Femvertising is a relatively new concept that describe the use of feminism in advertising. Femvertising aims to both strengthen the image of women and overrule stereotypical representations of women in advertising, whilst at the same time aims to sell products. This highlights a conflict within the concept, which is what makes femvertising an interesting subject to study. This study investigates the representation of women in contemporary fashion commercials withfemvertising messages. Further, it examines how young Swedish women create meaning in relation to these messages, and finally, how they interpret the conflict within the concept of femvertising.The main material consists of semi-structured interviews with ten young women, the secondary material consists of advertisements from three Swedish fashion brands; H&M, Gina Tricot and Monki. The theoretical framework consists of Stuart Hallsrepresentation theoryand encoding/decoding theory, as well as parts from the consumer cultural framework, a critical view on identity and fashionand finally, two critical theories on feminist messagesin advertisement. Through these theoretical perspectives the study has demonstrated that young female consumers care relatively little about feminist messages in advertising. Instead, consumers want companies to work with feminist values internally and throughout. Further, the results points to that young female consumers want a more including representation of female bodies in advertising and that consumers react in a positive way towards advertising that represents bodies which they can relate to. In conclusion the results suggests that it is not enough for companies to use feminist messages and values in their advertisement, if these messages are not reflected in the company itself.

Though brands are created and maintained using many different management strategies, market and academic research has offered evidence that brands presenting the strongest personalities are more likely to perform better and resonate longer with consumers. This paper examines the components of brand personality using connections between contemporary branding and 13 classic archetypes. The study also discusses the life cycle of the brand, including development of brand personality and achievement of iconic status in conjunction with archetypal marketing. The research of Faber and Mayer (2009) is the basis for an analysis measuring participant attitudes toward popular brands by matching them with archetypal descriptions and explores possible correlation between product category and archetype. Results show evidence for high levels of participant agreement when categorizing archetypal representations of popular brands as well as consistency across product category. Results are also indicative of a relationship between gender and archetype selection.

<p>The popularity of social media have increased over the last years, appearing under variousbrands with millions of members worldwide. This thesis exemplifies how the features in twoof the most popular social media of today, Facebook and Twitter, can enable individuals touse these forums as tools for presentation and promotion of their identities.</p><p>The empirical material was gathered through qualitative interviews with 13 users of socialmedia, illustrating how individuals actively strive to use these forums to create positiveassociations around their persons.</p><p>What is perceived as beneficial communication varies with individuals different socialcontexts, learned through socialization mechanisms similar to those in real life. Social mediacommunication allows individuals to highlight preferable parts of their personality whileminimising negative to a higher extent than what sometimes is possible in the physicalreality, thus increasing the possibilities to communicate a desired self. The insights providedin this thesis can contribute to the understanding of social media as a phenomenon, as wellas increasing the knowledge around individuals purposes and user preferences as consumersof these media.The popularity of social media have increased over the last years, appearing under variousbrands with millions of members worldwide. This thesis exemplifies how the features in twoof the most popular social media of today, Facebook and Twitter, can enable individuals touse these forums as tools for presentation and promotion of their identities.The empirical material was gathered through qualitative interviews with 13 users of socialmedia, illustrating how individuals actively strive to use these forums to create positiveassociations around their persons.What is perceived as beneficial communication varies with individuals different socialcontexts, learned through socialization mechanisms similar to those in real life. Social mediacommunication allows individuals to highlight preferable parts of their personality whileminimising negative to a higher extent than what sometimes is possible in the physicalreality, thus increasing the possibilities to communicate a desired self. The insights providedin this thesis can contribute to the understanding of social media as a phenomenon, as wellas increasing the knowledge around individuals purposes and user preferences as consumersof these media.</p>

