Introduction to the special section: Tribal marketing after Covid

Abstract

This article introduces the special section, “Tribal Marketing After Covid: Consuming Together in an Age of Social Distance.” The authors trace the history of tribal marketing theory up until the present, ‘post-Covid' era, outlining each wave and some trajectories for future research. 

It is only now, when I have to avoid many of those who are close to me, that I fully experience their presence, their importance to me. (Žižek, 2020: p.3)

Marketing theories share much in common with viruses. First, they are communicable, spreading far and wide through global networks of social animals and the physical and digital surfaces they interact with. Second, they mutate as they move through hosts, taking on new forms to adapt to local conditions, surviving and thriving by becoming increasingly innocuous, taken-for-granted facts-of-life. Yet, every so often, an endemic theory or virus may suddenly transform, remerging on the global stage as a virulent threat to the status quo. Third, and by virtue of the first two characteristics, both viruses and marketing theories come and go in waves.

The first and second wave

Tribal conceptualisations are now endemic in marketing theory. While it could be claimed that Mafessoli’s (1996 [1988]) neo-tribal theory was patient zero, it was Cova’s (1997) call to consider linking value that transmitted tribal thinking into the marketing population. Certainly, there were other vectors of anti-individualist theorisation circulating at the time – Schouten and McAlexander’s (1995) subcultures of consumption went on to infect many minds with a concern for the communitarian, for instance – but many who read Cova (1997) contracted a new set of values. They feverishly sought out products, places, and other marketplace resources that could create and sustain interpersonal relationships, whether in the form of enduring groups or ephemeral gatherings (Cova and Cova, 2002).

Avi Shankar was an early victim of tribal thinking, going on to infect many others with his own works on convivial consumption (e.g. Cova et al., 2007; Goulding et al., 2009; Goulding et al., 2013; Mamali et al., 2018). In the cosine chronology of tribal theory, these works embodied a second wave of interest in tribal marketing theories. The first wave represented a consideration of collective consumption ripping through a community of scholars accustomed to the routine transmission of individualistic theories, and this second wave came as an act of consolidation, codifying different ‘variants’ of tribal thinking in an epistemic population where such ideas were now commonplace (Canniford, 2011; Goulding et al., 2013).

Certainly, some came into contact with tribal theory without showing symptoms of having been infected. For many, exposure was followed by fever and gradual normalisation. In both cases, however, a herd immunity emerged. The term ‘tribe’ was no longer as salient as it once was, still circulating in the background but now competing with new viral ideas. After spending time in airports with global nomads (Bardhi et al., 2012) and coming into contact with the shared surfaces of access-based car rentals (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2012), it was perhaps unsurprising that Bardhi and Eckhardt (2017) brought liquid consumption as a kind of a new pandemic in marketing thought. By stressing that the desire to connect is dissolving under the precarious pressures and pleasures of late modernity, Bardhi and Eckhardt’s (2017) idea threatened to compete with tribal thinking, perhaps to the point of the latter's extinction.

At the same time, the polarising events of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump have been associated with the emergence of political tribes (Chua, 2018). In present-day discourse the term ‘tribalism’ is increasingly associated with passion and kinship but also self-segregation, structural apathy, and the stigmatisation of out-group ‘Others’. Against the feverish theories of earlier tribal waves, this more sober conceptualisation of tribalism might be thought of as a vaccine of sorts. Those who took two or more doses of this discourse soon became inoculated to the celebratory postmodernism that had so troubled the status quo (Cova et al., 2013), instead pushing a post-postmodern perspective that might transform tribalism into an innocuous ideation, one which circulates widely but is barely noticed.

