This essay examines the relationship between commercial branding and American consumer identity, focusing on the phenomenon of entertainment brand-specific retail stores. Drawing on James Twitchell's critique of manufactured identity and Diamond et al.'s sociocultural branding research on American Girl Place, the paper argues that consumers are neither purely passive recipients nor fully autonomous agents in branded environments. Through analysis of stores like American Girl and the Disney Store, the essay explores how themed retail spaces invite consumers to co-create identity and meaning, while also raising questions about corporate direction of play, consumption, and cultural values.
This study guide is drawn from PaperDue's library of 130,000+ paper examples across 47 subjects.
The paper demonstrates effective source synthesis: rather than summarizing each source in isolation, the writer places Twitchell and Diamond et al. in explicit dialogue, using each to interrogate the other's assumptions. This creates an argument that is more than a report — it takes a position on the complexity of consumer-brand relationships.
The essay opens with an attention-grabbing cultural example before introducing its central tension. It then walks through Twitchell's critique, complicates it with Diamond et al.'s findings on entertainment brand stores, and applies those findings to the specific case of American Girl Place. The conclusion is brief but appropriately measured, resisting a fully resolved thesis in favor of a nuanced takeaway about consumer agency.
What do you think when you see someone riding in a car that proudly displays a bumper sticker reading: "My other car is a Harley?" Media critic James B. Twitchell would likely shake his head and sigh, noting how the corporate giant was getting free advertising through a bumper sticker that the driver had paid for with his or her own money. Nina Diamond, Mary Ann McGrath, Albert Muniz, Stefania Borghini, and Robert Kozinets, writing in the Journal of Marketing, might counter that the consumer was "getting something" from the experience of buying and using the bumper sticker — namely, access to a cultural identity as a Harley-Davidson consumer.
Twitchell would see such a status as a manufactured identity. But in their 2009 article "American Girl and the Brand Gestalt: Closing the Loop on Sociocultural Branding Research," Diamond et al. argue that consumers are never merely the passive recipients of marketing; rather, they use marketing images for their own purposes. For example, "in Harley-Davidson stores… women who ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles subvert the hyper-masculinity that is integral to the brand, as well as female gender stereotypes, to create meanings" that challenge American gender norms and the brand norm in conjunction — by using the tropes of Harley-Davidson in an ironic fashion, often paired with hyper-feminine gear (Diamond et al. 2009, p. 120).
"There is really no great difference between Evian and Mountain Spring, Colgate and Crest, Miller and Budweiser, Ford and Chevrolet," argues James Twitchell in his essay "But First a Word from Our Sponsors." What is "different" is the advertising and the branding of such products. America has given consumers an array of inexpensive goods and little more than an array of homogenized identities that can be bought (Twitchell 2009, p. 560). In support of this view, it sometimes seems as if the smaller the difference between rival brands — such as Coke vs. Pepsi — the more passionate an American consumer's brand loyalties are likely to be. Even more insidious, says Twitchell, is how major brands have gotten consumers to do part of the work themselves (such as busing their own tables at McDonald's and pumping their own gas at Exxon) while the price paid for enjoying the brand continues to rise.
Twitchell portrays a world where marketers are in perpetual search of new markets, a world driven by branding in everything from radio, to television, to the Internet. Yet it could be argued that consumers are not simply ignoring advertising — in some cases, they are actively soliciting it. TiVo and DVR allow consumers to edit out advertising content in ways they were unable to in the past, yet consumers are simultaneously paying to advertise brands in addition to paying for the products themselves. This can be seen in everything from people wearing M&M t-shirts to buying Coca-Cola bears as Christmas presents, despite the growth of corporate sponsorship in every facet of modern life. Clearly, consumers feel that a brand "says" something about them, and have yet to reach the super-saturation level one might expect.
In the particular phenomenon explored in the Diamond et al. article, marketers have taken consumer engagement one step further by creating brand store "experiences." This began with the Disney Store, but has since expanded to include newer brands such as American Girl, where the target consumer — a middle school girl — and her mother can watch plays featuring the brand's dolls, eat at the American Girl Café, and purchase paraphernalia related to the doll. "Brilliantly designed and executed, American Girl Place consists of three sales floors, comprising 35,000 square feet of back-to-the-future retroscape ambiance. Inside can be found museum-like dioramas, a theater, a café, a doll hair salon, and lounging areas designed to facilitate interaction among shoppers and the examination and use of products" (Diamond 2009, p. 119).
Diamond et al. (2009) argue that entertainment brands such as American Girl and the Disney Store hold a unique power — not simply to encourage consumers to buy a product, but also to foster consumer creativity. They suggest that, as a result, identity exists in dialogue with the corporation and is not merely manipulated by the seller. Consumers are crafting their own unique image as they consciously choose to "brand" themselves. In these "themed flagship brand stores" offering "spectacular environments… far from being overwhelmed or coerced by the sign-rich context, consumers use the retail environment as a stage on which to perform, enthusiastically enacting the brand and cocreating the spectacle. Therefore, emplacement is reconceptualized as a shared endeavor, with the marketer ceding considerable freedom to consumers" (Diamond 2009, p. 120).
Branding, while not necessarily to be embraced, may not be as insidious as some media critics believe in all contexts. In an entertainment-driven store, the consumer is not a purely passive object, even if he or she is subject to marketing. Brands shape our environment and our identity, but consumers also "talk back" to brands and use brands as individualized human entities.
You’re 67% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 1 section.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.