Legitimizing sustainable game meat consumption: a discursive-visual approach to legitimacy claims

ABSTRACT

The marketing world has become increasingly visual in its legitimacy claims, yet much scholarship has drawn on discursive approaches to legitimation. This research extends institutional theory through a discursive-visual approach to legitimation. The aim of this article is to address the need to understand how companies engage discursive-visual strategies for legitimizing products and consumption practices with the aim of engaging society in more sustainable behavior. It is based on a case study of the Swedish game meat market and identifies three strategic discursive-visual interventions that market actors engage to unsettle existing norms and meanings: 1 aestheticization and exotic framing, 2 proximity claiming and localization, and 3 discrediting institutional norms. Although prior work drawing on institutional theory tends to focus on symbolic and discursive resources, this research also emphasizes the visual practices involved in the elaboration of legitimation claims that market actors mobilize.

KEYWORDS:

• Game meat
• legitimation
• institutional theory
• visual
• sustainable consumption

Introduction

As the challenges facing sustainability are increasing on the global level, it becomes important to understand, explain and support efforts to accept, promote and adopt consumption and products that are sustainably and ecologically viable. One response to this challenge lies in the interest shown by researchers studying sustainable or ethical consumer behavior. Research on sustainable consumption often occurs in one of two research streams. The most common of these is when consumer researchers apply micro-economic or psychological theory, with much attention being paid to determining which values or factors influence consumers making ethical purchasing decisions (see, for example, Megicks, Memery, and Angell 2012; Ozcaglar-Toulouse, Shiu, and Shaw 2006). Other studies have focused on the values and attitudes of ethical consumers to discern “who” the ethical or green consumer is (Rowlands, Scott, and Parker 2003; Worcester and Dawkins 2005). Most research on green or ethical consumption reports a persistent attitude-behavior gap regarding sustainable purchase behavior, thus suggesting the limited conversion of behaviors perceived as “alternative” or fringe (see Rettie, Burchell, and Riley 2012). Cultural understandings of sustainable consumption present a different conceptualization of this behavior. Sustainable consumption has been positioned as a part of consumers’ radicalized identity projects (Cherrier and Murray 2007; Connolly and Prothero 2008), as micro-community builders (Moisander and Pesonen 2002), involving the re-enchantment of consumption (Thompson and Coskuner-Balli 2007), driven by the search for meaningful alternative experiences (Soper 2007) and as a part of status competition (Carfagna et al. 2014; Elliott 2013). These studies position sustainable consumption in a social and cultural context, with sustainable consumers’ agency being shaped by sociocultural forces. Although these two research streams have offered us significant insights into these forms of consumption, they are also characterized by some important blind spots. While a consumer focus is understandable, it often leads to a neglecting of the ways in which institutions and actors like companies shape sustainable consumption at the expense of examining marginalized groups’ identity work (see Scaraboto and Fischer 2013 regarding the limits of “resistant rebels” who lack market legitimacy). This brings challenges if we seek to understand market change in favor of more sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption practices are partly enabled, and limited, by the broader social engagement and legitimization work that organizations pursue when aiming to mainstream or normalize sustainable consumption rather than the interests of fringe groups with less power to influence market change (Hopkinson and Cronin 2015; McDonagh and Prothero 2014). Research on the legitimation and organization of consumption argues that consumer efforts to legitimize and normalize more sustainable markets and consumer practices only have limited possibilities of effecting change within market systems because of internal contradictions and a lack of agency (Hopkinson and Cronin 2015; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013). Hopkinson and Cronin (2015) argue that institutional change in favor of sustainable production and consumption can instead be revealed by looking at the ongoing change processes working to unsettle the current mainstream understandings and practices of markets, thus legitimizing an alternative.

This paper addresses the need to understand how actors like companies engage in strategically promoting products and consumption practices with the aim of engaging society in more sustainable behavior. It does so by using institutional theory, focusing on the ways that marketing discourse and visual elements are organized by means of introducing alternative meanings and values as part of a process potentially unsettling current practices and legitimizing an alternative.¹ Research shows that processes such as consumption legitimatization, mainstreaming and normalization are partly organized by either upholding or unsettling distinctions between alternative and mainstream markets, especially as regards understanding market practices related to ethics and sustainability (Hopkinson 2017; Hopkinson and Cronin 2015; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013). This dynamic can be observed in relation to the legitimacy of mainstream meat markets now that meat consumption is being challenged. This is related to growing climate concerns and the introduction of a growing number of alternative meat producers and products, including those active on so-called game meat markets (Smith Maguire, Watson, and Lang 2017; Wiart, Özçağlar-Toulouse, and Shaw 2022). Game meat is a category of meat that is gastronomically defined as the flesh of any wild animal or bird, including anything from small birds up to big game like venison, roebuck, deer, elk and moose, among others (including bear and wild boar) that is often described as a sustainable and healthy alternative to conventional meat and the mainstream meat markets (see, for example, www.sverigesnatur.org; www.wwf.org). One effect of these complex processes surrounding the status of meat is the growing interest, among both producers and consumers, in so called “alternative” meat production and consumption (Hopkinson 2017). Hence, my research questions are as follows: 1. How do companies on the game meat market, through their discursive and visual marketing practices, work toward legitimizing the benefits of game meat? 2. How does marketing – theorized as a form of legitimizing work – contribute toward the spread of sustainable food alternatives?

