Brand local: Consumer evaluations as commodity activism on Yelp.com. (July 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kuehn, Kathleen M
• Is Part Of: Journal of consumer culture. Volume 17:Number 2(2017)
• Page Start: 205
• Page End: 224
• Publication Date: 2017-07
• Subjects: Commodity activism -- consumer citizenship -- localism -- branding -- neoliberalism -- consumer evaluations -- Yelp; Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Consumers -- Periodicals; 339.47
• DOI: 10.1177/1469540515586866
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1469-5405

Abstract

This project explores consumer evaluations on Yelp.com as "commodity activism" – the politicization of market activities for the purposes of social change and/or cultural resistance. A textual analysis of consumer evaluations (n = 1972) and interviews (n = 18) reveal that commodity activism on Yelp most commonly appears as a positive bias toward localism. Consumers discursively construct an aesthetic of authenticity around localism that functions in accordance with the logic of corporate branding; in turn, "brand local" is appropriated by reviewers as part of their own authentic "self-brand" grounded in the civic duty to one's community. The implications of this logic are critiqued against commodity activism's commitment to individual, personalized forms of self-empowerment over identification with larger collective and community struggles. In this sense, Yelp is favorable to neoliberal discourses of consumer capitalism, where consumption serves as a stand-in for citizenship and localism's political potential reconfigured in market terms.