Zeynep Arsel

Biographic Data

ID113074
NAMEZeynep Arsel
GIVEN NAMESZeynep
FAMILY NAMEArsel
SIGNATUREARSEL Z
AFFILIATIONSConcordia University
ORCID0000-0002-1557-2947
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS34
TOTAL CITATIONS495
AUTHOR COUNT13
EDITOR COUNT21
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2004
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX10

  • Surviving as a Vegan in a World of Omnivores

    Open AccessAya Aboelenien, Zeynep Arsel et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025

    Prior research documents the role of the misalignment of practice elements in practice habituation and change. We extend this literature by demonstrating the understudied role of practice relationality. Locating our empirical work in veganism, a context that encompasses a bundle of interrelated practices, we show how people who adopt veganism manage the relationality of their food-related practices (e.g., eating, cooking, and shopping for food) d…

  • Who Am I Here? Care Consumers’ Identity Processes and Family Caregiver Interventions in the Elderscape

    Open AccessJulia Rötzmeier-Keuper, Nancy V Wünderlich et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025References: 78

    With increasing longevity, the need for institutional elderly care has become commonplace. This study explores the experiences of elderly care consumers in institutional care settings, which we define as the “elderscape”—a heterotopic place shaped by the marketization of care. Drawing from 24 in-depth interviews with elderly care consumers, their family caregivers, and professional caregivers, we present a model of elderly care consumers' navigat…

  • How the Materials of Objects Shape Consumption

    Open AccessRoman Pavlyuchenko, Delphine Dion et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025References: 59

    Glasses and stones, metals and textiles, leathers and plastics ... . The materials of objects can shape consumption in a variety of ways. Drawing on affordance theory, the authors conceptualize materials as prominent drivers of object affordances, that is, action (im)possibilities with and around objects. The authors explain when, how, and what materials drive object affordances. And, they explain how consumers actualize (or put to use) materials…

  • Design-Mediated Morality

    Open AccessSzilvia Gyimóthy, Hanne Pico Larsen et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025

    Art and artisanal objects carry the potential for moral transformations. Although consumer research suggests a relationship between aesthetic taste and morality, scholars have not deeply considered the role of material design in shaping consumers’ moral self. We address this missing link by theorizing the formative process of design-mediated morality: defined as the transmission of moral values into design objects through manifestos and design sc…

  • The Cumulative Effects of Marketized Care

    Open AccessAndreas Chatzidakis, G M Eckhardt et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025Cited by: 2References: 83

    Care is increasingly marketized. Previous marketing and consumer research has focused on specific tensions underlying marketized care provision and the ways in which consumers navigate them. In contrast, this conceptual article draws on interdisciplinary research on care to develop a cumulative understanding of marketized care, that is, based on those effects that build up over time when a critical mass of consumers routinely addresses care needs…

  • Gendered Consumer Responsibilization

    Open AccessCanan Corus, Bige Saatcioglu et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025Cited by: 1References: 52

    Recent decades have witnessed menopause, an inevitable and natural bodily transition, come under the purview of the market. Menopausal women are increasingly expected to be informed entrepreneurs of their bodies, bringing this transition within the domain of self-regulation and responsibility. Using data emanating from institutionalized market actors (i.e., pharmaceutical and insurance companies, healthcare professionals) and the accounts of cons…

  • Digital Affective Encounters

    Open AccessGhalia Shamayleh, Zeynep Arsel et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025References: 58

    One of the most ubiquitous practices on social media is sharing content with others to show affection or affirm an interpersonal connection. Extant consumer research has examined the circulation of objects fueled by desire or as repositories and carriers of emotion and value. The article extends this work to understand how consumer relationships are shaped through the creation, consumption, and circulation of digital objects imbued with affect. D…

  • The Discomfort of Things! Tidying-up and Decluttering in Consumers’ Homes

    Open AccessJohanna F Gollnhofer, Kushagra Bhatnagar et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025References: 56