Although previous work drawing on institutional theory has studied how marketers legitimize their offerings (Humphreys 2010), how consumers come to perceive brands as either legitimate or illegitimate (Giesler 2012), how consumer legitimacy can affect market dynamics (Scaraboto and Fischer 2013), and how consumer malcontent can trigger institutional change (Hopkinson and Cronin 2015), they tend to draw on ideational and discursive approaches of legitimation. For example, Humphreys (2010) draws on discourse analysis of newspaper articles to show how journalists worked to legitimize casino gambling (changing discursive frames) and Scaraboto and Fischer (2013) applies a qualitative content analysis to identify discursive interventions among bloggers to change the fashion market (see Coskuner-Balli and Ertimur 2017 for a similar approach). Hopkinson and Cronin (2015) include visual elements to identify strategies applied in celebrity campaigns that build consumer malcontent (mythologizing, personalizing, and framing the issue), and Giesler (2012) combines discourse analysis and brand image analysis in his study of Botox and show how contestation around brand images become part of the legitimation process of new technologies. These exceptions show the potential of including visual elements in studies of legitimation but have not been applied to marketing efforts towards sustainable consumption nor conceptualized as such. Even though the Internet and social media have made visuals more omnipresent in market communication there is a paucity of research that addresses the role of visuality in legitimation practices and it remains a neglected topic in institutional theory approaches to consumption. Therefore, this research examines the discursive-visual practices embedded in legitimacy claims of game meat.

The structure of the article is as follows: First, a research overview of the relevant studies related to legitimacy and legitimation is presented to provide the relevant backdrop to the conceptual framing of the paper. Here I note the relative absence of visual practices in the understanding of legitimacy. I elaborate upon the potential of a discursive-visual approach to legitimacy claims by adding a social semiotic-inspired approach. Next, the empirical context, methods, and empirical data, including the analytical framework, are described. The article’s findings and analysis are then presented broken down into the analytical themes emerging from the analysis. Finally, I will discuss theoretical contributions in dialogue with previous research on legitimation processes, and consequences when it comes to understanding sustainable consumption.

Legitimacy and legitimation: a background

Many scholars have used institutional theory to examine how individual actors, firms or markets gain and/or maintain legitimacy (Giesler 2012; Humphreys 2010; Kates 2004; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013). Given the importance of the concept of legitimacy in this study, I start by considering the relationship between legitimacy and legitimation. Suchman (1995, 574) has defined legitimacy as the perception that something is “desirable, proper or appropriate.” Legitimation is thus different from but still related to legitimacy, defined as the collective process by which that same perception both comes into being and is objectified so that “what is becomes what is right” (Johnson, Dowd, and Ridgeway 2006, 57). One might conclude that the relationship here is between two references, i.e. the thing in focus (in this case game meat as a good, product or practice) and the broader, abstract framework of reference (Suchman 1995). Smith Maguire (2018) argues that a consumption entity, a good, a practice or a service, is never good or proper in itself, attaining the status of being legitimate by obtaining a “goodness of fit” within larger frameworks of norms, beliefs and values that have become proper or good via social processes such as tradition, consensus, affirmation and endorsement, by means of so-called external authorities. Further, the status attached to a legitimate or accepted consumption entity is not a fixed or stable property, but an ongoing process that takes place during a dynamic negotiation process, including the not-yet-legitimate and the taken-for-granted (Humphreys 2010; Scott 2014).

