Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Con­ sumerism Magnus Boström The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism Edited by Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer

Print Publication Date: Feb 2019 Subject: Political Science, Political Behavior Online Publication Date: Aug 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190629038.013.50

Abstract and Keywords

Brands play important roles as targets and arenas for political consumerism. Much of po­ litical consumerist action navigates towards large and highly visible brands, which politi­ cal consumers reject or embrace. This chapter views a brand—the name and logo of an actor/object and their associated/recognized meanings—as a core symbolic asset of an or­ ganization. The chapter argues that such a symbolic resource brings both opportunities and risks. A brand increases its power if it is entwined in institutions, identities, everyday practices, discourses, values, and norms. Successful eco- or ethical branding can bring profits, legitimacy, and power to companies. At the same time highly visible brands are targets of negative media reporting and movement attacks, and thus they are vulnerable to reputation risks. Through a literature review, the chapter demonstrates how brands re­ late to boycott/brand rejection, buycott, discursive, and lifestyle political consumerism. The concluding discussion suggests topics for future research.

Keywords: boycott, buycott, discursive, labelling, lifestyle

A columnist for the New York Times recently argued that online campaigns “against brands have become one of the most powerful forces in business, giving customers a huge megaphone with which to shape corporate ethics and practices, and imperiling some of the most towering figures of media and industry.”1 Regardless if he is correct or not in his assessment of the strong power of brand-focused online activism, without a doubt brands play imperative roles as targets and arenas for political consumerism, par­ ticularly in present times. Much of political consumerism activities navigate towards large and highly visible brands. This fact is something the owners of these brands know they need to be very well aware of because what is at stake is their reputation.

What is a brand? It consists of the name and logo of an actor/object and the associated/ recognized meanings. It is the core symbolic asset of an actor. Such an actor is usually an organization and its trademarked products or services. Brands are particularly and in­ creasingly important for multinational corporations (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013). Big brand manufacturers and retailers such as Walmart, Ikea, H&M, HP, Nike, Shell, Coca-

Page 1 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Cola, Disney, McDonald’s, Apple, Facebook, and Google have gained tremendous power in terms of material resources (financial capital, physical infrastructure) and providing jobs, as well as in information power, technology, culture, and governance. They are also large and powerful in terms of brand visibility and recognition. According to one of the key branding experts, Douglas Holt, “branding is a core activity of capitalism, so must be in­ cluded in any serious attempt to understand contemporary society and politics” (2006, p. 299). Big business invests enormous amounts of resources on branding, working with a palette of techniques and with frequent appeals to the ethical, responsible, and environ­ mentally conscious consumer.

Brands also function as a cultural resource for consumers for development of their identi­ ty, status, and search for pleasure and happiness. Moreover, brands are a key (p. 206) fo­ cus in monetary, discursive, and lifestyle types of political consumerism. While large com­ panies invest enormously in marketing resources to cultivate their brand, trying to estab­ lish “hegemonic brandscapes” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004), a peculiarity with brands is that such a kind of symbolic asset is difficult to control. Brands are also targets for nega­ tive publicity and antibrand movements, which can destroy the reputation of a brand. There is hence a space for debate and contestation for political consumerism.

The strong association between brands and political consumerism warrants scholarly at­ tention.2 This is not least important because economic, symbolic, and discursive power concentrates around brands and branding activities, surrounding both the consumption and the production sides of brands. The study of brands and political consumerism re­ quires more understanding of both frontstage and backstage dynamics of brands and branding. Frontstage refers to the visual, official, and public aspects of an actor or activi­ ty (e.g., logos, reports, public boycott campaigns, culture jamming), whereas backstage refers to the nonpublic processes of preparations, negotiations, and decision-making be­ hind (and needed for) such frontstage performances.3

Through a literature review on brands and political consumerism, this chapter demon­ strates and discusses how brands relate to the various forms of political consumerism (boycott, buycott, discursive, and lifestyle political consumerism). This body of literature is interdisciplinary, including marketing, business administration, media and communica­ tion studies, sociology, political science, human geography, ethnology, social anthropolo­ gy, environmental sciences, and several others, and a broad range of concepts and ap­ proaches are developed and used to explore the phenomenon. This chapter cannot do jus­ tice to all this heterogeneity nor does it aim to map all different streams. Rather it is an effort to understand how brands provide arenas and targets for political contestation and how political consumerism tends to navigate towards high-profile brands. For this pur­ pose, useful theoretical perspectives are introduced in the next section, which is followed by four sections, focusing respectively on boycott/brand rejection, buycott, discursive, and lifestyle political consumerism, in which the relation between brands and political consumerism is explored in more detail. The concluding section presents a summary, also in a table, and discusses topics for future research and methodological challenges.

Page 2 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Theoretical Perspectives for the Study of Brands and Political Consumerism

This section introduces useful theoretical perspectives for studying the relation between political consumerism and brands. It will present a brand as a symbolic resource, which opens a path for seeing a brand as both opportunity and (reputation) risk in relation (p. 207) to political consumerism. It is furthermore argued that scholarship needs to look at both front- and backstage processes of brands and branding among producers (brand owners), social movements, and consumers (e.g., brand communities).

As discussed, a brand is the name and logo of an actor/object and their associated/recog­ nized meanings. Nike has its “Just do it”; Volvo is safety, Nokia is connecting people, Wal­ mart is saving money. (Dauvergne & Lister, 2012, pp. 36–45). An actor could be a compa­ ny, but it could also be a civil society organization (such as WWF and the Panda logo) or even an individual celebrity like musicians Bono and Madonna or football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic. An object could be a product, service, or activity. A brand becomes an intan­ gible economic asset for a company particularly “when people come to count on the brand to contribute to social life, when it is embedded in society and culture” (Holt, 2006, p. 300). The asset increases in value to the extent the brands are entwined in institutions, everyday practices, discourses, values, and norms (Holt, 2002, 2006).

A brand can be conceptualized as a kind of symbolic resource (see Boström & Tamm Hall­ ström, 2010). Symbolic resources (or symbolic capital) can be employed to accumulate other resources such as human, financial, and social capital. An advantage with a symbol­ ic resource is that it is not necessarily consumed when used; it may even increase. Visibil­ ity of a logo tends to increase its value. A problematic feature with symbolic resources, however, is that their value can quickly be changed, damaged, and lost. Therefore, sym­ bolic resources are tied with some particular risks. While transnational corporations may develop incredible economic, cultural, and symbolic power related to their brands, they tend to be short of such symbolic power in relation to environmental and social responsi­ bility. For example, the sociologist Ulrich Beck (2005) argues that global business power is caught in a “legitimation trap.” The risk of reputation damage and waning consumer trust, for example in relation to sweatshop accusations, provides considerable potential for politicization. Indeed, such accusations may not just threaten a company, such as Nike and H&M, if it becomes associated with it. The whole industry sector, for instance the footwear and textile sector, will enter the “watchdog radar.” Sociologists and brand ex­ perts Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson explain:

When branding is successful in building corporate value, it also makes a corpora­ tion visible on watchdog radar … as brand values grow and spread, corporations become more vulnerable to public attack. Brand reputation, brand recognition and brand visibility are double-edged signs. There is no story that television likes bet­ ter than that of the celebrity gone wrong, or a brand identity gone awry.

