What Your Consumer Wants

Business-to-business advertising as a mechanism of market change

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2181338
AutoresDavid Schleifer (0000-0002-7341-6897, Schlumberger (Ireland), autor correspondente), Michaela Desoucey (0000-0003-1183-402X, Schlumberger (Ireland), autor correspondente)
Ano2015
Volume8
Fascículo2
Páginas218-234
Data de publicação2015-03-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Cultural Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1753-0350 • E-ISSN: 1753-0369
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17530350.2013.861356
OpenAlexW1805286785
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas53

With what mechanisms and cultural resources do market actors pursue change? Based on an analysis of business-to-business advertisements in two US food industry trade publications, we show the generative influence of social movements on perceived market opportunities. Building on recent scholarship on market-making, we find that market actors articulate and reshape critiques of their own industry by making claims about what consumers ostensibly want and about how their products can satisfy those desires. We find that business-to-business food ingredient advertisements selectively articulate precepts of the emergent 'good food' movement by urging manufacturers to develop healthy, natural, and 'clean' foods. While 'good food' advocates typically portray processed and packaged food as inherently unhealthy, suppliers and trade associations' advertisements transform this critique by claiming that products will be more marketable to consumers if they are made with ingredients designed to provide specific health benefits and to comply with federally mandated product labeling regulations. As such, we find that these business-to-business advertisements mediate between imagined demands and pragmatic constraints while serving as a conduit for the influence of social movements on industry practices and products

Advertising · Business · Business model · Economics · Food industry · Political science · Product (mathematics · Public relations · Scholarship · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification · Environmental Sustainability in Business · Law · Organic Food and Agriculture · Marketing