Consumer Fetish: Commercial Ethnography and the Sovereign Consumer

Abstract

What is the sovereign consumer that occupies such a central role in organizational discourse whose satisfaction has become an organizational imperative? Our research draws from extended fieldwork in the world of commercial ethnography. Our analysis shows how ethnography is implicated in the organizational fetishization of consumers, that is, how in the process of understanding and managing markets, a quasi-magical fascination with amalgams of consumer voices, images, and artefacts comes about. We offer several contributions. First, we demonstrate the pertinence of (primarily anthropological) theories of the fetish to organizational sensemaking. Second, we describe a distinctive process of organizational market sensemaking that is sensuous, magical, and analogical. Third, we offer a subtle critique of commercial ethnography, a popular research practice that aims to bring ‘real’ consumers to life inside the firm.