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Ain't misbehavin' — consumption in a moralized brandscape

Stockholm University, Sweden, ms{at}fek.su.se

Lars Strannegård

Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden, lars.strannegard{at}hhs.se

How can one explain the phenomenon that a consumer is able to protest against worker exploitation in the third world outside a Nike outlet and a day later walk in and buy a pair of shoes from the same outlet? In this article we try to conceptualize how consumers handle the expressive and functional aspects of brands in a moralized brandscape. By introducing the idea of `de-coupling', we suggest that both the production and the consumption of brands rest on a logic where the functional and expressive values are separated from one and another. This implies that consumption is not merely an expressive activity operating on the sign level, but rather that consumption must be understood as an intricate play where the relationship between brand image and buying behaviour needs to be further explored.

Key Words: •brands •buying behaviour •de-coupling •expressive values •moral discourse

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