Why Prepare a Meal When Supermarkets Will Do It For Us? a Study

ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH
Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802
Why Prepare a Meal When Supermarkets Will Do It For Us? a Study of Meals As a Metaphor
Céline Del Bucchia, Edhec Business School, Lille, France
Despite the fact that, thirty years ago, family meals were predicted to disappear, the tradition still prevails today. Why do parents
continue to prepare the daily meal whereas the food industry is ready to help them to ‘dispose’ of the burden? In order to understand
this paradox, our study explores the underlying meanings associated with family meal production in a latin culture. Results suggest
that feeding can be considered through four metaphors: the “child’s well-being”, “family ties”, “discovery” and the “domestic chore”.
This research suggests that studying meal production in the context of family consumption opens up potential new research avenues
for analysing food consumption.
[to cite]:
Céline Del Bucchia (2011) ,"Why Prepare a Meal When Supermarkets Will Do It For Us? a Study of Meals As a Metaphor", in E
- European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN
: Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 477-478.
[url]:
http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1006892/eacr/vol9/E-09
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Why Prepare a Meal When Supermarkets Will Do It For Us?
A Study of Meals as a Metaphor1
Céline Del Bucchia, Edhec Business School, Lille, France
Extended Abstract
Despite predictions to the contrary, family meals remain part
of family life in 21st century Europe. While France appears to be
a cultural exception in this domain (de Saint Pol 2006), the family
meal remains the main activity in bringing families together, even in
the United States (Guttierez and Arnould 2007). Sociologists agree
that even if family meals are less frequent at times, they nonetheless
remain a strategic factor in building family ties (Kaufmann 2005;
DeVault 1991). Consequently, our study explores one aspect of
the consumer experience that has been relatively overlooked by
marketing in the past, namely, the activity of feeding. Our study is
firstly a response to the call by researchers to explore the meaning
generated by the act of final consumption (Vargo and Lusch 2004;
Arnould 2007), and secondly aims to study consumers as social
actors who belong to a community and a family and who develop
interpersonal relationships (Bagozzi 2000; Cova 1997; Epp and
Price 2008; Penaloza and Venkatesch 2006).
The research questions underpinning this study are the following:
Parents resist these “obstacles” to protect their children from the
threat they represent. Surprisingly, resistance to a market threat is
expressed through consumption: parents invest more in “symbolic
resources” and in their domestic production. Finally, “Escape”
resources enable the parents to distance themselves from the role
of “carer/meal provider,” which they transfer onto the market.
This research suggests that mealtime consumption should be
studied from the family perspective rather than that of individual
consumption. Here, consumption is a resource (Arnould 2005)
which informs the production of a domestic metaphor. This change
in perspective (product versus resource) opens up potential new
research avenues for analysing food consumption. Moreover,
identifying “obstacle” resources in the ‘metaphoric’ preparation
of meals allows us to consider market resources not only as “value
propositions” (Vargo and Lusch 2004) but also as sources of “value
destruction.” This calls for new research to be developed on consumer resistance (Penaloza and Price 1993; Roux 2007) as a key
driver behind symbolic consumption. Finally, the identification of
“escape” resources contributes to Marcoux’s proposal concerning
tensions in the “gift economy” (2009).
1) What does meal production mean to parents today?
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2) How do parents use market resources to produce this
meaning?
Based on 4 focus groups and 21 in-depth interviews, together
with the use of projective collages (Belk, Ger, and Askegaard 2003),
43 informants from Latin cultural backgrounds (French, Italian and
Romand2) took part in the study (mothers or fathers with at least
one child aged 3 to 11 in their care). Using a phenomenological
approach, the participants were asked to describe their experiences
when preparing and taking part in family meals on an everyday basis.
Our study indicates that the act of “feeding” can be considered
through 4 metaphors: the “domestic chore,” the “child’s well-being,”
“family ties” and “discovery.” With regard to the “domestic chore”
metaphor, the informants allude to mechanics and chronometers.
The parent acts as a robot, devoid of affection or emotion, and their
discourse centres on the meal preparation. In the “child’s wellbeing” metaphor, the child is the focal point. What is considered
best for the child is the key driver, something that is very different
from pleasing the child. It is a largely female metaphor. In the
“family ties” metaphor, the source domain is that of passing time,
associated with biological rhythms. The meal is viewed as a family
activity which everyone contributes to. Finally, in the “discovery’
metaphor, the source domain is that of education. Learning to eat
is not simply an end in itself, but gives us a broader view of the
world that surrounds us. Furthermore, market resources take on
distinctive roles. We identified 3 main roles: symbolism, obstacles
and escape. Symbolic resources play a particularly important role as
they contribute directly to the production of the parent’s metaphor.
For example, organic products are considered as a “health” resource
to produce the “child’s well-being.” With Symbolic marketplace
resources, the parents engage in a co-construction of symbolic
meanings with the market (Penaloza and Venkatesh, 2006). On
the other hand, “obstacles” hinder the production of the metaphor.
This study is supported by the National Swiss Foundation.
French-speaking Swiss.
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