Transcultural consumption and meaning transfer: African clothing in the United States

My research examines the transcultural products that consumers commonly refer to as ‘African-style’ clothing, within different consumption settings. I argue that current efforts to understand meaning transfer are incomplete because (1) they do not provide a comprehensive outline of the role that consumers themselves play in the process, and (2) they have not explored adequately product usage in diverse settings.; I employ a multi-site ethnography to achieve a holistic understanding of consumer meaning. The inherent mobility of meaning demands that research methodologies used to investigate it possess similar flexibility. My contemporary mobile ethnography involves a one-year field immersion “following the cloth,” that is, studying consumers in African-style clothing across multiple social settings. Phenomenological interviews are utilized to elicit a narrative of the consumption relationship. To accentuate opportunities for enriched insight into meaning transfer, informants are purposively selected to include consumers who wear the consumption product in more than one context. Data was collected and recorded via multiple methods (e.g. audiotaping, written fieldnotes and photography).; On the basis of this data, I develop a model of meaning transfer that identifies what occurs when consumers assign and reassign transcultural product meanings and a framework of contextualized product meanings. I extend current theories of meaning transfer by exploring the usage of consumer meaning domains and the role of the consumption setting. In addition to these principal extensions, the research refines current literature on meaning influences (i.e. macro-societal, material and individualistic influences) to include the impact of ‘other’ consumption products (i.e. products that are not the primary consumption objects) and ‘other’ consumers. These resulting insights have managerial implications for a diverse set of strategic marketing issues such as product branding, positioning and personality.