Craig Thompson

J. Craig Thompson is the Gilbert and Helen Churchill Professor in the Marketing Department of the Wisconsin School of Business.

His research focuses on issues related to the use of qualitative methodologies in marketing, gender differences among consumers, media effects on consumer perceptions and body images, consumer satisfaction, and the symbolic aspects of consumer behavior.

Craig has published articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Advances in Consumer Research. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.

His teaching interests are in the area of consumer behavior, research methodology, marketing theory, and retail management.

Thompson received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Tennessee.

He has been awarded the 2013 Erwin A. Gaumnitz Distinguished Faculty Research Award by the Wisconsin School of Business, and the 2014 Distinguished Marketing Scholar Award by the Society for Marketing Advances (SMA).

Selected Accepted Journal Articles

• Tambyah, S. & Thompson, C. (2012). Social Branding and the Mythic Re-Invention of Ethnic Identity,”. Identity and Consumption, 326-335.
• Thompson, C. Cooperative Networks, Participatory Markets, and Rhizomatic Resistance: Situating Plenitude within Contemporary Political-economy Debates,. Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plenitude: Case Studies of the New Economy,, 233-249.

Selected Published Journal Articles

• Thompson, C. & Giesler, M. (2016). Process Theorization in Cultural Consumer Research. Journal of Consumer Research (43), 497-508.
• Thompson, C. & Ustuner, T. (2015). Women Skating on the Edge: Marketplace Performances as Ideological Edgework. Journal of Consumer Research (42), 235-265.
• Thompson, C. (2015). “Out of Morris Holbrook’s Aesthetics of Consumption Symbolism”. Legends in Marketing—Morris Holbrook, Volume 9, Qualitative Methods, Part II: Symbolic Consumer Behavior or Consumption Symbolism, ed. Alan Bradshaw, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, forthcoming., 457-462.
• Thompson, C. & Humphreys, A. (2014). “Branding Disaster: Re-establishing Trust through the Ideological Containment of Systemic Risk Anxieties. Journal of Consumer Research (41), 877-901.
• Thompson, C. (2014). Practicing Plenitude: An Introduction,”. Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plenitude: Case Studies of the New Economy,, 1-25.
• Thompson, C. (2014). Russ Belk’s (Belkian) Perspective on Discipline and Liberation in Consumption: A Convergence of the Cosmopolitan and the Carnivalesque —Editor’s Introduction,”. Legends in Consumer Behavior—Russell Belk, Vol. 9: Discipline and Liberation in Consumption
• Thompson, C. (2014). “How Community Supported Agriculture Facilitates a Re-embedding and Re-territorializing of Sustainable Consumption Practices. Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plenitude: Case Studies of the New Economy,, 125-147.
• Thompson, C. & Arnould, E. (2014). Writing Consumer Culture, Writing B-School,”. Sourcebook of Anthropology in Business, 116-134.
• Thompson, C. & Anrould, E. & Giesler, M. (2013). Discursivity, Difference, and the Destabilizing Departures of Dirty Theory: Genealogical Reflections on the CCT Heteroglossia. Marketing Theory (13), 149-174. doi: 10.1177/1470593113477889.
• Coskuner-Balli, G. & Thompson, C. (2013). The Status Costs of Subordinate Cultural Capital: At-Home Fathers’ Collective Pursuit of Cultural Legitimacy through Capitalizing Consumption Practices. Journal of Consumer Research (40), 19-41. doi: 10.1086/668640.
• Thompson, C. & Ustuner, T. (2012). How Marketplace Performances Produce Interdependent Status Games and Contested Forms of Symbolic Capital. Journal of Consumer Research (38), 796-814. doi: 10.1086/660815.
• Thompson, C. (2011). Understanding Consumption as Political and Moral Practice. Journal of Consumer Culture (11), 139-144. doi: 10.1177/1469540511403892.
• Arsel, Z. & Thompson, C. (2011). Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect their Field-Dependent Capital from Devaluing Marketplace Myths. Journal of Consumer Research (37), 791-806. doi: 10.1086/656389.
• Thompson, C. (2010). Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand- Mediated Moral Conflict. Journal of Consumer Research (36), 1016-1032. doi: 10.1086/644761.
• Thompson, C. (2008). Reconstructing the South: How Commercial Myths Compete for Identity Value through the Ideological Shaping of Popular Memories and Countermemories. Journal of Consumer Research (34), 595-613. doi: 10.1086/520076.
• Thompson, C. & Coskuner-Balli, G. (2007). Countervailing Market Responses to Corporate Co-optation and the Ideological Recruitment of Consumption Communities. Journal of Consumer Research (34), 135-152. doi: 10.1086/519143.
• Thompson, C. (2007). Enchanting Ethical Consumerism: The Case of Community Supported Agriculture. Journal of Consumer Culture (7), 275-300. doi: 10.1177/1469540507081631.
• Thompson, C. (2007). A Carnivalesque Approach to the Politics of Consumption. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (408), 112-125. doi: 10.1177/0002716207299303.
• Thompson, C. The Politics of Consumer Identity Work. Journal of Consumer Research (40), iii-vi.

