A Theory of Grocery Shopping Food, Choice and Conflict

by Koch, Shelley L.

• ISBN13: 9780857851512
• ISBN10: 0857851519
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-06-05
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Grocery shopping is an often ignored part of the story of how food ultimately gets to our pantry shelves and tables. A Theory of Grocery Shoppingexplores the social organization of grocery shopping by linking the lived experience of grocery shoppers and retail managers in the US with information transmitted by nutritionists, government employees, financial advisors, journalists, health care providers and marketers, who influence the way we think about and perform the work of shopping for a household's food. The author provides insight into the contradictory messages that shape how consumers provision their households, and details how consumers respond to these messages. The book challenges the consumer choice model that places responsibility on the shopper for making the "right" choice at the grocery store, thereby ignoring the larger social forces at work, which determine what products are available and how they get to the shelves.

Author Biography

Shelley L. Koch is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Assistant Director of the Masters of Arts program in Community and Organizational Leadership at Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia, USA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Institutional Ethnography: Using Texts to Examine the Individual-Institutional Connection	p. 5
Who and Why?	p. 7
The Economic and Social Context of Grocery Shopping	p. 13
The Household	p. 14
Food Experts	p. 17
Economic Institutions: Supermarket	p. 20
Supermarket Design	p. 22
Rise of Marketing and Advertising	p. 25
Consumer Sovereignty	p. 27
The Work of Grocery Shopping	p. 31
Planning	p. 32
Division of Labor	p. 37
At the Store	p. 40
Conclusion	p. 43
Shopping and the Nutrition Discourse	p. 45
Nutrition Knowledge	p. 47
Institutional Agents	p. 53
Examples of Nutrition Discourse	p. 55
Shopping for Nutrition	p. 58
Conclusion	p. 63
The Efficient Housewife Discourse	p. 65
Efficient Housewife Discourse	p. 69
Notes from Real Life	p. 74
Conclusion	p. 81
The Consumer Control Discourse	p. 85
Managers and Practice	p. 86
Advertisement Production	p. 90
The Food Show	p. 92
Know Your Customer	p. 93
Build Relationships	p. 96
Notes from Real Life	p. 99
Conclusion	p. 101
Competing Discourses and the Work of Food Shopping	p. 105
Discourses in Contradiction	p. 108
Social Organization of the Economy	p. 109
Gendered Economy	p. 110
Appendix	p. 113
Bibliography	p. 115
Index	p. 129
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