Legiticimacy and Authenticity of Ethnic Affiliations: The Case of Regionalism

Abstract

This study analyzes the ways consumers legitimize their regional ethnic affiliation. An analysis of 29 introspections highlights the means individuals use to legitimize their ethnic affiliation and its authenticity. More precisely, it (1) demonstrates how individuals hijack and invent new sources of ethnic legitimacy, (2) emphasizes the role of archetypes in perceived ethnic authenticity and (3) examines dissonances linked to ethnic authenticity (artificiality and ambivalence). These results enrich previous research on reflexive ethnicity by introducing self-legitimizing processes and showing how individuals contribute, by consuming archetypes, to developing the collective constructs on which ethnicity is based. This leads to recommendations regarding the legitimization of regional brands.

Institutional entrepreneurs and legitimation strategies: The case of personal hygiene in France from 1880 to 1980

“…Some papers focus casework-like on the role played by individual–consumer in the legitimation process. Consumers enlist both natural and experiential legitimation to make their self-affiliated regional ethnicity more authentic (Dion et al, 2012). Gay communities legitimate an identity and meaning to those brands that fit their community standards (Kates, 2004), while stigmatized consumers reshape existing market dynamics to better legitimate their consumption community needs (Scaraboto and Fischer, 2013).…”

“…The legitimation literature highlights the operant sociocultural mechanisms at work when consumers adopt (or abandon) goods, services or consumption spaces. Legitimation is all about understanding how consumption practices get valorized or gain social justification within society (Dion et al, 2012;Dolbec and Fisher, 2015;Luedicke et al, 2010;Scaraboto and Fischer, 2013). A number of papers have shown the importance of actors from media to institutions and businesses (Debenedetti and Philippe, 2011;Giesler, 2008Giesler, , 2012Humphreys, 2010b) in a legitimation process.…”

Subjectivity and reflexivity: The contributions of countertransference to interpretative research

“…Inspired by Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), the ethnomarketing approach (Robert-Demontrond et al, 2013) highlights the particularities of the interpretative studies in research into consumption. This approach is based on many methods (Arnould et al, 2019) and takes reflexivity in research into account as well as the researcher's introspection (Carù and Cova, 2003;Dion et al, 2012;Wallendorf and Brucks, 1993) but it remains underexploited in marketing (Wallendorf and Brucks, 1993). Using 'retrospective introspection' to study their experiences of immersion during a concert, Carù and Cova (2003) can give an account of their 'internal states' in their results.…”

Combining images and words in order to understand the cultural meaning of practices: What photo-elicitation reveals

“…By bringing a photo into play as part of an oral interpretation, we were able to capture the reference to real-life experience. It was not necessarily by chance that Dion et al (2012) were able, using this same approach, to make an interpretative link with the embodiment of identity, as if the physical perspective the photos provided made it possible to take better account of the senses mobilised and of the sensory dimension of regional consumption practices. In our case, for Papis (aged 56 years), the classification of the photos wove a 'thread that makes sense of his life' (Kaufmann, 2007: 58).…”

“…Research subject Origin of the photos and conduct of the interviews Thematic contributions Dion et al (2012) The researchers analyse the way in which consumers legitimise their ethnic affiliation through consumption.…”