(Goldman & Papson, 2006, p. 341)

Page 3 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Adding to risks like these is lack of control. Brand owners are reliant on the performance of other actors, such as suppliers, over whom they can have significant power but not to­ tal control. Economic globalization and outsourced production—much of it done for en­ suring mass-production of cheap consumer goods—creates a whole range of social and environmental risks and unforeseen consequences. As the contingency, (p. 208) complexi­ ty, and length of the supply chain increases, it also become much harder to manage, nur­ ture, and control responsible production (Boström, 2015; Boström et al., 2015; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; Locke, 2013).

Scholars of political consumerism should not however only focus on the risk of reputation damage. Conceptualizing brands as symbolic resources implies looking at brands as si­ multaneously creating opportunities and risks for the brand owner. The brand owner can cultivate sensitivity to environmental and ethical issues and hence gain from existing con­ sumer power. In studies of political consumerism, it is important to recognize that brands concern social relations and have social meanings. For instance, brands concern the rela­ tion between business and consumers (Gupta & Kumar, 2013), and brands benefit from the creation of brand loyalty, which could include ecobrand loyalty or ethical brand loyalty. Brand loyalty involves commitment, involvement, identification, status, and trust. Thus brand loyalty is precisely what big brands want to achieve and that they may try to organize in various ways through clubs, membership, and so on.

Brands with associated logos, pictures, colours, slogans, tunes, styles, and storylines are what companies want to present of themselves. They are, in a sense, the visible part of the company and the product; that is, the “frontstage” of the company. Negative media reporting and movement attacks of various kinds also appear frontstage in the public sphere. However, scholars of political consumerism also need to focus on what is happen­ ing backstage, which includes nonpublic activities such as preparations, negotiations, de­ cisions, and impression management about what is to be presented frontstage (Boström & Klintman, 2008). Journalists and movements are trying to reach backstage activities in efforts to disclose what is behind that which is disclosed, thus attempting to make the brand more transparent. Social movements can engage in “monitoring power,” which is the mobilization and organization of various resources (cognitive, social, economic) and strategies to critically scrutinize, for example, businesses’ green and ethical advertise­ ments, claims, and promises (Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010).

What are companies doing backstage? The scholarly search for what is happening back­ stage entails focusing on the brand not just as a noun but as a verb; that is, branding. Branding is the activity of cultivating brands. One perspective on branding, derived from critical theory,4 is developed by marketing scholars Craig J. Thompson and Zeynep Arsel (2004) with the concept “hegemonic brandscape” (exemplified later in this chapter by Starbucks). This concept denotes

a cultural system of servicescapes that are linked together and structured by dis­ cursive, symbolic, and competitive relationships to a dominant (marketdriving) ex­ periential brand. The hegemonic brandscape not only structures an experience

Page 4 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

economy market … but also shapes consumer lifestyles and identities by function­ ing as a cultural model that consumers act, think, and feel through.

(Thompson & Arsel, 2004, p. 632)

However, this is just one side of the coin. They and other scholars maintain and demon­ strate there is room for contestation of such dominant brandscapes, and the historical (p. 209) development of branding and antibranding activism have provided more room for reflexivity, that is, increased public ability for critical scrutinizing of brands. While big business invests large amounts of resources on branding, trying to establishing hegemon­ ic brandscapes (Thompson & Arsel, 2004; see also Goldman & Papson, 2006), the other side of the coin is that post- or reflexive modernization, through processes of individual­ ization, globalization, and increased public challenging of traditional authorities, provides an opening to new forms of politics (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; Holt, 2002).5

Even if consumer power and reflexivity should not be exaggerated (see Boström et al., 2017a; Boström & Klintman, 2017), there is a potential for it, which invites the scholar­ ship on political consumerism to look at the backstage of consumer action in relation to brands (if frontstage activities are seen as the buy- and boycott of brands). The discussion here suggests that the concept of brand communities, invented by marketing scholars Al­ bert M. Muniz & Thomas C. O’Guinn (2001), is relevant because it focuses more on con­ sumers getting together around a brand. Like other communities, a brand community is “marked by a shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsi­ bility” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 412). Brand communities are largely imagined commu­ nities among consumers and users, but they can also involve concrete social ties. Brand communities involve commitment, difference, distinction (see Bourdieu, 1984), even op­ position (Pepsi vs. Coke, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, Macintosh vs. PC, etc.). Muniz & O’Guinn (2001) see a brand community as a modern type of community, a form of social association in a consumption context not necessarily tied to a particular geographic con­ text, which is facilitated by the internet. While they do not relate this concept to new forms of consumer politics and power, this chapter argues that this is exactly scholars of political consumerism could do.

In sum, there is a space for debate and contestation when we look analytically and empir­ ically at the intersection of political consumerism and brands. Scholars ought to investi­ gate both front- and backstage processes of brands, branding, and related activities among producers (brand owners), social movements, and consumers. The following four sections will look closer into how such contestations are expressed.

Rejecting and Boycotting Brands

Boycotting has been a core focus in political consumerism research. The discussion here focuses on the boycotting of brands, although boycott campaigns may also target coun­ tries and regimes (like the anti-apartheid and BDS movement) or categories of products or services (drugs, tobacco, sex industries, meat products, fur, social media, cars, large

Page 5 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism cars, etc.), which only indirectly may affect brands. Examples of well-known international boycotting campaigns that directly target brands include Nestlé for selling baby formula in the third world, Nike for sweatshop conditions in outsourced manufacturing, Shell for planning to dump its Brent Spar oil platform in the Atlantic Ocean as well as its problem­ atic involvement in Nigeria, Coca-Cola for its (p. 210) misuse of water resources in India, Monsanto as the “Frankenstein seed” ’ company, and Starbucks for unfair trading prac­ tices in the coffee market (on boycotts, see, e.g., Holzer, 2010; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013; and in this volume: Chapter 14, 18, and 33). In research it has been noted that many of these consumer activist campaigns have produced changes in corporate practice and poli­ cy (Bennett, 2012; Holt, 2002; Holzer, 2010). They are therefore intimately linked to buy­ cott initiatives (see next section).