The power dynamics of consumerism is an important aspect of contemporary consumer culture. Within the field of marketing and consumption, consumer culture theory (CCT) tends to understand power in terms of agency, the ability of consumers to emancipate from a market infused by the culture of consumerism. As such, CCT assumes a repressive hypothesis of power, as if consumerism was an external reality from which agentic consumers can escape by acts of dialectical opposition. In contrast, through a Foucauldian approach, the present study emphasizes the productive side of power, arguing that consumerism operates beyond dialectical oppositions to constitute consumption at different levels of scale – at the macro, meso and micro levels. More specifically, through qualitative data generated from official documents and interviews with state agency officials, consumers, and food manufacturers and retailers, the study undertakes a discourse analysis of date labeling in the food market. In accounting for the regulative, organizational and performative dimensions of consumption, the case of date labeling makes it possible to study consumerism at the intersection of the state, business and consumers. The study argues that consumption is constituted through a multiplicity of mundane power struggles that arise in the wake of date labeling. As such, it extends previous approaches by suggesting an extra-dialectical theory of consumer culture. Further, it argues that date labeling reinforces the mind/body dualism of consumerism by privileging cognition and choice at the cost of the human embodiment and sensory perception. It concludes that empowered performativity does not represent a negation of power, but that it emerges as a product of power and the consumerist attempt to constitute effective, predictable, responsible and controlled consumption. However, future research should continue studying the dominant institutional conditions of particular consumption contexts.

The popularity of social media have increased over the last years, appearing under variousbrands with millions of members worldwide. This thesis exemplifies how the features in twoof the most popular social media of today, Facebook and Twitter, can enable individuals touse these forums as tools for presentation and promotion of their identities. The empirical material was gathered through qualitative interviews with 13 users of socialmedia, illustrating how individuals actively strive to use these forums to create positiveassociations around their persons. What is perceived as beneficial communication varies with individuals different socialcontexts, learned through socialization mechanisms similar to those in real life. Social mediacommunication allows individuals to highlight preferable parts of their personality whileminimising negative to a higher extent than what sometimes is possible in the physicalreality, thus increasing the possibilities to communicate a desired self. The insights providedin this thesis can contribute to the understanding of social media as a phenomenon, as wellas increasing the knowledge around individuals purposes and user preferences as consumersof these media.The popularity of social media have increased over the last years, appearing under variousbrands with millions of members worldwide. This thesis exemplifies how the features in twoof the most popular social media of today, Facebook and Twitter, can enable individuals touse these forums as tools for presentation and promotion of their identities.The empirical material was gathered through qualitative interviews with 13 users of socialmedia, illustrating how individuals actively strive to use these forums to create positiveassociations around their persons.What is perceived as beneficial communication varies with individuals different socialcontexts, learned through socialization mechanisms similar to those in real life. Social mediacommunication allows individuals to highlight preferable parts of their personality whileminimising negative to a higher extent than what sometimes is possible in the physicalreality, thus increasing the possibilities to communicate a desired self. The insights providedin this thesis can contribute to the understanding of social media as a phenomenon, as wellas increasing the knowledge around individuals purposes and user preferences as consumersof these media.

Konsumenter använder varumärken dagligen och exponering av varumärken sker överallt: i reklam, böcker, filmer, människor och så vidare. Tidigare forskning visar att konsumenter använder varumärken för att bygga upp sin självbild och skapa sin identitet, samt att konsumenter kan ha mer eller mindre starka relationer till varumärken. Varumärken i sig är bara materiella markörer, de blir meningsfulla för konsumenterna först då de sätts in i ett sammanhang och får en individuell historia uppbyggt kring sig. Studiens syfte är att utifrån ett konsumentperspektiv visa hur meningsskapande i en relation mellan ett varumärke och en konsument kan se ut. Detta genom att reda ut frågeställningen: ”Hur kan en konsument skapa mening i sin relation till ett varumärke?”. En fallstudie har genomförts, där en individs meningsskapande kring ett varumärke har undersökts. Fallstudien bestod av två djupgående intervjuer och fem observationer. Resultatet har analyserats med hjälp av teorier kring bland annat meningsskapandeprocesser och varumärkessymbolik. Slutsatsen är tre faktorer som kan bidra till meningsskapande kring ett varumärke: överensstämmelse med konsumentens ”jag”, symbolisk innebörd och visuellt tilltalande, och användning. / Consumers use brands daily and the exposure of brands takes place everywhere: in advertisements, books, movies, people, and so on. Previous research shows that consumers use brands to create their self-image and identity, and that consumer can have stronger or weaker relationships with brands. Brands in their selves are only material markers, brands become meaningful to consumers when they are put into a context and receive an individual story built around them. The purpose of this paper is to show how consumers can create meaning in their relationship with brands. This is by sorting out the issue: “How can a consumer create meaning in the relationship with a brand? “. A case study has been carried out, in which an individual's meaning creation to a brand has been investigated. The case study consisted of two interviews and five observations. The results were analyzed using theories about meaning creation processes and brand symbolic. The conclusions are three factors that may contribute to the creation of meaning towards a brand: correspondence with the consumer's “self”, symbolic meaning and visually appearance, and the use of the brand.

