Negotiating Distinctions: How Brands Become Cultural Resources

The metaphor of “cultural resource” has been widely used by researchers in CCT to describe the role of brands in the production of culture. The purpose of this presentation is twofold. First, we provide an overview of the different interpretative uses of the cultural resource metaphor in the recent CCT literature on brands. Second, we employ the concept of brand system to explain how consumers use brands as unique cultural resources. Our findings reveal that brands become cultural resources only with respect to consumers’ social communications about them. Implications are discussed using Apple’s ipod music player as an empirical example.

Citation:

Risto Moisio, Eric Arnould, and Zeynep Arsel (2005) ,"Negotiating Distinctions: How Brands Become Cultural Resources", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Karin M. Ekstrom and Helene Brembeck, Goteborg, Sweden : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 10--11.