Boycott campaigns tend to be directed towards large and particularly visible brands. Con­ sumers, journalists, activists, and social movements primarily orient to businesses that are considered market leaders. These are targeted as those most responsible for certain wrongdoings, destroying the planet, or damaging millions of lives. They are also per­ ceived as the crucial change-makers, those that can most effectively shape supply (along supply chains) and demand. The boycotting of brands is facilitated by recent develop­ ments in information technology: there is high speed in contemporary campaigns, achieved through communication technology and social media. Anyone can take initia­ tives and through social networking achieve rather far-reaching impact (Bennett, 2012; Hobsbawm, 2009).

The concept of boycotting tends to focus on overt public campaigns. However, it is also important to pay attention to a potentially much larger phenomenon of a related nature, discussed in the literature as “brand avoidance” or “brand rejection.” In this context (po­ litical consumerism), the word “rejection” appears to me more apt, but the discussion here refers to avoidance when this word is used in the literature. Lee et al. (2009) touch on the fine line between the overt boycott of brands and “brand avoidance.”

Boycotting, argues Lee et al. (2009, p. 170), “builds from an implicit commitment, by the boycotter, to reenter the relationship once certain conditions are met, such as a change of policy by the offending party.” However, “in brand avoidance there is no guarantee that the consumption relationship will resume in the future” (Lee et al., 2009, p. 170). The dif­ ference is subtle, however, because earlier research has shown that temporary boycott campaigns are difficult to call off (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008), as people remember the wrongdoings of companies. Thus, temporary brand boycotting may become permanent brand rejection (and an element in lifestyle political consumerism, discussed later).

Lee et al. (2009) see “brand avoidance” as a particular type of “anticonsumption.” They conducted a qualitative interview study addressing the “average consumer” living in New Zealand, and thus they recruited ordinary consumers and not people among, for example, consumer activists, downsizers, and voluntary simplifiers, which is perhaps more com­ mon in studies of anticonsumption. Still, they were able to find a variety of anticonsump­ tion sentiments in this group of average consumers. Brand avoidance, they claim, is an

Page 6 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism active kind of nonconsumption. Not included in this category are goods and services not bought just because they are too expensive, unavailable, or inaccessible. Lee et al. (2009) distinguish between three types of brand avoidance: experiential (p. 211) (brands failed to meet expectations), identity (brands are symbolically incompatible with the consumer’s identity), and moral brand avoidance. It is the third category that most clearly exemplifies political consumerism, because it involves “when participants believe that certain brand management policies have a negative impact on society” (Lee et al., 2009, p. 172). Their interviews revealed, for example, issues such as antisweatshop motivations, distrusting altruistic motives of companies (e.g., McDonald’s speaking for the health of children), and resistance towards multinational brands (particularly American brands) that destroy local economy and business. Rejecting some brands is thus seen as a way to redress power im­ balances. Their study is interesting because it indicates the use of brand rejection, also for political reasons, in everyday consumption among “average consumers” even if this rejection is not linked to an ongoing boycott campaign.

Also other studies have found that market dominance may be the trigger for creative, re­ flexive, and capable consumers to seek alternatives. They seek ways to escape the cage of a strong brand. Thompson and Arsel (2004) studied anti-Starbucks discourse; Ginnis and Gentry (2009) studied how consumers can resist “top dog” brands in favour of “under­ dog” brands, and Cromie and Ewing (2009) studied the rejection of brand hegemony among the open source software (OSS) community and participants’ view of the software’s dominant brand Microsoft. Sandıkcı and Ekici (2009) presented another inter­ esting study with partly similar themes. They studied competition between Coca-Cola and Cola Turka in Turkey and three distinct sets of political ideologies that can lead to brand rejection by consumers. These are predatory globalization, chauvinistic nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Cola Turka was developed by a company known for its ties to Islamic politics. The brand became a symbol for anti-American (also antiglobalization) sentiments during the invasion of Iraq and increased its market shares in Turkey rather significantly. Turkish citizens drinking Coca-Cola were seen as traitors: “almost as a crim­ inal act, a form of treachery that does nothing but harm to the local culture” (Sandıkcı & Ekici, 2009, p. 213). In contrast, other consumers drank Coca-Cola and deliberately re­ jected Coca Turka for political reasons, claiming that this brand symbolized “chauvinistic nationalism” and “religious fundamentalism.” Interestingly, those who rejected Coca-Cola did not reject other American brands, such as Levi’s, Starbucks, and Disney. An important lesson is that the Coca-Cola brand became a target when an alternative appeared and there was politicization of the issue: “what triggers rejection of the Coca Cola brand among some consumers is not a particular objectionable action undertaken by the Coca Cola Company but rather the entry of Cola Turka with a positioning that highlights na­ tionalist sentiments” (Sandıkcı & Ekici, 2009, p. 216). This example thus illustrates the importance of orchestration and politicized targets as well as highlighting the importance of something to positively choose or buycott (see next section). In sum, political con­ sumerist research has paid a lot of attention to the boycotting of brands, including overt public campaigns. The analysis in this section also suggests that the wider topic of brand rejection in everyday consumption ought to be part of scholarly attention.

Page 7 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

(p. 212) Brands and Buycotts

It is already apparent from the previous analysis that boycotts and buycotts are intimate­ ly linked. Rejection or boycott of one brand is often accompanied by the promotion/choice of another brand. On the consumer side, the buycotting of brands fits the era of “person­ alization” and “Do It Yourself” in politics (Bennett, 2012). On the producer side, supply­ ing for ethically/politically conscious consumers has become a core part of branding strategies. Aligning buycott arrangements with branding can be a way for companies to set agendas and exercise governance power in political consumerism.

Early on, there were plenty of failed and hypocritical green advertisements (Peattie & Crane, 2005) but also a few companies that pioneered in creating more serious green brands. A few companies deliberately targeted segments of reflective and politically con­ scious consumers, with the Body Shop as a key example:

The Body Shop advertisements have counted on three factors dissonant with the meanings that normally characterize cosmetic ads. … Body Shop has relied on irony, the moralization of consumption through a concern for animal rights and a critique of mass consumption, de-fetishization through reference to fair trade, nat­ ural ingredients and a mise-en-scène of the productive process. In a well-known campaign, the Body Shop invited all women to consider that only a few of them might ever resemble the standard supermodel of contemporary advertising. How­ ever, each woman could allow herself the pleasure of a cream, even if she was a little tubby, and regardless of the fact that no cream could or would remove the signs of ageing from her face.

