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Friday, 5 September 2008
Brand loyalty
Newspapers are puzzled why a company that makes own branded products for supermarkets - McBride - is doing so badly. Rather, shouldn't it be doing rather well given the 'current economic climate'? The Telegraph (a rare read for a 'liberal' like me) argues that it's either due to brand loyalty or that the downturn has yet to hit. I would prefer to argue that much of this 'downturn' is due to us talking ourselves into it and that some consumers aren't re-organising themselves according to the dominant rhetoric. That is to say, they aren't 'performing' the economic climate 'correctly'.
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3 comments:
Why aren't they?
Hello atlanticwriter
I wanted to demonstrate that discourses around the 'current economic climate' are able to configure particular readings that people may then act upon and then give an explanation for. In the article I cite, the writer resorts to an un-falsifiable 'well, the 'current economic climate' just hadn't hit you yet' to explain why some people don’t act as the writer expects. The current climate is a given fact which some people experience right now, whilst others do not currently, but will. For those who do experience a tightening of finances and so on, the given explanation is the 'current economic climate'. I’m not saying there isn’t a ‘current economic climate’, but what counts as this ‘climate’ arises from a complex set of processes. We observe some phenomena, explanations are sought and given, and then we act accordingly. How we act demonstrates the effectiveness of these discourses, and if we feel a tightening of our belts then we can identify the causes according to those currently available e.g. declining house prices, increased food prices, increased oil prices etc. However, other causes that are given less press are increased grain costs because of bio-fuels and climate impacts for example. A radical contrast might be to seek a more foundational cause or set of causes, for example the capitalist mode of production. This is to say, explanations are up for grabs. The one that wins out is largely down to who shouts the loudest, which has greatest explanatory power and who wields that power.
That makes sense.
It's going to be interesting to see how the media handles the fact that millions of mortgage owners will be better of from next week as interest rate cuts start to filter through to those on variable or tracker mortgages. This benefit doesn't seem to quite "fit" into the current narrative about the economy.
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