Creating the Responsible Consumer: Moralistic Governance Regimes and Consumer Subjectivity

“Amid this pandemic, the market is only to promulgate the neoliberal responsibilization (Giesler and Veresiu 2014; see also Dholakia, Ozgun and Atik 2020) that binds individuals to wellness-oriented self-care practices.”

“…in order to increase knowledge, awareness, confidence, ability and skills to manage finances, so that people can take advantage of financial services (conventional and sharia) for the sake of prosperity and be aware of financial conditions or situation in the future (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“This problematic link between the individual and social contexts has been highlighted in many consumer research studies (e.g. Arsel and Thompson, 2011; Askegaard and Linnet, 2011; Earley, 2014; Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; McAlexander et al., 2014; Moisio et al., 2013; Scaraboto and Fischer, 2013; Thompson et al., 2013;…”

“The approach sees prescriptive moral regulations from the top-down shunned in favour of freedom-of-choice models, which are accompanied by a variety of moral guidelines, codes of conduct, and nonbinding rules (Giesler and Veresiu 2014, Pyysiäinen et al .”

“…well-being leads to some conclusions — albeit many more questions — in terms of consumer responsibilization (Bajde & Rojas, 2021; Caruana & Crane, 2008; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Pellandini-Simányi & Conte, 2020) as well as the meaning of consumer well-being (Ganglmair-Wooliscroft & Lawson, 2012;…”

“…are consistent with broader forms of responsibilization and moral de fl ection in market systems, where institutional actors construct discourses that shift accountability for systemic harms away from fi rms and toward individual or public actors (Barnett et al., 2011; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“Collaborations among stakeholders to improve overall performance and to achieve a common good is the foundation of stakeholder theory (Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Verma, Chandra, and Kumar 2019; Bhattacharya and Fayezi 2021).”

“…the broader social sciences have shown that consumers do not exist ‘out there’ independent of marketing but are instead, at least partly, constructed by marketing practices, discourses, and devices (e.g. Caruana and Crane 2008; C. Fuentes and Sörum 2019; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Stigzelius 2018).”

“Giesler and Veresiu (2014) theorize the “consumer” as a constructed subjectivity that is produced through disciplinary interventions.”

“Seen in this light, the consumer is framed as an innocent victim of marketplace violence (Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Kravets, Preece, and Maclaran 2020; Martin et al. 2021).”

“Guns are a quintessential contested market, “ one where the legal, cultural, and moral legitimacy [ … ] are in fl ux and in tension ” (Coskuner-Balli, Pehlivan, and Hughes 2021, p. 663).”

“Financial literacy is the ability to understand how money works in a person’s day-to-day life: how someone earns money, manages it, invests it, and donates it to help others (Giesler and Veresiu 2014).”

“…the notions of self-care and self-responsible citizens using financial products to secure themselves for the duration of their life rather than relying on traditional state-organised means to provide for their welfare [Doling and Ronald 2010: 165; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; van der Zwan 2014: 112].”

“…gender ideologies (Drenten et al., 2020; Gurrieri et al., 2020), class-based ideologies (Dion and Borraz, 2017; Henry 2005), normative political ideologies (Crockett and Wallendorf, 2004) and “ re-sponsibilizing ” neoliberal ideologies (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014), among other ideological sources.”

“It inspires individuals, communities, and other businesses to make sustainable choices and creates a culture that values sustainability and responsible consumption (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“…topics (networks, transformative consumer research, communities, consumer responsibility, etc.) in consumer research (e.g. Epp and Price 2010; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Price, Coulter, Strizhakova, and Schultz 2018; Tian et al.,2014 ) – has faced its own transformation in relation to…”

“…other academic disciplines seem to ardently support regimes of a ff ective regulation: sanguine marketing research states boldly how it helps ‘ [imbue] the socialization of consumers into an ethos of responsible consumption with heightened moral signi fi cance ’ (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014, p. 853).”

“…act as providers of resources to facilitate consumers ’ own value creation via technologies, and where consumers are responsibilized (Foucault 2008; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Huston, Cruz, and Zoppos 2023) to perform an increasing number and array of value co-creating actions (Ritzer 1993).”

“…completely transforming the field of consumer research with the human ‘consumer’ as its central figure, whether manifest as a theoretical-ideological belief resistant to critique (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014) or a more consciously employed epistemic device worth rehabilitating (Schmitt et al., 2022).”

“…(Eckhardt et Dobscha, 2019 ; Veresiu et Giesler, 2014), une résistance à cette responsabilisation consiste en une contestation du pouvoir du marché et à la domination qu’il exerce (Giesler et Veresiu, 2014 ; Gonzalez-Arcos et al., 2021 ; Monnot et Reniou, 2013 ; Roux et Izberg-Bilgin, 2018).”