(Sassatelli, 2007, p. 130–131)

Whereas the Body Shop used a holistic approach, a selective strategy has been more com­ mon. A selective strategy is to supplement existing ranges with green brands. Many re­ tailers tend to sell brands both for conventional and political consumers. However, during the last decade more or less every big brand needed to present itself as responsible and sustainable and not just link issues of ethics and sustainability to fragments of what they were doing. Corporate responsibility and environmentalism has moved from a reactive to a proactive strategy (Dauvergne & Lister, 2012, 2013). Boycotting and public blame-mak­ ing has, arguably, been important in driving this trend. Companies set up codes of con­ duct for responsible business, write longer and longer sustainability reports, make their supply chains more transparent, and engage in “stakeholder dialogues.” They collaborate with business partners, governments, universities, business associations, various experts, and social and environmental NGOs to set up a variety of extralegal arrangements, in­ cluding various kinds of eco- and ethical certification and labelling arrangements. Some of these are more business-governed, whereas others rely more on more multistakeholder governance arrangements. The variety of governance forms result in sometimes heated competition and contestation. The chapters in the (p. 213) industry section of this volume present many examples of this. The development of this new rule-making industry has

Page 8 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism been well covered in literature (for references and further analyses see Chapters 11 and 12).

Yet another approach, more in the philanthropic tradition, is what Ponte & Richey (2014) label “brand aid.” Brand aid is part of “cause-related marketing” through a constellation of corporate brands, celebrities, and international NGOs, and the activity has grown sig­ nificantly thanks to the internet and social media. All these three (companies, celebrities, NGOs) are, according to Ponte and Richey, branded entities, which are combined in a campaign for the purpose of solving environmental, social, developmental, or animal wel­ fare problems. This is a kind of privatization of helping, which potentially has significant outcomes in terms of fund-raising and agenda-setting, because it can principally enable a donation in every purchase (if used in credit cards, for example).

Compared with the boycotting of brands, which is an apparent driver from the con­ sumerist/social movement side, there is a more complex set of internal and external dri­ vers behind the development of buycotting arrangements in relation to brands. Profits can be made and market shares can grow from the sale of “ethical” products, but there are more incitements. A key one is legitimacy. More or less all large companies, at least in the northwestern context, need to ensure that their brand has a strong reputation as re­ sponsible, ethical, and sustainable. In the search for legitimacy, speaking in terms of cor­ porate social responsibility (CSR), triple bottom lines, and sustainability has become al­ most a “social license” to operate, at least for the big brand companies and in some parts of the world. Everyone has to have something serious to say and report about ethics and sustainability beyond what is required by legislation. Such activities may even be done to prevent the threat of stricter legislation. Furthermore, a strong brand reputation can be a way to recruit engaged staff as well as ensuring the inflow of other resources. A strong and credible name can facilitate the establishment of business relationships along and surrounding supply chains.

Paradoxically, this search for legitimacy simultaneously involves lots of mimicry among business actors while each one of them strives to achieve differentiation through brand­ ing (Goldman & Papson, 2006; Gupta & Kumar, 2013). Branding is primarily about pre­ senting oneself as unique, not as similar to everybody else. In a competitive market, any company wants to be seen as a bit more caring than all the others. Buycotting fits this symbolic game. Symbolic competition, however, fuels the drive towards an inflation of green and ethical claims. Hence, a very cluttered symbolic landscape of nature clichés appears (Peattie & Crane, 2005). It becomes hard to tell what is different and what is sim­ ilar: “differentiation and imitation become oscillating sides of the same coin” (Goldman & Papson, 2006, p. 344). This game creates certain challenges for the political consumer who wants to engage in buycotting and to sort out the serious options from less serious ones (see, e.g., Boström & Klintman, 2008).

For businesses, the development of brand reputation and legitimacy through these kinds of ethical and sustainability initiatives becomes itself a risky activity. Responsibility claims can easily be targeted as hypocrisy and greenwashing, particularly in the face of political­

Page 9 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism ly conscious consumers. “Their need to keep promises to consumers and their (p. 214) consumer-dependence puts them into a highly vulnerable situation, one which anti-sweat­ shop activists gladly exploit to show the hidden politics of brand name apparel” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 759). There may be considerable disparities, ac­ cordingly, among the perspectives of consumers, NGOs, and corporations on what is con­ sidered ethical/unethical in corporate practices (Brunk, 2010).

While businesses face these risks, their continuous engagement in the development of buycott arrangements also empowers them. Large businesses take part in multistakehold­ er certification bodies, shape agendas, and learn the right discourses. They set up their own “business initiatives” and create their own standards, which compete with multi­ stakeholder standards. These businesses also invest in a large cadre of personnel work­ ing on their brand, image, and credibility: “there is massive disproportion between the re­ sources invested by producers to control the market, and those invested by consumers as a group” (Sassatelli, 2007, p. 81). Just because a large brand is attacked it must not kill the brand. Big companies have developed skills and reflexivity along with a readiness to respond to any question addressed by various audiences. In the scholarship, there are al­ so a number of critical studies on the power-seeking and legitimizing aspirations of busi­ ness in relation to green advertisements, codes of conduct, CSR, labelling, and sustain­ ability (some examples are Boström & Klintman, 2008; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; Fransen, 2012; Locke, 2013; Peattie & Crane, 2005; Ponte & Richey, 2014).

In sum, the buycotting of and through brands is today a firm part of the repertoire of po­ litical consumerism, and there is an entire rule-making industry backstage in setting up arrangements for buycotts. However, it is not easy for the buycotter to navigate in this cluttered symbolic landscape and to figure out serious options. In general, critical litera­ ture suggests that ethical and green branding are often done more to seek legitimacy for one’s business and increase profit than to actually open up space for politically conscious consumption. Businesses exercise considerable power in the framing and governance of buycott arrangements. The existence of critical voices indicates the important role for de­ bate and deliberation on this kind of political action, which also happens because there is room for discursive political consumerism in relation to brands, which is discussed in the following analysis.

Brands and Discursive Political Consumerism

Discursive political consumerism is “the expression of opinions about corporate policy and practice in communicative efforts directed at business, the public at large, family and friends, and various political institutions” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, pp. 752–753). And “it targets other vulnerable points within corporations, namely their image, brand names, reputation, and logos” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 753; see also Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 6).

Page 10 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

(p. 215) Discursive political consumerism thus involves citizens, journalists, movements, and activists that engage in monitoring and debating corporate practices. With the devel­ opment of buycotting arrangements, as described in the previous section, there is a paral­ lel growth of frames, claims, promises, and vocabularies that debaters can exploit in their scrutiny of corporate conduct. There is hence a discourse developed around that practice. Indeed, as soon as companies commit to principles of human rights, social justice, and a healthy environment—goals that social movements strive for—movements immediately obtain a crucial weapon: “the ability to assess performance against promises and to ex­ pose the distance between rhetoric and practice” (Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010, p. 47). Journalists, NGOs, movements, and activists hence exercise monitoring power and can expose the gap between brand message and reality, unmasking the supposed charade or greenwashing that is going on. Discursive political consumerism can accordingly be seen as an effort to expose the backstage of (eco- and ethical) branding. Holt gives an op­ timistic view of this type of consumer power:

Consumers have responded by increasingly attending to contradictions between the brand’s espoused ideals and the real world activities of the corporations who profit from them. The internet has become a powerful vehicle for the viral dissemi­ nation of the backstage activities of corporations. A diverse coalition of self-ap­ pointed watchdogs monitors how companies act toward their employees, the envi­ ronment, consumers, and governments. Such monitoring will grow as a greater percentage of the population becomes socialized in this new form of aggregated consumer power.