Enter a novel coronavirus. It is uncontroversial to state that the emergence of Covid-19 called almost everything into question. On the one hand, government lockdowns forced many millions of people to stay at home, with coffee shops, bars, and other ‘third places’ closed. By losing access to others, it became clear that meaningful connections and embodied experiences still had value in contemporary market societies. As we were all implored to remain ‘socially distant’, an interpersonal link (even with a masked stranger at the supermarket) could become more valuable than ever. On the other (alcohol-doused) hand, social links now carried with them the very real fear of pathogens, potentially creating anti-tribal paranoias that countered desires to connect. The creation of vaccines also created a vehement ‘anti-vax’ movement, a movement constituted by the linking value of platforms and events that facilitated contact with other conspirators. However, there was also an avoidance of links, with those whose blood was ‘chipped’ by Bill Gates, with needles and other objects like masks. Politics became more polarised, ideology more intense, making it unclear whether the tribe of mask-wearing, socially responsible, stay-at-home consumers could ever be reconciled with the opposing hyper-libertarian, anti-societal but pro-social tribe who thought them ‘sheep’ or ‘dupes’.

The third wave?

Tribal thinking was ‘troubled’ by these recent events, in the Butlerian (Butler, 1990) sense that working assumptions become the object of direct and detailed consideration. As such, there was a need for papers taking a critical tribal perspective, papers that are willing to deconstruct the postmodern trope of tribalism in order to reconstruct neo-tribal theory for the post-postmodern zeitgeist of radical realism (Cova et al., 2013). Papers that pay attention to the role of markets and marketing were particularly important at a time when face-to-face service industries are facing an existential crisis (e.g. airlines and hospitality) while other companies see their stocks soar (e.g. Amazon).

Covid-19 created novel relationships between markets, as demonstrated when the Pfizer-BioNTech press releases caused the value of Zoom to plummet (Monica, 2020), but it also disentangled long-established synergies, as shown by the declining fortunes of city-centre food providers as office employees worked from home (Ford, 2020). As ever, the changing character of tribal tendencies are intimately entwined into broader market structures, requiring papers that consider the first-hand phenomenological experience of Covid-19 but also the broader ‘context of contexts’ that shape market societies during a pandemic (Askegaard and Linnet, 2011). For instance, governments responded to the pandemic with unprecedented state interventions that challenge the neoliberal status quo and highlight how free markets are a choice rather than an irrefutable fact of life (Žižek, 2020). As a consequence, Covid-19 elucidated the ideological contours of the market and opened up spaces for more critical research to take place (Fitchett et al., 2014), but it also highlighted the challenges with formulating alternatives to the status quo (Coffin and Egan-Wyer, 2022).

Marketing Theory has long been the home of critical tribal studies, publishing papers that challenge scholars to keep tribal thinking fresh rather than succumb to the ossification of orthodoxy (e.g. Cova, 2005; O’Reilly, 2012; Jones, 2020), as well as papers that explore the shadowy sides of tribal phenomena (e.g. Cova and Dalli, 2009; Cova et al., 2011; Sinclair and Dolan, 2015; Wickstrom et al., 2020). At this critical juncture and in this critical outlet, we called for papers that addressed how tribal thinking may need to be transformed to respond to markets in the era of Covid-19 and after. In effect, we were trying to induce a third wave of tribal thinking. The original deadline was December 2021, in the wake of Covid-19, while at the present time of writing, the pandemic has largely passed. Yet, we are now living in an endemic context, with new, post-Covid concerns (a war in Europe, the cost of living crisis, etc.) and the threat of new pandemics percolating in the background (e.g. zoonotic transmission from Avian flu). The prognosis of market societies remains unclear – much seems to have returned to normal, in some cases with enthusiasm (such as festivals and nightlife), but much else seems irreversibly changed (like home working and online meetings).

Similarly, the four published papers emerge at a time when the largest Covid and tribal waves have passed and new variations are less disruptive by comparison. Similarly again, it is unclear whether these four papers represent a false alarm or an early indication of a full-blown third wave of tribal thinking. A third similarity is that these papers document how much about tribal theory is changed by Covid-19 but also how much is unchanged. The first paper by Murphy et al. (2022) focusses on how boring Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns could be. However, the resulting theorisation is anything but dull. Drawing on Heidegger, the authors argue that while most boredom is superficial and could be easily satisfied if consumers have access to accelerating connectivity, there is also a more profound form of boredom that challenges us to reflect, existentially, on who we are and how new forms of tribalism might change our selfhood. While Murphy et al. (2022) focus on the theme of technology – a theme that loomed large in the public discourse during the pandemic – it could be said that the other three papers focussed on other responses to pandemic-induced boredom.

