Negotiating life themes through brand symbolism synthesis

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to identify and evaluate how life themes (manifested in life projects and identities) are reflected and negotiated onto symbolic brand consumption. An ethnographic qualitative research was conducted in Kuwait focusing on the luxury fashion brand which demonstrated how tensions in the construction of life themes are synthesized through symbolic brand consumption by young Muslim women in Kuwait.

Briefly, the findings of the study indicate that a discrepancy between personal desires and social goals in the construction of young women‘s life projects and identities manifests itself paradoxically onto three major life themes, namely; the social taboo of female sexuality as a personal desire, female modesty as a sexual strategy, and women as oppressed and oppressor of female sexuality. Such life themes are negotiated onto the site of the luxury fashion brand through brand symbolism synthesis whereby young women simultaneously; utilize the brand as a symbolic-substitute to satisfy personal desires and express sexuality, repel brand ideology in practice in favour of modesty practices and as a result a reconstruct symbolic brand meaning through the process which compels women to further 'force‘ one another to consume.

The study extends knowledge of symbolic brand consumption to Islamic consumer culture and carries broader implications that pertain to agency and the consumer culture of Kuwait.

Date of Award	12 Oct 2011
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Richard Elliott (Supervisor) & Peter Nuttall (Supervisor)