(Holt, 2002, p. 86)

Nongovernmental organizations can mobilize considerable monitoring power (Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010), but we should not underestimate the role of ordinary citizens. Various scholars point at an increasing mistrust or reflexivity regarding green advertise­ ments and brands among the public (Holt, 2002; Peattie & Crane, 2005; Sassatelli, 2007, p. 131; Zinkhan & Carlson, 1995). These scholars highlight that those citizens who are most likely to express green and ethical concerns through their consumption may also be the ones that are most sceptical towards overly simplified green advertisements and na­ ture clichés and also most educated to detect greenwashing behind the claims.

Criticism may even escalate to an “anti-McDonald’s discourse,” “anti-Shell discourse,” or “anti-Starbucks discourse.” Thompson and Arsel (2004) studied the third example. The Starbucks company’s aggressive expansion strategy, which has outcompeted a huge num­ ber of local coffee shops in many cities, triggered many protest campaigns. This dis­ course is also linked to an antiglobalization frame. Social movements target companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks for representing a homogenizing and flattening cultural force. For instance, Starbucks is “condemned for propagating a soul-numbing aesthetic homogeneity and sanitized versions of the creative arts” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004, p. 634).

Page 11 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

(p. 216) A prominent (anti)brand-oriented type of discursive political consumerism is cul­ ture jamming. Culture jamming can be seen as a “brand boomerang.” It targets and sub­ verts the meaning of corporate logos and slogans. Culture jammers confront the authority of corporate representation and questions the ways companies shape culture, conscious­ ness, and imagination (Carducci, 2006; Lekakis, 2017; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 6). Culture jammers tend to pick highly visible and fashionable brands with high cultural res­ onance. “Culture jamming preys on brand vulnerabilities in its colourful, creative, funny, playful, and poignant semantic displays of politicized logos easily flashed across comput­ er screens without considerable costs” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 761).

There are several culture jammer movements today (see Lekakis, 2017) but the most well-known is probably Adbusters, a magazine and movement founded in the 1980s with an anticonsumerism, earth-friendly profile. It is a self-proclaimed “journal of the mental environment,” and the magazine pages are filled with articles, artwork, and “subvertising” (see Carducci, 2006). Scholars present culture jamming as a battle be­ tween “good” and “bad” culture, between the artificial and the authentic (Carducci, 2006; Lekakis, 2017). By exposing the backstage of a brand, culture jammers try to foster con­ sumer reflexivity and resistance.

If magazines and digital platforms appear as a core space for culture jammers such as Ad­ busters, movements also operate in the physical urban public space. Lekakis (2017) made a study of “Brandalism,” which is a recent culture-jamming movement that mobilizes ac­ tivists and international artists. Its core activity is to install works of art in advertising panels in bus stops. This is done to challenge the dominance of advertisement in public space. Lekakis sees Brandalism as a creative “ethical spectacle,” which aims for direct democracy, diversity, and difference and fights against greenwashing and commodity fetishism. The largest operation took place in Paris, during the COP21, on Black Friday, where 600 advertising panels in bus stops were replaced with original artworks.

Culture jamming exemplifies the most visible and spectacular form of discursive political consumerism. It is important to recognize, however, that discursive political consumerism is much more than these public antibranding campaigns and deliberations. It is also im­ portant to focus attention on everyday deliberation on the role of brands in public and pri­ vate settings. There is a lot of debate and discussion on corporate policy and practice that takes place in social media platforms, at public seminars, at shopping malls, or in many other everyday places where people connect and jointly are exposed to brands (TV-rooms, cafes, kitchen tables, etc.). Conventional and online news consumption can stimulate “po­ litical talk” that in turn can stimulate political consumerism (Shah et al., 2007). There is a role for research to design innovative studies that try to capture these more mundane set­ tings of conversations, for instance through focus group research (see e.g., Benulic, 2016, who studied political consumerism and conversations about meat), as well as focusing on “brand communities.” Muniz & O’Guinn (2001) have an optimistic view of brand commu­ nities in terms of agency and social relations, and with relevance to discursive political consumerism, in that they can function as an arena for (digital) discussion, consumer agency, and sharing of information. In digital platforms, (p. 217) negative sentiments to­

Page 12 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism wards particular brands may escalate to levels that may be quite worrisome for the branding office:

There are sites for brand fans and brand terrorists in equal measure. Try Googling a random brand name followed by the word “sucks” (for example, Sony, Dell, Ikea, Ford, Disney and, ironically, Google). There is now a Wikipedia for whistleblowers. On Wikileaks.org anyone can post comments and leak documents untraceably and anonymously about governments and corporations all over the world.

(Hobsbawm, 2009, p. 220)

Finally, discursive political consumerism may take place inside the corporation. Goldman & Papson (2006, p. 341) argue that, as more corporations recognize the tendency that their brand reputation is put at risk because of all the watchdog actors, “they have moved to integrate a discourse of ethics into brand construction.” The study of discursive politi­ cal consumerism can hence contribute to the opening of the black box of companies, and such a critical view focuses more on the debates and deliberations taking place inside corporations (see Börjeson & Boström, 2018; Holzer, 2010). What dilemmas and trade- offs are debated internally? Are internal corporate discourses defensive or proactive? A strong brand in terms of sustainability may be important for sustainability capacity build­ ing, spilling over to the corporate culture to create “an ethos of open communication” (Gupta & Kumar, 2013, p. 315). Indeed, it is important to recognize that many environmental spokespersons and other leaders and personnel within companies may, at the same time, be affiliated with social movements and have backgrounds as so­ cial or environmental activists (Boström et al., 2017b; Prakash, 2000). They can engage in internal policy and politics and may debate and fight for moving the green and ethical is­ sues higher up on the company agenda.

In sum, connected to brands, there are several examples of overt and covert discourses in play among companies, social movements, and consumer communities. The concept of discursive political consumerism highlights frontstage activities such as culture jamming, efforts to expose what is happening on the other side of the curtain, and deliberations that take place backstage.