“…consumers as autonomous, self-governing, and entrepreneurial agents who bear personal responsibility for the outcomes of their choices (Anderson et al., 2016; Bajde & Rojas-Gaviria, 2021; Cherrier et al., 2023; Corus et al., 2024; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Varman & Vikas, 2007; Varman et al., 2011).”

“To put it in terms used by Giesler and Veresiu, calculators are media for capabilizing consumers, which contribute to making them, subjectively as well as in public discourse, responsible for their economic welfare (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014).”

“This governance arrangement has been termed “responsibilization” (Eckhardt & Dobscha, 2018; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; O'Malley 1996; Shamir, 2008) and can be defined as “a process whereby subjects are rendered individually responsible for a task which previously would have been the duty of another—…”

“Yet, despite having at its aim the ‘common good’, such campaigns have fuelled critiques of individualisation and consumer responsibilisation (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“Numerous studies have examined market transitions of Fatshionistas (Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013), marijuana (Huff et al., 2021), gambling (Humphreys, 2010), Botox (Giesler, 2012), and the creation of consumer subjectivities (Coskuner-Balli, 2020; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“We argue that the growing political discourse on promoting resilience represents another example of neoliberal consumer responsibilisation (see Barnhart et al., 2024; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“The responsibilisation (Foucault, 2008; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014) of at-genetic-risk individuals yields important implications for the market of healthcare prevention, as it is geared towards the control of degeneracy.”

“Giesler and Veresiu (2014) also argue, through their ethnographic analysis of WEF initiatives, that the responsibility for sustainable consumption is shifted away from businesses to individual consumers.”

“…consumer vulnerability that is intrinsic to the human condition, the market seems to ignore this condition in favour of a more functioning and utilitarian-oriented state of being autonomous and capable of taking responsibility (Cherrier and Türe, 2023; Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Henry, 2010).”

“The way people make sense of and give meaning to things is rooted in the socio-cultural context they are born and socialized into (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Humphreys, 2014).”

“Yet it remains peripheral in much research (Arsel and Thompson, 2011; Giesler, 2008; Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Holt and Thompson, 2004; Thompson, 1997; Thompson and Tian, 2008), often confined to secondary contextual points of illumination, or nestled in short methodological preambles.”

“…algorithms, and data (Airoldi and Rokka, 2022), and how they inter-twine with market systems (Giesler and Fischer, 2017), marketplace ideology (Thompson, 2004), consumer morality (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014), and consumption ideology (Schmitt et al., 2022) within platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017).”

“…under the prevailing neoliberal political-economic system, where market logics dominate and reinforce self-interested and rational motivations, such as profit maximisation, the commodification of social justice issues (Sobande, 2019) and individualised consumer governance (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“…and market context in which consumption takes place, as ethical consumption is increasingly recognized as being shaped not only by individual agency but also by social norms, policy frameworks, and market infrastructures (Carrington et al., 2021; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Pekkanen, 2021).”

“According to Giesler and Veresiu (2014) a tool use to identify the best investment options is financial literacy.”

“Drawing from this ideology, privacy self-management works as another example of consumer responsibili-sation (Giesler and Veresiu 2014), which highlights sovereign consumers who have the ability and obligation to initiate change and thus lead the way for other market actors to follow (Carrington,…”

“…governmental mode of responsibilization cannot be reduced to strategic discourse is that it conflicts with the notion of horizontal authority underpinning it (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Shamir, 2008), which informs the analysis of some of the leading empirical studies of consumer responsibilization.”

“…a pattern that aligns with neoliberal tendencies, where the responsibility for appropriate behavior is often transferred to individuals, expected to be actively responsible subject (Barnett, 2003; Jones & Arnould, 2024; Giesler & Veresiu, 2014), instead institutions (e.g., Varman et al., 2012).”

“…the research landscape acknowledges the involvement of institutional entities such as government regulators and religious institutions in shaping the vir-tuous principles of society, both through direct and indirect means (Agarwala et al., 2019; Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Hassan and Rahman, 2023).”

“Our approach, succinctly captured in the epigraphs above, shifts the focus of the discussion from supply-side actors to the demand side, and places the consumers as central to the solution (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014; Jacobsen et al., 2007; O’Rourke, 2011).”

“This new, whitewashed critique does not threaten the system which supports gendered violence, and supports the problematic responsibilization processes which foreclose structural critique (Giesler & Veresiu, 2014).”

“Schulich’s legions and its associated authors (e.g. Dolbec and Fischer 2015; Giesler and Veresiu 2014; Humphreys 2010) are right to shift the focus away from phenomenology of people, but we need not lose phenomenology as well.”