Consumer Culture

Study of consumer culture is characterized by placing consumption in interdisciplinary investigations, which engage with multiple research paradigms for interpreting such social processes as social transformation, identity construction, trend-setting, and consumer imagination. Marketing communication researchers and practitioners are advised to pay adequate attention to consumer culture, so they may gain more in-depth insights into the dynamic relationship between marketing communication and consumer culture. Such relationship lies in the tendency of promotion campaigns to gear more toward culture-orientation, which is now deemed key factor of successful marketing communication in today’s business environment. In order that the students may develop a broader perspective on the connection between marketing communication and consumer culture, this course integrates and applies relevant theories of communication, sociology, and cultural anthropology to explore the following subjects: 1. Consumer culture in the socio-cultural contextualization of human desire; 2. Media, imagination, and consumption in the postmodern era; 3. Consumer culture for expressing self/social image; 4. Formation of fashion and fandom; 5. Marketing communication and consumer culture.