Digitalizing Consumption: How Devices Shape Consumer Culture

Contemporary consumer society is increasingly saturated by digital technology, and the devices that deliver this are increasingly transforming consumption patterns. Social media, smartphones, mobile apps and digital retailing merge with traditional consumption spheres, supported by digital devices which further encourage consumers to communicate and influence other consumers to consume.

Through a wide range of empirical studies which analyse the impact of digital devices, this volume explores the digitization of consumption and shows how consumer culture and consumption practices are fundamentally intertwined and mediated by digital devices. Exploring the development of new consumer cultures, leading international scholars from sociology, marketing and ethnology examine the effects on practices of consumption and marketing, through topics including big data, digital traces, streaming services, wearables, and social media’s impact on ethical consumption.

Digitalizing Consumption makes an important contribution to practice-based approaches to consumption, particularly the use of market devices in consumers’ everyday consumer life, and will be of interest to scholars of marketing, cultural studies, consumer research, organization and management.

Franck Cochoy is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaures and a member of LISST-CNRS, France. He works in the field of economic sociology, with a focus on the human and technical mediations that frame the relationship between supply and demand. He has published several books in both French and English including On the origins of self-service (Routledge, forthcoming).

Johan Hagberg, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg. His research examines market practices in the field of retailing. His current work investigates consumer logistics, digitalization of consumption and retailing.

Niklas Hansson is PhD in European Ethnology and senior researcher at the Centre for Consumer Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His current work examines digitalization of ethical consumption practices, consumer logistics and marketization of cultural heritage on second hand markets in the Swedish context.

Magdalena Petersson McIntyre is PhD in European Ethnology and Associate Professor at the Centre for Consumer Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests are within consumption, gender and retail and she has published on fashion, service work and normativity.