Brands as Targets and Tools for Lifestyle Politi­ cal Consumerism

Lifestyle political consumerism tends to include the other three action forms (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, pp. 41–42, 163–165). It is associated with more holistic commitment about how one is designing and living one’s life. Examples include voluntary simplifiers, downshifters, vegetarianism and veganism, urban gardeners, and slow food movements (Cohen et al., 2005; Schor, 1998). Examples need not be that radical. It could be that oth­ er types of lifestyle projects, like people with outdoor lifestyles, (p. 218) may use their lifestyle project as a platform from which politically oriented identities and consumption

Page 13 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism patterns emerge. Certain lifestyle projects may tend to involve an entire set of buycott/ boycott brand-rejection routines and provide discourses that give reasons and values for these actions. In lifestyle politics, however, it may rather be a type or set of products or services that are in focus rather than particular brands. A climate-conscious consumer may use a bike instead of a car in commuting to their job or travel by train instead of air­ craft for a vacation. A downshifter may place less emphasis on the importance of designer names and heavily advertised brands (Black & Cherrier, 2010; Nelson et al., 2007). Nev­ ertheless, brands can be important. For example, a vegan may buy the brand Outly (see Chapter 8), and there are also a few slow-fashion brands (see Chapter 14). Brands can function as both positive and negative references in lifestyle political consumerism: “con­ sumers use brand choices to mark both their inclusion and exclusion from various lifestyles” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 420).

Brand rejection, as discussed in the boycott section, may be a crucial part of the develop­ ment of lifestyle political consumerism. Holt (2002) discusses the reflexive and creative resistance to brands by empirical demonstrations from qualitative interview data. People who are critical towards the marketing industry, and engaged in reflexive and creative re­ sistance to brands, are not, however, emancipating themselves from the world of brands. The brand sceptics rather use a pragmatic approach, Holt notices. Some brands are part of the creation of an identity that is critical towards other brands. Reflexive resistance, however, requires some distance towards brands and an ability to detect codes and mo­ tives behind brands and corporate messages. From this perspective, brands can be seen as cultural resources that are used to develop politically conscious lifestyles. Seen in this way, aspirations and identities are created through a reflexive and pragmatic way of relat­ ing to brands.

In the anti-Starbucks study mentioned earlier, Thompson and Arsel (2004) found, in their qualitative interviews with coffee shop visitors and field observation at coffee shops, that the anti-Starbucks discourse gave rise to two types of local coffee shop consumption: café flaneurs and oppositional localists. The café flaneurs are intellectually aware of the anti- Starbucks discourse, but they primarily only expressed an aesthetic critique towards Starbucks. These people are not emotionally and rigorously opposing Starbucks and occa­ sionally go there. Their interviews show that the anti-Starbucks discourse, combined with some peer social pressure (they prefer not to be seen with a Starbucks cup in their hand in public), motivate the café flaneurs to engage occasionally, but not systematically, in boycotting and buycotting of the local alternative. The “oppositional localists,” however, are more emotionally invested and fiercely fighting Starbucks, and they consistently buy­ cott their local alternative. Their preferred coffee shop is constructed as a site of commu­ nal solidarity. It is seen as a deep political commitment to go to their local coffee shop “where like-minded individuals can collectively challenge prevailing corporate power structures, enact a progressive vision of a just and sustainable economy, and defy the alienating forces of commercialization” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004, p. 637). This kind of brand rejection is a bit more than a (p. 219) combination of boycott (Starbucks) and buy­ cott (the local coffee shop) but serves as part of a penetrating antibrand discourse and an

Page 14 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism element of a larger lifestyle orientation, in which a person more systematically tries to en­ vision, identify with, and basically live an “alternative” view.

There may be clear antibrand positioning in the development of an alternative consumer lifestyle. Local brands or underground brands can function as symbolic contrasts to the global brands: “consumers who wish to take a stand on globalization debates via con­ sumption choices may gravitate toward David-like brands that can be interpreted as fight­ ing a heroic battle against the corporate Goliaths of global capitalism” (Thompson & Ar­ sel, 2004, pp. 639; see also McGinnis & Gentry, 2009). Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that achieving thorough and consistent lifestyles may be something quite difficult. Several of the studies referred to in this chapter in various ways report on a rather eclec­ tic or inconsistent approach to, for instance, anticonsumption and the rejection of brands (Bennett, 2012; Boström & Klintman, 2017; Guthman, 2009; Holt, 2002; Lee et al., 2009; Sassatelli 2007; and see Chapter 40). The cluttered brandscape, discussed earlier, does not make this endeavour easier (Goldman & Papson, 2006).

In sum, brands have a bit of an ambiguous relation to lifestyle political consumerism. Brands and branding as phenomena are often something these political consumers may want to disassociate from because brands and branding are seen as connected with capi­ talism, market hegemony, homogenizing culture, and big business. Yet strong brands can be difficult to reject if there are no alternatives, and even this type of political consumer tends to rely on a few other brands (alternative, local, underground) to positively choose and embrace.

Conclusion and Discussion

Brands constitute key symbolic resources for business. For large businesses, significant market opportunities, legitimacy, and power can be gained by cultivating this kind of sym­ bolic resource. But at the same time they face significant reputation risks. Efforts to link their brand to buycott arrangements with an aura of ethics, care, responsibility, and sus­ tainability can lead to claims of greenwashing and other accusations. A strong and highly visible brand can therefore be a double-edged sword. The strong role of brands in politi­ cal consumerism also means that they constitute core arenas and tools for political con­ sumers on the demand side and for social movements engaging in political consumerism. The embracing or rejection of brands is a considerable part of how political consumerism takes shape today, and it plays important roles for consumers and their identities, dis­ courses, and everyday practices. In Table 10.1, some key examples, challenges for the po­ litical consumer (as an individual, in communities, in social movements), and responses from the company side are summarized, as well as some thoughts regarding future re­ search. (p. 220)

Page 15 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Table 10.1 Examples of Political Consumerism in Relation to Brands: Challenges, Responses, and Topics for Future Research

Forms of political Key examples Challenges for the Responses from Topics for future consumerism in political con­ business in face research relation to brands sumer of PC action

Brand rejection and Boycott campaigns Rejecting brands Developing proac­ Mundane forms of boycott of big and visible not always feasible tive communication brand rejection brands (rely on alterna­ strategies Reaching the “aver­ Everyday brand re­ tives, etc.) age consumer” jection

Buycott Labels and other Navigate and sort Participating in de­ Development of standards aligned out serious options veloping tools for buycott strategies with brands and in the cluttered PC (labels, codes of in small and medi­ branding brandscape conduct, etc.), de­ um-sized companies Brand aid veloping gover­ nance power Promoting eco- or ethical brand loyal­ ty among consumer segments

Discursive Anticorporate dis­ How to develop Developing internal Development of courses monitoring power communication and monitoring and dis­ Watchdog monitor­ and get behind the corporate reflexivity cursive power ing and debate brand backstage among watchdogs

Page 16 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individ­ ual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Culture jamming Getting access and Digital platforms Digital and every­ being empowered among brand com­ day deliberations by relevant con­ munities sumer communities Internal debates in companies, and struggles between defensive and proactive forces Focus groups to study everyday de­ liberations

Lifestyle Brands as positive Reflexive handling Promoting eco- or The role of eco- and and negative refer­ of the ambiguous ethical brands as ethical brand com­ ence in develop­ relationship with positive references munities ment of PC brands for lifestyle choices Antibrand as a form lifestyles How to reject among politically of lifestyle Antibrand move­ brands in situations conscious con­ The ambiguous re­ ments of brand hegemo­ sumers lation with brands Alternative, local, ny? and underground How to find credi­ brands ble brands to con­ sistently and per­ manently commit to (brand loyalty)?