Presentations

Consumer Culture Theory Conference ( 2017 ) Beyond Consumer Responsibilization: Actually Existing Neoliberal Governmentality and the Production of Ethical Authority in Political Consumerism

Annual consumer culture theory conference ( 2016 ) Craving Identity: Towards a Reflexive Sociology of Taste

Association for Consumer Research ( 2016 ) Political Consumerism as Neoliberal Therapy: The Case of Slow Food

Consumer Culture Theory Conference ( 2015 ) The Politics of Consumer Nostalgia: How the Slow Food Movement Constructs its Cultural Authority

Society for Marketing Advances Annual conference ( 2014 ) Consumer Culture Theory: A Reflection on the Branding of Identity

American Sociological Association Annual Conference ( 2014 ) Can Market Based Alternatives be Transformative?: Plenitude, Participatory Markets, and Rhizomatic Resistance

9th annual Consumer Culture theory Conference ( 2014 ) Hegemonic Masculinity and the Ideological Allure of Retrosexual Marketplace Myths

American Sociological Association Annual Conference ( 2014 ) Thompson, Craig J. and Juliet Schor (2014), "Can Market Based Alternatives be Transformative?: Plenitude, Participatory Markets, and Rhizomatic Resistance

Invited Seminar ( 2013 ) Becoming a Derby Grrrrl: Marketplace Performativities and the Normalization of Gender Transgression

( 2013 ) Becoming a Derby Grrrrl: Marketplace Performativities and the Normalization of Gender Transgression

7th annual Consumer Culture Theory Conference ( 2012 ) Oil Spills as Disaster Myths: Grotesque Realism in Postmodern Consumer Culture

Social Innovations for Sustainable Lifestyle Symposium ( 2011 ) How Community Supported Agriculture Facilitates a Re-embedding and Re-territorializing Vision of Sustainable Consumption

2010 European Conference of the Association of Consumer Research, ( 2010 ) How Servicescape Figurations Mediate Socio-cultural Differences Between Consumers and Aesthetic Labourers

5th Annual Consumer Culture Theory conference ( 2010 ) “Three Waves of CCT: On Transcending Anachronistic Rhetorical Conventions

Undergraduate Courses

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305), Spring 2005.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305), Spring 2004.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305), Spring 2004.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305), Fall 2002.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305), Fall 2002.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305), Spring 2002.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305 Section 1), Spring 2010.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305 Section 2), Spring 2010.

Consumer Beahvior (MKT 305 Section 2), Spring 2007.

Consumer Behavior (MKT 305 Section 1), Spring 2008.

Graduate Courses

Seminar-Marketing PhD (MKT 972), Spring 2006.

Seminar-Marketing PhD (MKT 972), Spring 2004.

Seminar-Marketing PhD (MKT 972), Spring 2002.

Seminar-Marketing PhD (MKT 972 Section 1), Spring 2010.

Seminar-Marketing PhD (MKT 972 Section 1), Spring 2008.

Qualitatively-Based Marketing Insights (MKT 805), Spring 2005.

Qualitatively-Based Marketing Insights (MKT 805 Section 1), Spring 2007.

Contemporary Topics (MKT 765), Spring 2001.

Contemporary Topics (MKT 765), Fall 2005.

Contemporary Topics (MKT 765), Spring 2005.

Contemporary Topics (MKT 765), Fall 2002.

Professional Organizations

Journal of Consumer Research

Editorial and Reviewing Activities

Journal of Consumer Research - June 2011 - June 2017 Associate Editor

Journal of Consumer Culture - Since January 0001 Special Issue Editor