Mission
The Centre for Consumer Culture Theory at Stockholm Business School (3CT) was established to unite scholars, students and businesses around a point of view on consumption research that differ from traditionalist managerial approaches. Fundamental to our approach to marketing and consumer research is particular attention to the logic of consumer culture. ‘Consumer’ here is used as an adjective, not as a noun, and refers to ‘consumption’ to indicate the strategic embrace of all aspects on consumption beyond the mere consumer. We see consumer culture as the interconnected system of commercially produced objects, images, and texts that consumers use to construct and produce practices, identities and meanings that themselves often overlap and contradict each other (e.g. Kozinets 2002). Therefore, consumer culture is viewed not as a determinant cause to particular manifestations but as the contextual environment where various market actors and consumption objects interact. It can be described as the social arrangement where the relation between lived culture and symbolic and material resources, used to create meaning, is mediated through markets (e.g. Slater 1997: 8).
Theoretical grounding
3CT considers consumption not as merely an individual need-fulfilling activity, but rather as a way to construct and communicate meaning in society. Theoretically it stems from traditions of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), which combines a number of non-essentialist interpretive approaches and embraces poststructuralist epistemology, viewing a relationship between ideology and consumer agency as a dialogue, as well as theories of practice, highlighting the taken for granted routines of everyday life.
Programme
3CT will take an active part in the intra-university, national and international research network and promote multidisciplinary exchanges and programmes that contribute to both the theorizing around and empirical understanding of particular topics and commercial contexts (i.e. food, sports, advertising, popular culture, fashion, metropolitan lifestyles, symbolic branding). By arranging workshops, seminars, etc., the center will serve as a meeting point for scholars, students, businesspeople and officials.