Marketing’S Interpretive Communities: a Case Study of Gay Men’S Responses to Advertising

ABSTRACT - Interpretation of marketing communications has become increasingly problematic in the contemporary commercial environment, largely due to postmodern conditions characterized by an overabundance of available cultural meanings and interpretive perspectives and the instability of social categories. This problem has implications for segmentation and the positioning of brands, and strategic consistency of marketing messages becomes increasingly difficult. In response to this question, this article adopts a reader-response perspective. The purposes here are the following: to advance the theoretical constructs of interpretive communities and interpretive strategies; to present ethnographic evidence from a study of gay men’s consumption patterns, demonstrating these constructs’ critical roles in structuring and inflecting interpretation of marketing communications; and to demonstrate their usefulness and relevance to contemporary marketing theory and practice.

Citation:

Steven M. Kates (2001) ,"Marketing’S Interpretive Communities: a Case Study of Gay Men’S Responses to Advertising", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 5, eds. Andrea Groeppel-Klien and Frank-Rudolf Esch, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 168.

European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 5, 2001      Page 168

MARKETING’S INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES: A CASE STUDY OF GAY MEN’S RESPONSES TO ADVERTISING

Steven M. Kates, Monash University, Australia

ABSTRACT -

Interpretation of marketing communications has become increasingly problematic in the contemporary commercial environment, largely due to postmodern conditions characterized by an overabundance of available cultural meanings and interpretive perspectives and the instability of social categories. This problem has implications for segmentation and the positioning of brands, and strategic consistency of marketing messages becomes increasingly difficult. In response to this question, this article adopts a reader-response perspective. The purposes here are the following: to advance the theoretical constructs of interpretive communities and interpretive strategies; to present ethnographic evidence from a study of gay men’s consumption patterns, demonstrating these constructs’ critical roles in structuring and inflecting interpretation of marketing communications; and to demonstrate their usefulness and relevance to contemporary marketing theory and practice.

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