Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Conference Track
Marketing Research/ Demographics/ Consumer Behavior
Publication Date
2017
Abstract
This manuscript examines mothers’ consumption of digital technologies to enact their individual, relational, and familial identities. Using phemenological interviews it finds mothers purposefully consume digital technologies to negotiate, construct, and enact identities. Specifically, mothers use a repertoire of four appropriation strategies: mastering, partnering, domesticating, and avoiding. Mastery is a multi-year project in which mothers enroll in digital educational programs, qualify, and create new professional identities. In domestication, mothers assert themselves on technology managing their inclusion/exclusion in the time and spaces of family life, thereby enacting parental identities. In contrast, partnering is collaborative; mothers consume those functionalities of technologies that help them enact their identities. In the strategy of avoidance, mothers enact their identities of being fiscally responsible, by refusing to engage with budget busting technologies. The implications of these findings for marketing new Internet of Things technologies in the smart home are discussed.
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
Digital Commons@Georgia Southern License
Recommended Citation
Venkatraman, Meera, "Consuming Digital Technologies and Enacting Identities: Mothers in Mundane Daily Life" (2017). Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2017. 51.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/amtp-proceedings_2017/51
About the Authors
Meera Venkatraman is Professor of Marketing at the Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University, Boston. She received her Ph.D from the University of Pittsburgh for studying Consumer Innovativeness, foreshadowing her current interest in digital technology consumption.