“To Spanx or not to Spanx”: How objects that carry contradictory institutional logics trigger identity conflict for consumers

Abstract

Despite claims supporting its relevance, the role of objects as carriers of institutional logics has been overlooked in marketing research. This study examines how the extended materiality of consumption objects—that is, the material substances, designer intentions, and marketing efforts objectified in them—may trigger identity conflict for consumers, particularly when such objects are carriers of contradictory institutional logics. We collected and analyzed qualitative data on body-shaping undergarments (i.e., shapewear), which carry the contradictory logics of constricted femininity and flexible feminism. We explain how the extended materiality of shapewear creates intimate tension for consumers by interfering with how consumers relate to their own bodies and to other people, thereby prompting identity conflict.

Introduction

Institutional logics are socially constructed, supra-organizational patterns through which social reality acquires meaning by producing and reproducing material and symbolic practices (Friedland & Alford, 1991; Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). Consumption objects are infused with institutional logics (Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli, 2015; Slater, 2014) and transmit them through their usage in diverse functions and routines, thereby acting as institutional carriers (Scott, 2003). As marketers attempt to secure legitimacy for their products in markets that are characterized by multiple sources of institutional pressures (Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli, 2015), they offer consumption objects that carry contradictory institutional logics. The sorts of tensions and conflicts that such injunctions can cause for individuals has not received sufficient attention, with the exception being a few studies considering marginalized individuals (e.g., Creed, DeJordy, & Lok, 2010). This study contributes to addressing this gap by examining the conflicts for consumers that emerge from engaging with objects whose materiality carries contradictory institutional logics.

Institutional theorists have recently manifested interest in understanding artifacts in their roles as institutional carriers (Scott, 2003). Friedland (2018), for instance, proposes the concept of institutional objects to refer to artifacts that are connected with social systems, embody social complexities, and contribute to transmitting values and beliefs through their physical properties (Jones, Meyer, Jancsary, & Höllerer, 2017). These conceptualizations have sparked interest among institutional theorists in developing understandings of the agentic role of materials in maintaining institutional orders or enabling institutional change (Monteiro & Nicolini, 2014).

This emerging stream of research at the intersection of institutional theory and material studies falls in line with an expanding literature in marketing that examines the agentic role of objects in consumer culture (e.g., Epp & Price, 2009; Martin & Schouten, 2014). An understanding of extended materiality, recently advocated by Ferreira and Scaraboto (2016) in the Journal of Business Research, provides a useful perspective for considering the role of consumption objects as institutional agents. By paying particular attention to designers' intentions, marketing efforts, and the consumer's sensorial and physical interactions with the material substances that constitute consumption objects, Ferreira and Scaraboto (2016) note the emergence of a creative space in the interaction between consumers and objects where consumer identity work is triggered.

Despite such advancements, neither stream of research has examined how extended materiality—understood as a combination of the tangible material aspects and symbolic meanings that constitute an object—acts as a carrier of institutional pressures and how, as such, it can interfere with identity projects. Considering prior research suggesting that institutional contradictions are resolved through embodied identity work (Creed et al., 2010) and that identity conflict precedes identity work (e.g., Wright, Nyberg, & Grant, 2012), we ask: How do objects that carry contradictory institutional logics trigger identity conflict for consumers?

To address this research question, we examine consumer interactions with body-shaping undergarments, also known as shapewear. Shapewear includes several forms of constructed undergarments that compress or enhance body parts. The history of shapewear can be traced back to the Victorian corset, and the object has been involved in multiple controversies related to the role of the female body and its place in the world (Humphreys, 2010; Zanette & Scaraboto, 2018). Shapewear garments are marketers' response to institutional pressures related to the role of women and their bodies in society (Entwistle, 2015; Zanette & Scaraboto, 2018). Consequently, these objects carry in them contradictory logics: the logic of constricted femininity, which subjugates female agency to restrictive boundaries by imposing physical and symbolic constraints on the female body, and the logic of flexible feminism, which promotes female empowerment as facilitated by market resources by claiming to reconcile body acceptance and confidence with contemporary beauty standards.

There is accumulating evidence suggesting that it may be challenging for consumers to experience these salient contradictory logics. Such challenges are manifest in detailed blog posts, videos, and discussions shared online by individual consumers; condemnations of the practice by body-positive movements (Gurrieri & Cherrier, 2013; Harju & Huovinen, 2015; Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013); and public mockery of shapewearing in mainstream media outlets (Goddard, 2017). As such, consumer engagement with shapewear provides a rich context in which to examine how objects carry contradictory institutional logics and the consequences thereof.

Our dataset consists of a long-term netnographic study of online communities dedicated to the intersection between body positivity and fashion, interviews with consumers who wear shapewear, and archival data from media outlets that directly or indirectly discuss shapewear. Our findings show how the extended materiality of shapewear carries contradictory institutional logics and explain how the material substances, designers' intentions, and marketing efforts objectified in shapewear provoke consumers who interact with these objects at an intimate level by interfering with their relationship with and understanding of their own bodies. We demonstrate how these uncomfortable interactions lead some consumers to perceive an incongruence between their identity projects and their wearing of shapewear, thereby experiencing identity conflict.

Our contributions to the literature are as follows. First, we contribute to neoinstitutional theory by adding to the recent stream of research focusing on micro-level analysis that starts to unveil how individuals perceive, experience, and engage in dialogue with institutions. By demonstrating how the extended materiality of objects manifests contradictory institutional logics, we introduce consumer–object interactions as an essential aspect in explaining how individual consumers experience institutional contradictions.

Second, we build upon Ferreira and Scaraboto (2016), who conceptualize extended materiality but do not examine the role of objects as institutional carriers. In doing so, we extend the understanding of objects as institutional carriers (Scott, 2003). We account for how the designers' intentions, marketing efforts, and materials that constitute a consumption object enact and enforce contradictory institutional logics that lead consumers who interact with that object to experience identity conflict.

Finally, our study calls researchers' attention to the body as a site where institutional contradictions are manifested. As consumers try on, wear, and take off shapewear garments, these objects and consumers' bodies interact to reveal the incompatible demands of the contradictory logics of constricted femininity and flexible feminism.

In the following sections, we briefly review relevant research on institutional contradictions and identity conflict, present our methods, introduce the case of the contradictory logics of contemporary shapewear, and trace our analysis of how extended materiality triggers identity conflict for shapewear consumers. We then discuss the implications of our findings for institutional theory and consumer research.