“Marketing and Meat-a-physics: Managing an Appetite for Meaning in Modern Consumer Society”

Abstract

The following dissertation will raise the the question of the role that meaning and culture plays in consumption in general and meat consumption in particular.
It will pursue the notion that culture, understood as the concepts and actions humans use to construct our world, is underdeveloped in marketing, and marketing on the other hand has been starved for anthropological attention.
After looking at some of the symbolism related to meats cultural status of the issues that modern meat consumption presents, it will go on to inspect the emergence of a new industry that seeks to solve these issues by disrupting the existing livestock industry through technological food innovation. At the end, it will introduce the question of culture and meaning to ask whether this emerging industry, needs to incorporate a deeper understanding of culture in its’ marketing strategies.