Hietala (2022) investigated quarantine art, where consumers created or recreated artworks using materials available at home. This was a tribal phenomenon because social media afforded connections, however fleeting, to others online. While this certainly relieved boredom, Hietala adopts a feminist approach to explore the ways in which these art pieces challenge traditional representations of femininity and care, affording new aesthetic and subjective possibilities in the post-postmodern era through the creation of novel virtual tribes. Schwarz et al. (2022) also studied online tribalism, but here in the form of digital nomadism where Covid-19 represented an existential threat to this mobile, sociable lifestyle. They make the point that digital nomads are already well-versed navigators of social and geographical complexity, but the virus posed far more difficult challenges to those who are usually able to connect and disconnect at will. They focus on the ways in which Covid-19 changed the role of materiality in providing links across time and space. As materiality is traditionally associated with the tactile immediacy of physical interaction, this reconceptualisation is not only pertinent to global nomads but also everyone forced to negotiate the liquidity of modern times – that is, almost all of us to some degree. Their work responds affirmatively to Bardhi and Eckhardt's (2017) open question about whether liquid consumption and tribal connections can sit on the same spectrum.

Fuschillo and D’Antone (2022) also reconceptualise a traditionally close-contact concept, solidarity. While social theory has long recognised solidarity across borders, online, and in imagined communities, it retains a sense of the face-to-face social connectivity that Covid-19 (in many cases, cruelly) disrupted. The solidarity of community was fractured by conspiracy theories, by families forced apart by social distancing, and by diasporas struggling with disrupted travel. Yet, Fuschillo and D’Antone focus on an Italian counter-case, an instance of a network that generated solidarity despite, and perhaps because of, the lack of solidarity elsewhere. Questioning the extant emphasis on the ‘community’ concept in consumer research, the more flexible theorising of tribal linking proves a powerful means through which to explore how Spesasospesa.org navigates the antitheses of anti/structure into something that solders people together. As intimated above, this and the other papers could all be read as varying responses to the boredom induced by Covid-related lockdowns, an expression of tribal necessity in an era where socialising could be dangerous. However, they could also be read as attempts to rethink traditionally embodied and emplaced concepts (femininity, materiality, and solidarity) for more ‘hybrid’ times.

The future of tribal marketing theory: pandemic, endemic, or something else?

The question remains, is this the start of a third wave for tribal marketing theory, or the petering out of a now-endemic viral idea? It seems that the postmodern cultural and intellectual climate in which tribal theory gestated is now over (Cova et al., 2013). Yet, the shock of Covid-19 showed how many tribal themes remain relevant to understanding contemporary consumption and market systems. Even where the tribal metaphor is not explicitly evoked, many marketing scholars write about products and services that can spark conversations or maintain relationships (á la Cova, 1997), or consumer conviviality that coalesces into new brands and organisations (much like Cova and White, 2012; Mamali et al., 2018). More diffuse tribal precepts, such as the blurring of production and consumption through tribal prosumption or consumer work (Cova and Cova, 2012; Cova and Dalli, 2009; Cova et al., 2011), have become accepted axioms of theoretical perspectives ostensibly counterpoised to tribal theories, such as liquid consumption (Bardhi and Eckhardt, 2017). Then again, it may be that the desire for another wave of feverish interest should be considered less desirable than an established, ambient, circulation of ideas and their variants.

Perhaps the viral metaphor has run its course. The Covid-19 pandemic certainly drove innovation and provided many with an opportunity to reflect on their lives and the societies that they lived in, but at the same time it led to much death and destruction (e.g. the vast mountains of plastic generated by masks, alcohol gel bottles, and the like). Perhaps post-Covid tribal theory should run in metaphoric parallel to some other phenomenon. To return to Hietala (2022), perhaps the post-modern feminist art that we saw during lockdown may provide an alternative model: embracing long-standing tropes with renewed vigour, carrying forward the best of tribal phenomena whilst seeking ways to diminish their darker sides. Whatever the future of tribal marketing theory, we look forward to being able to discuss it with readers, in person.