Page 17 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individ­ ual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

(p. 221)

The rest of this concluding discussion focuses on a few topics and methodological chal­ lenges for future research in this broadly interdisciplinary endeavour.

On the producer side, attention ought to be paid to what is happening backstage behind the big brands. There is a need for critical analyses that are exposing trade-offs, dilem­ mas, and the battle between defensive and proactive discourses within the big brand companies. That is warranted because they are so powerful in transforming our society and planet to an extent never seen earlier in human history (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013). Even more, businesses also exercise considerable governance power in the framing and design of buycott arrangements as they are part of agenda- and standard-setting. There are, for sure, considerable methodological challenges involved in studying them. If repu­ tation damage is one of the largest risks facing big brands, they may show little willing­ ness to give access to researchers to critically investigate their brands, branding, and other crucial activities backstage. If researchers manage to get access, what are they al­ lowed to see and what are the conditions for conducting the research without loss of criti­ cal perspective? What are the analytical tools to be able to look under the surface of the green and ethically correct corporate language? What if the sample is biased towards on­ ly frontrunners? These are crucial questions, but it is beyond the scope of this chapter to dig into all methodological challenges.6

However, attention also ought to be paid to other brands, those unknown to the public and not under the watchdog radar. Research tends to bias towards the drama of the gi­ ants (see Boström, 2015; Boström et al., 2015 for a discussion). It is warranted with atten­ tion to the broad variety of producers and retailers. Organizations differ a lot in terms of size, type, and form. Small and middle-sized companies/brands are also deserving of at­ tention. Even if they are not the primary target for boycotts and culture jamming, facing reputation risk to the same extent, they can be crucial as a positive reference for the de­ velopment of buycott strategies and lifestyle political consumerism. The “local” and “un­ derdog” companies (Ginnis & Gentry, 2009) can have various kinds of positive connota­ tions in political consumerist framings, and they appear in both democratic and undemoc­ ratic variants of political consumerism. Thus, the theorizing and literature on brands and political consumerism should take into account the varying size, type, and forms of orga­ nizations, and also be context-sensitive, taking into account the extremely varying condi­ tions among organizations.

On the consumer side, more attention ought to be paid to how people (individually, in communities, in social movements) relate politically and ethically to brands. The chapter has shown that this can take place explicitly (e.g., brand rejection and antibrand lifestyles, movements, and discourses) or in more mundane everyday settings. It would be interesting to study more in-depth the activities taking place in digital platforms, blogs, and social media, including how ethical or green brand communities may take form and if such communities (or other forms of governance) can help and empower consumers to navigate the cluttered brandscape. How groups and movements can develop reflexivity,

Page 18 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism monitoring power, and ways to get backstage of branding activities is another set of ques­ tions that needs more scholarly attention. Furthermore, topics such as how brands, or the avoidance of them, are part of everyday political and ethical (p. 222) considerations, con­ versations, and life projects are so far only researched to a limited extent. Equally impor­ tant is to ask whether the dominance of brands in everyday life creates hindrance and makes people ignorant and politically disempowered to engage in societal issues. Qualita­ tive studies referred to in this chapter indicate that it would be interesting to focus more on not just the overtly politically committed consumer but the “average consumer” as well. Some of the literature referred to in this chapter indicates there is much going on beyond the most outspoken and visible examples. Advancing qualitative interview studies, focus group research, or studies of social media appear promising for detecting such mundane political consumerism, and quantitative survey studies could try to operational­ ize more how often, when, where, and by whom a broader rejection and embracing of brands is done in relation to moral and political sentiments. Longitudinal studies, qualita­ tive and quantitative, could address questions related to the challenges and pathways to initiate (break practices), develop, and sustain brand-related political consumerism. For instance, is a politically oriented antibrand lifestyle possible to achieve these days in a consistent way and in the long run?

References

Beck, Ulrich. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage.

Beck, Ulrich. (2005). Power in the global age. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Bennett, Lance W. (2012). The Personalization of politics: Political identity, social media, and changing patterns of participation. cal and Social Science, 644(1), 20–39.

Benulic, Kajsa-Stina. (2016). mentally unsustainable production and consumption. PhD diss. Huddinge: Södertörn Uni­ versity.

Black, Ian, & Cherrier, Helene. (2010). Anti-consumption as part of living a sustainable lifestyle: Daily practices, contextual motivations and subjective values. sumer Behaviour, 9, 437–453.

Börjeson, Natasja, & Boström, Magnus. (2018). Towards reflexive responsibility in a tex­ tile supply chain. Business Strategy and the Environment 27(2):230–239.

Boström, Magnus. (2015). Between monitoring and trust: Commitment to extended up­ stream responsibility. Journal of Business Ethics, 131(1), 239–255.

Boström, Magnus, Jönsson, Anna Maria, Lockie, Stewart, Mol, Arthur P. J., Oosterveer, Pe­ ter. (2015). Sustainable and responsible supply chain governance: Challenges and oppor­ tunities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 107, 1–7.

Page 19 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Boström, Magnus, & Klintman, Mikael. (2008). Eco-standards, product labelling and green consumerism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Boström, Magnus, & Klintman, Mikael. (2017). Can we rely on “climate friendly” con­ sumption. Journal of Consumer Culture. doi:10.1177/1469540517717782

Boström, Magnus, Lidskog, Rolf, & Uggla, Ylva. (2017a). A reflexive look at reflexivity in environmental sociology. Environmental Sociology 3(1), 6–16.

Boström, Magnus, & Tamm Hallström, Kristina. (2010). NGO power in global social and environmental standard-setting. Global Environmental Politics, 10(4), 36–59.

Boström, Magnus, Uggla, Ylva, & Hansson, Viktor. (2017b). Environmental representa­ tives: Whom, what, and how are they representing? Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning.doi:10.1080/1523908X.2017.1332522

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Brunk, Katja. (2010). Exploring origins of ethical company/brand perceptions—A con­ sumer perspective of corporate ethics. Journal of Business Research, 63, 255–262.

(p. 224) Carducci, Vince. (2006). Culture jamming: A sociological perspective. Journal of Consumer Culture, 6(1), 116–138.

Cohen, Maurie J., Comrov, Aaron, & Hoffner, Brian. (2005). The new politics of consump­ tion: Promoting sustainability in the American marketplace. Sustainability: Science, tice & Policy, 1(1), 1–20.