    Most relatively affluent consumers are fighting a losing battle with material disorder in their homes. No matter how hard they try to rein it in, material disorder always comes out on top. We argue that part of the continued obduracy of material disorder is because of its messy understanding. We clarify material disorder’s muddled conceptual boundaries by theorizing from an ethnographic investigation of consumers who recently dealt with material …

  • Using Cultural Repertoires during Unsettled Times

    Open AccessYe Yang, Julie L Ozanne et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025Cited by: 1References: 35

    This research draws on the theory of culture in action, which explains how consumers selectively mobilize their cultural repertoires to understand and solve daily problems. Contemporary life, however, is increasingly unsettled, challenging the adequacy of consumers' repertoires and how they use existing institutional cultural resources. This qualitative study identifies four ways in which consumers use their cultural repertoires and institutional…

  • Becoming Nature

    Open AccessAnnetta Grant, Robin Canniford et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2025Cited by: 2References: 90

    Nature affords transformations to consumers' social, embodied, and temporal experiences. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human-fish interactions as encounters in interspecies contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering processes of interspecies becomin…

  • After 50 Years, It Is Time to Talk about Value Hierarchy and Inequality

    Open AccessLez E Trujillo-Torres, Lez Trujillo Torres et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2024Cited by: 3References: 76

    This research enriches the field's perspective on value and argues that to seriously address inequality during the next 50 years, consumer research must explore processual aspects of value hierarchy and consider its relationship to inequality. Doing so recognizes the duality of structures as embodying outcomes and agency, as well as the need to view value not only as what it is but also as what it does. To begin to address limitations in the lite…

  • Intersecting the body

    M C Zanette, Zeynep Arsel et al.ARTICLEConsumption Markets & Culture2024References: 43

    This Editorial presents the papers of the Special Issue “Intersecting the Body”, providing a dialogue between them and previous literature on the body

  • Consumer Desires and the Fluctuating Balance between Liquid and Solid Consumption

    Open AccessLaura M Rosenberg, Henri Weijo et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 2References: 59

    The ongoing rise of liquid consumption manifests in the growing popularity of ephemeral, access-based, and dematerialized forms of consumption that contrast with traditional solid forms of consumption characterized by possession and strong object relationships. The literature already presents a robust understanding of what makes liquid and solid consumption appealing to consumers. What has received less attention is the co-existence of liquid and…

  • Doing Family over Time

    Open AccessAnne Kastarinen, Elina Närvänen et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 6References: 65

    Care is a central dimension of family consumption. Previous studies have explored it as interpersonal, emotional work performed through everyday consumption practices. Most of these studies have investigated care as articulated in the present time and within nuclear families. This study sets out to explore the relations between grandparents and grandchildren, arguing that it provides an intriguing case for enriching the current understanding of c…

  • More Gamer, Less Girl

    Open AccessJenna Drenten, Robert L Harrison et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 7References: 74

    How do exclusionary boundaries persist in consumption subcultures amid increased progress, representation, and inclusion? In video gaming, women have come to represent nearly half of the market; yet, this is a limited indicator of gender-based progress. A culture of masculine dominance persists. Extending previous research on boundary work, the authors employ a cultural perspective of tokenism to examine how gendered boundaries in consumption sub…

  • Tensions in the Enactment of Neoliberal Consumer Responsibilization for Waste

    Open AccessHélène Cherrier, Meltem Türe et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 10References: 51

    Research has explored consumer responsibilization processes, yet there is a lack of understanding about the tensions that consumers might experience when enacting their responsibility. Using a large data set collected in France around waste responsibilization, we demonstrate how waste pathways can generate spatiotemporal, guidance, and destructiveness tensions in households. Consumers respond to such tensions by keeping waste at home, which allow…

  • Market Work and the Formation of the Omnivorous Consumer Subject

    Open AccessAnissa Pomiès, Zeynep Arsel et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 2References: 76

    Omnivorousness is the tendency of culturally and economically privileged individuals to consume both highbrow and lowbrow products. Prior research explores omnivorousness as a manifestation of status distinction in which consumers deploy the aesthetic disposition-a generic and transposable ability to appreciate cultural products through a formal gaze-to lowbrow options. Existing work emphasizes the acquisition of the aesthetic disposition, but it…

