Making a market for alternatives: marketing devices and the qualification of a vegan milk substitute

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to describe, conceptualise and critically discuss how and with what consequences marketing is used to construct a mass market for vegan substitutes. Drawing on the concepts of the marketing device and qualification, it shows how Oatly – a Swedish company making oat-based products – enrols three sets of marketing devices, i.e. digital media, packaging and stores, to simultaneously ‘alternativise’ and ‘convenienise’ its range of vegan products. The result is the material and discursive construction of a range of vegan products that is qualified as different enough from conventional dairy products to be an attractive alternative, but similar enough to fit into existing practices of shopping for food, cooking and eating. By qualifying products along multiple registers, Oatly constructs ‘plastic’ products, which can be consumed, for various reasons, by various groups of consumers thus enacting a multi-niche market for its products.

KEYWORDS:

• Vegan consumption
• food substitutes
• sustainability
• alternative
• market devices
• qualification

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the special issue editors and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support was provided by the Centre for Retail Research, University of Gothenburg and by the Swedish Retail and Wholesale Council.

Notes on contributors

Christian Fuentes

Dr Christian Fuentes is a senior researcher at the Centre for Consumer Science, University of Gothenburg and an Associate Professor at the Department of Service Management and Service Studies, at Lund University. He does research in the fields of Green Marketing, Green/Ethical Consumption, Mobile Shopping, E-tailing and Market Making. He is currently involved in several research projects exploring how digital devices enable and shape consumption and marketing practices.

Maria Fuentes

Dr Maria Fuentes is a senior researcher at the Centre for Consumer Science, Gothenburg University. Her research focuses on consumer practices related to food, risk and retail. She is currently involved in a project funded by the Swedish Retail and Wholesale Council, examining the development of food substitutes markets, and the ERA-Net Food, Convenience and Sustainability (FOCAS) project, examining how consumers make sense of and use convenience foods.