Location

Presentation- College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis Presentation (Restricted to Georgia Southern)

Faculty Mentor

Dr. Beth Myers

Faculty Mentor Email

bmyers@georgiasouthern.edu

Presentation Year

2021

Start Date

26-4-2021 12:00 AM

End Date

30-4-2021 12:00 AM

Keywords

Georgia Southern University, Honors Symposium, Presentation

Description

Today’s consumers are increasingly drawn toward multicultural advertising, which encourages many brands to incorporate artifacts/ideas of other cultures into their visual marketing campaigns. However, recent campaigns of fashion brands such as Dior and Dolce & Gabbana have led to backlash for utilizing culturally sensitive cues, because consumers felt offended by their cultural insensitivity and/or misrepresentation. This phenomenon is called cultural appropriation, which is defined as misusing or capitalizing on cultural property, creativity or experiences of a group of (often oppressed) people without honoring or respecting the people themselves. The question arises as to how consumers can differentiate between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation as the line between them has become increasingly blurred. There is little research that has explored consumers’ perceptions of cultural appropriation and appreciation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify consumers’ understanding of these two concepts by using qualitative textual analysis of 136 posts under the hashtag “cultural appropriation” on the social media platforms Twitter and Tumblr. The themes that emerged include: commodification, disrespect, and power imbalance, just to name a few. This study’s findings help product managers/marketers to create more effective multicultural marketing content incorporating culturally sensitive cues that resonate positively with their target market.

Academic Unit

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Comments

This work is archived and distributed under the repository's standard copyright and reuse license, available here. Under this license, end-users may copy, store, and distribute this work without restriction. For questions related to additional reuse of this work, please contact the copyright owner.

Files over 10MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "Save as..."

Share

COinS
 
Apr 26th, 12:00 AM Apr 30th, 12:00 AM

Read the Room: Exploring the Fine Line Between Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Appreciation

Presentation- College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Today’s consumers are increasingly drawn toward multicultural advertising, which encourages many brands to incorporate artifacts/ideas of other cultures into their visual marketing campaigns. However, recent campaigns of fashion brands such as Dior and Dolce & Gabbana have led to backlash for utilizing culturally sensitive cues, because consumers felt offended by their cultural insensitivity and/or misrepresentation. This phenomenon is called cultural appropriation, which is defined as misusing or capitalizing on cultural property, creativity or experiences of a group of (often oppressed) people without honoring or respecting the people themselves. The question arises as to how consumers can differentiate between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation as the line between them has become increasingly blurred. There is little research that has explored consumers’ perceptions of cultural appropriation and appreciation. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify consumers’ understanding of these two concepts by using qualitative textual analysis of 136 posts under the hashtag “cultural appropriation” on the social media platforms Twitter and Tumblr. The themes that emerged include: commodification, disrespect, and power imbalance, just to name a few. This study’s findings help product managers/marketers to create more effective multicultural marketing content incorporating culturally sensitive cues that resonate positively with their target market.