on-one Afternoon Sessions |
| 9:00 - 12:00 p.m. | Working Sessions in Small groups (2 Faculty Mentors x 3 Workshop Participants) Coffee and snacks will be available between 10:30 - 11:00 |
| 12:00 - 2:00 | Lunch and Key Note Speaker: Martha Cotton, Gravity Tank |
| 2:00 - 5:00 | One-to-one Sessions (individual 45 min session with faculty mentors; fifteen minute breaks between sessions) Coffee and snacks will be available between 3:45 - 4:15 |
| 5:00 - onwards | Transition to the CCT Conference at Kellogg School of Management |
Keynote Speakers
Eileen Fischer, PhD.
Eileen Fischer is a Professor of Marketing and the Max and Anne Tanenbaum Chair of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at the Schulich School of Business at York University. She has a doctorate from Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. She is interested in how consumers and entrepreneurs navigate their culturally constituted milieux as they strive to achieve their goals. Her work has been published in Journal of Consumer Research; Journal of Retailing; Journal of Business Venturing; Journal of International Business; Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice; Consumption, Markets and Culture and a range of other outlets. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for both Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Business Venturing. She is also an editorial board member for a range of consumer and entrepreneurship research journals.
Martha Cotton, PhD.
Martha is a Partner at gravitytank and has led the Research Discipline since the spring of 2008 when she joined the firm. She began her career at eLab in 1990s, and since then has worked across a wide variety of industries plying her skills as an applied ethnographer and business consultant. Stints include leadership roles at Sapient, Hall & Partners, and HLB. Clients are numerous and range from General Mills to General Motors; from SCJ to J&J; from Fidelity (Investments) to Security (U.S. Department of). Martha holds a BA in English from Indiana University and an MA in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. She is currently adjunct faculty at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering. Martha is former co-chair and current Advisory Committee member of the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC). She is also the author of Dinner Dates: A Cookbook for Couples Cooking Together (Avon, 1999).
Patricia Sunderland, Ph.D.
Patti Sunderland, based in New York, is an anthropologist and a founding partner of Practica Group. She brings background and interest in linguistic as well as visual anthropology to her specialty in the ethnographic, cultural analysis of consumer environments. Patti has been melding ethnographic video and photographs with cultural analysis to bring consumer environments to life for clients such as Anheuser-Busch, Frito-Lay, Hallmark, JCPenney, Nissan, SC Johnson, and Target for more than a decade. Her work has contributed to highly successful makeovers of brands and retail environments as well as contributed to the development and launch of new products and brands for SC Johnson, Whirlpool, Wrigley and Masterfoods. Patti has investigated retail settings from home parties to club stores, analyzed the meanings of luxury products and gold as well as drain and bathtub cleaners, and interviewed stay-at-home Moms, drug using Tweens, and CEOs. Patty has a M.A. and Ph.D. in social/cultural psychology from the University of Vermont and a M.Phil in cultural anthropology from NYU. With Rita Denny, she is also author of Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research, a book published by Left Coast Press in 2007.
Rita Denny, Ph.D.
Rita Denny, based in Chicago, is an anthropologist specializing in American consumer culture, focusing on culturally based meanings of products and services in everyday life. For the past 20 years, Rita has applied an anthropological framework to consumer behavior, calling on linguistic, semiotic and symbolic traditions for interpreting consumer attitudes, perceptions and behavior. Some of Rita’s favorite projects have included cultural analyses of dogs and their owners, book lovers, integration of technology into home life, living with art, the talk of drugs, the semiotics of retail environments and the symbolic costs of social marketing messaging. Rita’s clients have included Anglogold Mining, Apple Computers, AT&T Broadband, The Boeing Company, Borders Books & Music, Daimler-Chrysler Corporation, Detroit Institute of Arts, e-Pods, DraftFCB, General Motors, J C Penney, Miss America Pageant, Nissan North America, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Perich + Partners, Quaker Oats Company, S.C. Johnson, The Texas Coffee Company, Verizon and Whirlpool Corporation. Rita holds Masters of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. With Patti Sunderland she is the author of the book, Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research, (Left Coast Press, 2007).
