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AU:1 Little attention has been directed to investigating abandonment that refers to the deliberate choice of giving up something previously consumed. In this chapter, we look into meanings that motivate the abandonment of a product category and also the meanings abandonment gives rise to. The research used a qualitative methodology to collect and analyze data obtained from in-depth interviews with 16 Brazilian consumers who gave up automobile ownership. This category was chosen due to its intense symbolic dimension. In the literature, abandonment is described as the act of giving up something previously consumed, thus presupposing that a deliberate choice was made (Hogg, 1998; Hogg, Banister, & Stephenson, 2009). The interviews, however, suggest that, rather than being a discrete event, an action or decision that is circumscribed by a given moment, abandonment is in fact a process. The analysis also outlines three types of abandonment: contingent, positional and

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Purpose The research analyzes the presence of two global brands – Fiat and International Federation of Association Football – in Brazilian demonstrations in conjunction with the 2014 World Cup. The purpose of this paper is to extend the brand cultural resonance construct and highlights its boundary-straddling nature. The analysis reveals the dynamics of brand meanings established including why some brands have their meanings enriched through collective appropriation, while others become vessels of negative content and targets of anti-consumption movements. Design/methodology/approach A multimethod approach, which included observation, analysis of cultural texts and in-depth interviews with 21 demonstrators, was adopted for the study. Findings The study extends the construct of brand cultural resonance proposing an additional facet, named Institutional Resonance. This dimension relates to the meanings that arise from a brand’s institutional role and interactions with other social institutions, like governments, the economy, religious, and educational systems. Institutional Resonance occurs when a certain brand becomes the archetypal representation of a social institution. This study also presents two forms of brand cultural resonance: arrows or targets. As arrows, brands lend their symbolic resources to the construction of protesters’ messages helping them to communicate their ideas. As targets, brands become social enemies and represent negative poles of social contradictions. Originality/value This study investigates consumer appropriation of marketers’ actions. The research depicts Institutional Resonance as an interactive and acute phenomenon which promotes a social negotiation on a playing field where different agents forge brand meanings and reputations.

Although we know a lot about how brand meanings are created and perpetuated in relation to and through cultural discourses, remarkably little work has been done in the marketing field to develop a better comprehension as to how brand meanings are enacted through distancing behaviors, such as brand abandonment. In the marketing literature, abandonment has usually been associated with relationship crises, most commonly as the result of consumer dissatisfaction. This study investigates consumers who abandoned previously consumed brands in two distinct product categories, soft drinks and automobiles. Through investigation of two emblematic brands -Coca-Cola and Fiat -the analysis illustrates cultural discourses that consumers use to give meanings and socially negotiate their brand abandonment. Considering the repertoire of meanings attached to both the brands and consumers' commitment to their distancing behavior, the analysis presents three types of brand abandonment: (a) contingent, (b) balanced and (c) aversive. This paper also presents brand abandonment as an enabler of social distinctions, highlighting two discrete discourses promulgated and perpetuated by consumers: (a) Life evolution, and (b) Rationality, self-control and sovereignty.

Even though disposition is present in the consumer behavior research agenda, most of the studies focus mainly on intentional movements of products leaving the home. The present article describes a less conscious and co‐incidental journey of products into a liminal zone between use and disposal inside homes. A qualitative field study, based on the itinerary method, was undertaken with a group of 26 affluent women in Brazil. The findings show that consumers maintain purgatories – “forgotten” repositories of products no longer in use – as an in‐home disposition practice. The aspects and functioning of purgatory are also detailed, through a typology of purgatories and a discussion of specific strategies to deal with cluttering as a consequence of product accumulation inside homes. Finally, purgatories emerge as a contemporary consumer solution to deal not with individual products but with product collectivities' disposition. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

O presente trabalho investiga por que os indivíduos tomam a decisão de abandono de categoria, tendo em vista diferentes contextos de estímulo e questionamento ao consumo. Para isso, foram escolhidas as categorias de automóvel e cigarro, considerando-se o conteúdo do sistema da publicidade, que, no caso do automóvel, é predominantemente de reforço ao consumo e, para o cigarro, de proibição dos anúncios por parte da indústria e demarketing através das campanhas governamentais. A pesquisa utiliza-se de metodologia qualitativa de coleta e análise dos dados, obtidos a partir de entrevistas em profundidade com 29 consumidores (ex-fumantes e ex-proprietários de automóveis). O trabalho enriquece os estudos de anticonsumo ao diferenciar três tipos de abandono e evidenciar que este não é apenas movimento de distanciamento de significados negativos, com o objetivo de proteger a autoestima (Hogg et al., 2009), mas também passível de operar diferenciação afirmativa, positiva e de reforço da autoestima. O abandono contingencial acontece quando o indivíduo, apesar de compartilhar os significados com os consumidores da categoria, vê-se forçado a abandonar o consumo. O abandono posicional é motivado principalmente pela rejeição às associações simbólicas que o consumo proporciona. Por fim, o abandono ideológico apresenta uma perspectiva coletiva, onde o indivíduo acredita que a sociedade (e não apenas ele individualmente) deve abandonar aquele consumo.

In consumption studies, very little attention has been focused on investigating abandonment and, more specifically, its symbolic dimension. The present study aims to investigate how meanings are created and negotiated through the abandonment of cigarettes. This study used a qualitative methodology to collect and analyze the data generated by one-on-one semi-structured in-depth interviews with 15 Brazilian ex-smokers. Results suggest that abandonment of cigarettes can be offered as a connection, gift, or sacrifice that makes relations special and even magical. As regards abandonment, the present study evidences the interactions and movements of positive and negative meanings related to the consumption and non-consumption of a category. The study proposes a framework that highlights the cooling, decontamination, reinforcement and defensive symbolical movements, thus constructing a tool for analyzing abandonment, offering possible paths of intervention for organizations that are interested in this issue.