Cromie, John G., & Ewing, Mike T. (2009). The rejection of brand hegemony. Journal of Business Research, 62, 218–230.

Dauvergne, Peter, & Lister, Jane. (2012). Big brand sustainability: Governance prospects and environmental limits. Global Environmental Change, 22, 36–45.

Dauvergne, Peter, & Lister, Jane. (2013). ability. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fransen, Luc. (2012). Multi-stakeholder governance and voluntary programme interac­ tions: Legitimation politics in the institutional design of corporate social responsibility. Socio-Economic Review, 10, 163–192.

Giddens, Anthony. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity in associa­ tion with Blackwell.

Ginnis, Lee Phillip, & Gentry, James W. (2009). Underdog consumption: An exploration in­ to meanings and motives. Journal of Business Research, 62, 191–199.

Page 20 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Goffman, Erving. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Random House.

Goldman, Robert, & Papson, Stephen. (2006). Capital’s brandscapes. Journal of Consumer Culture, 6(3), 327–353.

Gupta, Suraksha, & Kumar, V. (2013). Sustainability as corporate culture of a brand for superior performance. Journal of World Business, 48, 311–320.

Guthman, Julie. (2009) Unveiling the unveiling: Commodity chains, commodity fetishism, and the “value” of voluntary, ethical food labels. In Jennifer Bair (Ed.), modity chain research (pp. 190–206). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Hobsbawm, Andy. (2009). Brands 2.0.: Brands in a digital world. In Rita Clifton (Ed.), Brands and branding (pp. 217–233). New York: Bloomberg Press

Holt, Douglas B. (2002). Why do brands cause trouble? A dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding. Journal of Consumer Research, 29(1), 70–90.

Holt, Douglas B. (2006). Toward a sociology of branding. Journal of Consumer Culture, 6(3), 299–302.

Holzer, Boris. (2010). Moralizing the corporation: Transnational activism and corporate accountability. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Lee, Michael S. W., Motion, Judith, & Conroy, Denise. (2009). Anti-consumption and brand avoidance. Journal of Business Research, 62, 169–180.

Lekakis, Eleftheria J. (2017). Culture jamming and brandalism for the environment: The logic of appropriation. Popular Communication, 15(4):311–327.

Locke, Richard. (2013). The promise and limits of private power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Micheletti, Micheletti, & Stolle, Dietlind. (2008). Fashioning social justice through politi­ cal consumerism, capitalism and the internet. Cultural Studies, 22(5), 749–769.

Muniz, Albert M. Jr., & O’Guinn, Thomas C. (2001). Brand community. sumer Research 27, 412–432.

Nelson, Michelle R., Rademacher, Mark A., & Peak, Hye-Jin. (2007). Downshifting con­ sumer—upshifting citizen? An examination of a local freecycle community. The ANNALS .

(p. 225) Peattie, Ken, & Crane, Andrew. (2005). Green marketing: Legend, myth, farce or prophesy? Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 8(4), 357–370.

Ponte, Stefano, & Richey, Lisa Ann. (2014). Buying into development? Brand aid forms of cause-related marketing. Third World Quarterly, 35(1), 65–87

Page 21 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism

Prakash, Aseem. (2000). Greening the firm: The politics of corporate environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sandıkcı, Özlem, & Ekici, Ahmet. (2009). Politically motivated brand rejection. Journal of Business Research, 62, 208–217.

Sassatelli, Roberta. (2007). Consumer culture: History, theory and politics. London: Sage.

Schor, Juliet B. (1998). . New York, NY: Harper.

Shah, Dhavan V., McLeod, Douglas M., Kim, Eunkyung, Young, Lee Sun; Gotlieb, Melissa R., Ho, Shirley S., & Breivik, Hilde. (2007) Political consumerism: How communication and consumption orientations drive “lifestyle politics.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611, 217–235.

Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michele. (2013). ty in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, Craig J., & Arsel, Zeynep. (2004). The Starbucks brandscape and consumers’ (anticorporate) experiences of glocalization. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(3), 631–642.

Zinkhan, George M., & Carlson, Les. (1995). Green advertising and the reluctant con­ sumer. Journal of Advertising, 24, 1–6. (p. 226)

Notes:

(1.) Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, June 21, 2017; accessed July 2, 2017, https:// www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/technology/how-battling-brands-online-has-gained-urgency- and-impact.html.

(2.) For sure, brands are not all that matters in political consumerism. People use positive and negative political consumption in relation to entire categories of goods and services, not just branded goods and services.

(3.) These dramaturgical metaphors have an origin in the sociology of Goffman (1959).

(4.) While the importance of branding has increased (Goldman & Papson, 2006), it is for sure not a new invention. It grew in parallel to the growth of mass production, mass con­ sumption, and the development of consumer society. Critical theory (Gramsci, the Frank­ furt School) early on targeted the cultural industry of corporate capitalism with the view that large companies in a rather deterministic way can produce consumer desires and conformity of style (Holt, 2002).

(5.) In his historical analysis of the development of branding and antibranding, Holt (2002) shows that the classic branding paradigm has not remained intact but developed in a dialectic fashion. The movements of the 1960s rebelled against mainstream con­

Page 22 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019 Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism sumer ideology and developed a variety of counterthemes, which affected branding, and later the postmodern cultural turn fostered more cynical and/or reflexive consumers. Those engaged in branding had to adapt to this changing cultural landscape and develop “postmodern branding techniques” with less overt persuasion (modern branding) and more irony, self-distance, accommodation of (urban) subcultures, brand persona, and product placement.

(6.) I can briefly offer a few thoughts, gained from my own research experience. First of all, it is important to recognize there is no magic formula to get backstage and reveal the “true” nature of the focused case. There is just hard work and craftsmanship, and find­ ings will give rise to new questions. A promising approach is the comparative case-study approach (which this author has practiced a lot, including studies of companies). It is cru­ cial that the researcher invests considerable research time spent on each case. Time is needed to develop mutual trust, gain proximity to the case, learn the organizational cul­ ture, be invited to backstage processes, and gather rich and varied sources of data. Ac­ cess means that not everything can be reported, so there will be some inevitable trade- offs and the researcher will need to constantly reflect on an acceptable balance. Triangu­ lation of data (interviews, all kinds of available text documents, field observations, and secondary literature) is crucial for a number of reasons. For the interviews, the interview­ er must make careful preparation because of the particular challenges related to “elite in­ terviews.” The researcher should interview several persons at different sections and lev­ els of the organization, as well as previous employees or collaborators. The latter are like­ ly to provide some important alternative views.

Magnus Boström Magnus Boström, Örebro University, Sweden

Page 23 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

Subscriber: Middlebury College; date: 12 August 2019