The cultural brand perspective assumes a consumer who is very much embedded
in the symbolic universes of branding:
Branding also causes a new consumer to form, a consumer who is brand
conscious in the largest sense: a consumer for whom these new symbolic
universes gradually become some of the most central parts of his or her
identity formation, both individually and in groups.
(Askegaard 2006, p. 100)The consumer of the cultural approach is a ‘no man is an island’ man. Embedded in
and influenced by the surrounding culture, the cultural brand perspective assumes
that it is the collective brand meaning creation that is important and relevant to the
consumer: Homo mercansor market man (Askegaard 2006) is deeply embedded –
or trapped, depending on the point of view – in consumer culture:
Market man is forged out of the interplay between different technologies: tech-
nologies of production, which allow us to transform and manipulate things; of
sign systems, which allow us to use meanings, symbols or significations; of
power, which directs the conduct of individuals; and of the self, which allows
us to affect our way of being so as to reach a certain state of being.
(Garsten and Hasselström 2004, p. 213)The role of the marketer implies bird perspective. Brand value is created through
playing an active role in mainstream culture. The brand is subjected to social and
cultural changes and thereby influenced by changes completely outside the brand
manager’s control. On the one hand, this means that the marketer is not the only
author behind the brand meanings. On the other, a brand manager who manages to
understand the most relevant cultural currents is able to write the proper ‘manu-
script’ for the brand to benefit from pressing cultural issues of the time. In that
sense, the brand gains competitive power by providing the consumer with the
appropriate web of associations and the most powerful myths of its time.
The cultural perspective
The perspective of the cultural approach embeds brand consumption in a
macro-level cultural context and it is linked to the tradition of cultural studies.
The culture researched into in the cultural approach surrounds us all and can
roughly be divided into different ‘levels’; a subcultural level, a national level,
and a global level. They are all valid analysis levels and concerns of the cultural
brand perspective.
Viewing consumption through the cultural lens means that all aspects of
consumption experiences are analysed in their respective cultural context. The
approach ‘borrows’ methods from different scientific traditions, such as phenom-
enological interviews, ethnographic field studies and netnography. The macro
level of analysis, however, makes the interpretation of the data different from
The cultural approach 211