The main objective of this thesis is to study how social and cultural norms regarding body and appearance are perceived and interpreted by young people. This is done by studying both how these perceptions affect young people and how the body is controlled and altered through practices such as dieting, exercise, plastic surgery and the use of steroids. Another question raised in the study concerns important sources of influence for how one's own body is perceived. The study is based on a questionnaire distributed to 167 young girls and boys aged 13,15 and 17.The theoretical framework includes both general theories of the body and gender perspectives. Four themes have been applied in order to capture central and important aspects of the ideal body. These are; the problematic body, the controlled body, the commodified body and the social body. These themes are all related both to gender and to the portrayal of bodies in mass media.The main conclusion is that the body matters very much to many young people today, both their own perceptions of it and what others think of it. The perceptions of one's own body is also very much gendered. Many girls have internalised a fragmented and problematised way of looking at their bodies. They report a greater dissatisfaction with their bodies than do boys. Size and shape are regarded as particularly problematic and a small and slim body is preferred. Girls are also frequently engaged in practices to alter and control their bodies and are more concerned with the state of their own bodies and how others' view them. Boys expressed a greater satisfaction with their bodies. Their dissatisfaction is primarily focused on height and weight and indicates a desire to become bigger and taller. Exercise is the prime way for boys to alter their bodies. However, their own bodies are not as problematic as for girls; instead they seem to be more concerned with others' bodies. Friends, together with mass media (particularly visual media and magazines), are regarded as the strongest source of influence on how the respondents (both girls and boys) perceive their bodies.Age differences are also found. Girls display a tendency to be more dissatisfied with and be more involved in practices to alter the body the older they are. Boys display the reverse situation. The largest differences can therefore be found among the oldest. The influence of friends and media tend also to be perceived as more important among the oldest. / digitalisering@umu

This thesis aims to investigate women&amp / #8217 / s double-way relation to consumption, as both consumers and commodities. The major goal of the study is to examine the historical construction of women as pimary consuming class and how this relationship of women to consumption has evolved through time. Moreover, it is claimed that display of women as visual objects of male gaze in visual iconography, ideologies of beauty and body politics on women&amp / #8217 / s appearances resulted in commodification of women in the modern consumer culture. Additionally, a brief analysis of Turkish print advertisements for the period 1930-1970 is attempted with a view to demonstrating how Turkish middle-class women have been incorporated into newly emerging consumer culture and how this integration process has been perceived by advertisers.

Post-purchase consumer behavior is an area of consumer research that is underdeveloped. One new phenomenon that can be used to study post-purchase consumer behavior is the individual behavior related to “socially-visible brands.” A socially-visible brand (SVB) is a brand located on or near a person’s physical body while they are out in the public atmosphere. Understanding consumers’ use of their socially-visible brands sheds light onto this form of post-purchase behavior. From a theoretical standpoint, impression management theory from the field of social psychology and consumer culture theory from the field of consumer research were juxtaposed and applied to the topic of socially-visible brands. An organizing framework is presented which adapts the dramaturgical concepts from impression management theory to the field of consumer behavior. Two studies are then presented which look at consumer behavior through this organizing framework. Study one delves into the consumer culture surrounding consumer behavior associated with socially-visible brands. Study two shows how market segmentation factors predict consumer behaviors associated with socially-visible brands. The overall argument being made here that socially-visible brands are a “prop” or tool consumers use during their presentation of self to others. / text

Mina Loy’s work explores the gaudiness of consumer culture in its spectacle, extravagance and underlying falsity. “Giovanni Franchi,” “Three Moments in Paris” and “Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots” question the perceptive powers and autonomy of Baudelaire’s flâneur when applied particularly to the modern female subject. Moreover, “Hot Cross Bum” explores the excess involved in consumer extravagance, while “Feminist Manifesto” uses that extravagance to re-appropriate advertising towards Loy’s own ends. Throughout, consumer culture is seen as a false veneer; ultimately, however, Loy admits the paradoxical reality of this false consumer culture, and its real implications on modern life in “On Third Avenue” and “Mass Production on 14th Street.” Consequently, Loy gives a nuanced and sophisticated critique and exploration of consumer culture, and can be connected to theorists of spectacle like Guy Debord, of advertising like T.J. Jackson Lears, and to Baudrillard’s hyperreality.