A cultural exploration of consumers’ interactions and relationships with celebrities

Banister, Emma and Cocker, Hayley (2014) A cultural exploration of consumers’ interactions and relationships with celebrities. Journal of Marketing Management, 30 (1-2). pp. 1-29. ISSN 0267-257X

Abstract

This paper offers a cultural exploration of young adult consumers' everyday interactions and relationships with celebrities. Adopting an interpretive methodology, we build on McCracken's (1986, 1989) important work on cultural-meaning transfer, and integrate a contemporary understanding of consumers as co-creators of meaning, in order to explore their everyday experiences with celebrities. Findings suggest that consumers purposefully interact with celebrities in a diverse range of ways and actively engage in a variety of consumer–celebrity relationships. We conceptualise a range of consumer–celebrity relationship types and demonstrate the roles that celebrities can play in providing meaning and context to consumers' identity projects.