  • Wealth in People and Places

    Open AccessSamuelson Appau, David Crockett et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 6References: 65

    In some cultures, migrants bear an obligation to bring gifts from the foreign country for their relations when returning to their homeland. Why, and to what end? We examine the reasons for these transnational gift obligations in a multisite study of Ghanaian migrants in the United States and Australia, as well as people in Ghana with migrant relations living overseas. We adopt a wealth-centered perspective that problematizes the underexplored mut…

  • The Value-Translation Model of Consumer Activism

    Open AccessMikkel Nøjgaard, Lisa Leimar Price et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2023Cited by: 4References: 49

    How do consumer watchdog organizations (CWOs) change markets? Research on consumer activism has prioritized studying grassroots movements of ordinary consumers over more formalized activist actors, resulting in a paucity of theoretical resources for understanding the activism of powerful consumer organizations such as CWOs. This article draws on the sociology of valuation and evaluation to develop a new theoretical model of consumer activism, the…

  • Meat

    Aya Aboelenien, Zeynep ArselARTICLEConsumption Markets & Culture2022

    Meat is both a loved and hated everyday consumption object across cultures and has become an icon throughout history. This article traces meat’s trajectory in the Global North and identifies four periods that contribute to its iconicity. Meat’s iconic status has been shaped by discourses on health, morality, ecology, class, science, and gender. It has been central to colonialism, wars, the Industrial Revolution, and scientific developments. We pi…

  • Brand Morphogenesis

    Open AccessSusanna Molander, Jacob Ostberg et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2022Cited by: 1

    How do brands change in environments defined by increasing consumer heterogeneity? Drawing on assemblage theory, this research develops the concepts of brand morphogenesis and consumer sub-assemblage to explain how heterogeneous consumer groups instigate, reinforce and hinder the evolution of a brand. This longitudinal case study of a Swedish fashion brand delineates the role of heterogeneous consumer sub-assemblages in the continual process of e…

  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in theJournal of Consumer Research

    Open AccessZeynep Arsel, David Crockett et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2022Cited by: 16References: 52

    Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become ubiquitous in public and academic discourse. This is despite ongoing contests over definitions and the lack of a clear consensus about the relative importance (and even the appropriate order) of each component. For our purposes, diversity refers broadly to real or perceived physical or socio-cultural differences attributed to people and the representation of these differences in research, market s…

  • Racial Oppression and Racial Projects in Consumer Markets

    Open AccessDavid Crockett, Lisa Leimar Price et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2022Cited by: 13References: 36

    The dominant theoretical approach to exploring ethnic and racial inequality in marketing and consumer research focuses on discrete acts of discrimination that stem from social psychological causes (e.g., prejudice, stereotypes, and negative racial attitudes). It holds limited explanatory power for meso- and macro-structural phenomena that also generate racialized outcomes. An implication is that ethnic and racial inequality can be portrayed as so…

  • Consumption Ideology

    Open AccessBernd H Schmitt, Bernd Schmitt et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2022Cited by: 10References: 98

    Ideology plays a central role in consumer decisions, actions, and practices. While there have been numerous studies of ideological formations in specific consumption contexts, an integrative theoretical framework on consumption ideology has been missing. The theoretical framework presented in this article integrates systemic, social group, and social reality perspectives from social theory with prior consumer research to conceptualize consumption…

  • A Framework of Brand Contestation

    Open AccessDaniel Dietrich, Daniel R Dietrich et al.ARTICLEJournal of Consumer Research2021References: 119

    The consumer literature on branding to date coalesces around the notion that brands are constantly contested. Brand contestation arises where the actions of consumer brand actors meet, and sometimes confront, those of the brands’ legal owners. This article integrates the extant branding research, a qualitative prestudy, and two complementary empirical studies to advance a theoretical process model of brand contestation. First, an in-depth analysi…