Re-Mapping Power for Critical Marketing and Consumer Research

Power has a prominent role in the organization and legitimacy of marketing theory and practice ( Denegri-Knott et al., 2006 ; Smith, 1987 ). Most notably, power underpins notions of consumer sovereignty, which frame and legitimize the marketing function. It has also gained analytical purchase as a conceptual vehicle through which critically inclined marketing and consumer researchers can expose inequalities produced and maintained by marketing and markets more generally. That prominence has not always been adequately matched with an effort to come to terms with the various intellectual bases that inform its study. Mostly, power continues to be reduced to heuristic simplifications and ambiguous epithets. This makes any attempts to draw comparisons difficult. Even more challenging is undertaking the kind of theoretical development required to elevate the study of power in marketing into a programmatic area of research. In a remedial effort, this chapter re-visits an integrative framework of consumer power proposed by Denegri-Knott et al. (2006) for the purpose of redefining boundaries in the study of power for marketing and consumer research, surveying the state of research to date, and suggesting new directions for research. The chapter offers an entrée for those new to the study of power, and for the more familiarized reader, it provides a hopefully useful point of reference and departure.