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Abstract
Brands are integral to contemporary marketing practice. Notwithstanding their ubiquitous presence in marketing, the question of what brands do in the shaping markets remains understudied. We examine the brand as a market shaping device which acts within, and alongside, its world to actualise the reality envisioned. We base on ethnographic material on the Good African brand and on a performative text authored by the entrepreneur behind the Good African brand, to explore the unfolding agencement (brand world) and reveal the brand’s performativity achieved.
Acknowledgements
The authors are very thankful to the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and constructive comments which helped to shape this paper, and acknowledge Professor Luis Araujo of Lancaster University Management School for his insightful advice.
Notes
From 1st November 2014, affiliation details of Dr Winfred Ikiring Onyas are as follows: School of Management, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK.
1 This is somewhat similar to Sherry’s (Citation1998) notion of the brandscape, which is commonly understood to refer to consumers’ active constructions of personal meanings and lifestyle orientations from the symbolic resources provided by an array of brands (Thompson & Arsel, Citation2004). However, we extend this spatial conceptualisation of the brandscape to conceive its configuration as an assemblage including multiple actors, including consumers, retailers marketing professionals and producers (Cochoy, Citation2008).
2 Pseudonyms are used to protect the identities of the participants, villages and Producer Organisations.
3 GAC only buys coffee during the harvest seasons which take place twice a year: The main season (in August–December) and the fly crop season (in March–May).
4 ‘Profit-share commitment to our farmers’ is not verifiable in this study.
5 Farmers in the Kasese district have grown coffee since the early 1900s when the crop was introduced in Uganda. Prior to GAC’s entrance into the market, the farmers were producing only unwashed coffee (using dry processing methods/the dry method), which they sold to various middlemen (including small and large traders and exporters’ agents). Dry processing involves drying coffee cherries under the sun immediately after harvesting. The dried cherries are then hulled in order to remove the husks and reveal the green beans. With wet processing, the farmers pulp cherries immediately after harvest. Pulping removes the skin off the fresh coffee cherries revealing parchment, which is then fermented, washed and dried. GAC buys the dried parchment from the farmers, which they then hull at factory in Kampala to reveal the green beans. The beans are then roasted and packed, ready for export.
6 Tabu based on his previous experience working with international aid agencies to form the 50-member farmer groups, explaining that the agencies preferred to channel assistance to farmer groups and not to individual farmers.
7 Pulpers are manually operated machines which remove the skin off coffee cherries revealing coffee beans enclosed in parchment covering.
8 GAC sourced about 200 pulpers (specialist machinery for wet processing coffee), donations from an international development agency, which they distributed to farmers – one pulper per farmer group. Tabu invited the farmer group leaders to the GAC field office to collect their pulpers and demonstrated to them how to operate the machinery. The farmers produced the first consignment of parchment in March 2005, marking the first buying season for GAC. In a joint effort involving GAC, an international environmental agency and (the respective farmers), two central processing stores were constructed at two farmer group locations including the Kitante homestead.
9 Although the traders typically buy unwashed coffee, they also buy parchment which fails to pass GAC’s quality standards. Unlike GAC which considers the quality and type of coffee produced by farmers, what counts for the traders is the volumes of coffee bought.
10 Parchment coffee attracts a higher price in the world market. These prices are set globally at the New York coffee futures market.
11 GAC only reveals their price at the start of the buying season. This price prevails for only the respective harvest season and changes in the subsequent buying season.
12 The exchange rate from UGX to the US dollar ($), euro (€) and British pound (£) at the time of data collection (August 2010) are as follows: UGX 1000 = $0.45 = €0.34 = £0.28.
13 Coffee prices in the world market are highly volatile. This directly affects the local prices of parchment and unwashed coffee. Whereas GAC provides a price cushion for farmers, the buyers of unwashed coffee do not.
14 The pulpers are scarce, with one pulper being shared by 50 farmers in a PO. At NPO, most farmers have to walk long distances on mountainous terrain to the processing store to access the pulper.
15 The Uganda Co-operative Savings and Credit Union (Citation2014) defines a SACCO as: A ‘unique, democratic, member driven and self-help co-operative organisation. In a SACCO, members agree to save their money together and offer loans to each other at reasonable rates of interest. Interest is charged on loans, to cover the interest cost on savings and the cost of administration’. According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives (Citation2013), SACCOs form the largest registered cooperative societies in Uganda (40%).
16 Although the plan was to have one SACCO per sub-county, GAC merged two sub-counties because they were too small, and helped to create one SACCO for them.
17 In the August–December 2010 season, this was only 2% of GAC’s price.
18 The traders offer mortgages to farmers particularly during the off-season when there is no income forthcoming from GAC. The mortgages present a substitute source of income for farmers, posing a major threat to the SACCOs. When the SACCOs run out of money for loans, the farmers mortgage their coffee to traders, and end up producing unwashed coffee. In the extreme case scenario, farmers will mortgage all their coffee and have none to sell to GAC in the subsequent harvest season.
19 During the organic farming workshop, the researcher observed as a GAC official handed out packaged roast coffee to the farmer leaders. This is common practice at the workshops.
20 While we have, in this paper, illuminated the agencement’s responses to the brand, the reverse question about how the brand responds to the agencement remains to be answered.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Winfred Ikiring Onyas
Dr Winfred Ikiring Onyas is a Research Associate at the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University. Her research focuses on how markets and global value chains are shaped in developing countries. She is currently researching on mobile phone-enabled financial services in Africa. Her work is published in Industrial Marketing Management.
Annmarie Ryan
Dr Annmarie Ryan is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick. Her research interests are focused on marketing interactions and relationships both from an IMP and Market Studies perspective. Her work has been published in Marketing Theory, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Management, European Journal of International Management, International Journal of Non-Profit and Voluntary Sector Marketing and the Irish Marketing Review.