Marketing objects as talking machines: The performative capacity of product packages

Abstract

In this paper, I extend the established concept of performativity by focusing on the origins and micro-level interactional strategies of marketing objects. In product markets wherein face-to-face interactions between buyers and sellers are impossible, profit-seeking firms depend upon marketing objects—and on their packaging stories—to interact with buyers. While much research focuses on the particular effects of performative marketing objects on consumers, I explore the conditions required for such effects to emerge. In this project, I employ a richly descriptive case study design by focusing on a transnational specialty food firm based in Indonesia and examining the complete collection of food product packages ( N = 81) that communicate with buyers on behalf of its products for sale. I understand marketing practices as helping to create the phenomena they allegedly describe, and thus contribute to object-oriented marketing theory through a dramaturgical analysis of packaging talk.