According to Scott (2014) and Suchman (1995), there are different bases for such legitimation processes, including the frameworks of regulative legitimacy (drawn from existing rules and regulations), normative legitimacy (drawn from dominant cultural norms and values), and cognitive legitimacy (drawn from existing classificatory schemas) (see also Scaraboto and Fischer 2013). To exemplify these three mechanisms of legitimacy, Giesler’s (2012) analysis of the successful brand Botox, in terms of drawing on medical expertise (regulatory), dominant discourses of femininity (normative) and a shift of vocabulary regarding their product (poison or cosmetic technology) (cognitive), would suffice when it comes to explaining the different registers of legitimacy. The processes of legitimation could be explicit to varying degrees. Less explicit mechanisms for gaining legitimacy have been identified, e.g. when companies appropriate consumer attitudes (Holt 2002) and position brands or products in daily life (Fournier 1998) in order to attain cognitive legitimacy. Finally, legitimization processes have been understood as processes through which mediated discourses (for example mediated by actors like the media, marketers, or consumers) contribute to and shape consumer reality (Humphreys 2010). This could most explicitly be understood through processes whereby actors like the media or marketing act as the gatekeepers and/or producers of meaning systems. Humphreys’ study of the role of journalists in shaping the meaning categories used for discussing casino gambling is exemplary in this sense (Humphreys 2010).

Theoretical framework: institutional theory, market change and the role of visuals in legitimation practices

For reasons of understanding market change, institutional theorists highlight the processual nature of legitimation rather than legitimacy, theorizing institutions as the outcome of institutional work and institutional entrepreneurship (Hopkinson and Cronin 2015). If legitimation, as already mentioned, is the process through which a product, service or practice becomes accepted and normative, i.e. mainstream (Humphreys and LaTour 2013), institutional work refers to the “practices of individual and collective actors aiming at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions” (Lawrence, Suddaby, and Leca 2011). This work is done by both insiders and outsiders, i.e. those at the periphery and those in the dominant center, with different agendas, to disrupt and/or provoke de-institutionalization (Maguire and Hardy 2009). The notion of institutional work is important for this study as it theorizes the marketing of game meat as a practice that takes part in such de-/re-institutionalization processes regarding the spread and normalization of game meat markets. Humphreys (2010) used institutional theory to analyze the legitimation of casino gambling as, in part, the result of the discursive frames of media accounts with the effects of shifted cultural understandings. This work helped to identify how actors with different agendas work toward provoking and promoting the institutionalization of emergent consumer markets. Scaraboto and Fischer (2013) studied the (potential) market change by means of the collective efforts of “fatshionista” blogs, using institutional theory to identify the strategic discursive interventions that consumers employ to unsettle existing norms; (1) appealing to institutional logics; (2) publicizing desirable institutional innovations and persistent institutional impediments; and (3) allying with powerful institutional actors in the field. Their study provides some insight into how micro-practices work toward unsettling institutionalized logics. In their study of a refugee aid initiative, Gollnhofer and Kuruoglu (2018) draw on institutional theory for an analysis of how market actors generate permanent, institutionalized structures and conceptualize how “makeshift” (transitory) markets emerge. In so doing, they reveal the transitory aspects of institutionalization. Coskuner-Balli and Ertimur’s (2017) institutional approach to hybrid cultural consumer product legitimation identified how Yoga was reconfigured using a series of reterritorialization strategies (i.e. legitimation processes) through which market actors dialectically exchanged forms and meanings between different cultural and geographical spheres. Hopkinson and Cronin (2015) show how market change in the direction of sustainable consumption can be brought about by means of articulating malcontent using celebrity campaigns and demonstrate the dynamic character of the consumer and industry groups involved in institutional work.

Previous research on market legitimacy tends to rely on ideational, strategic, and discursive approaches of legitimation. Yet, the organizational world has become increasingly iconographical, and visuals have become important properties of legitimacy claims. Literature on legitimation has to some extent admitted that legitimation practices may involve verbal (text, narrative, discourse) and non-verbal (e.g. visual) accounts (Giesler 2012; Hopkinson and Cronin 2015; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013) and that movies, advertisements, blogs, social media, role models and celebrities can be engaged in legitimation activities. But to the best of my knowledge, these insights about the role of visuals have not been applied to marketing efforts toward sustainable consumption or specifically conceptualized as such. This invites for exploration in terms of theoretical and empirical contributions regarding for example how moral evaluations (related to for example sustainability) can be connoted visually or represented by visual symbols in combination with verbal or textual discourse. And to acknowledge that visuals fulfill informational and communicational roles for as they help construct and display meaning through signs that may shape organizations’ communication practices. Thus, even though previous institutional research on consumption has to some extent included visual material like campaigns or blogs associated with legitimation practices, most research has focused on rhetoric, logic of arguments, and strategies, rather than on visual dimensions as such that may shape market actors’ communication practices. Yet, the inclusion of the visual traces that actors provide could open new insights into legitimation and impression management techniques (e.g. Meyer et al. 2013).

One prominent theoretical approach to visual communication research is semiotics (Kress 2010) or the study of signs. This methodology focuses on the duality of signs, the relationship between the word or image that is used to represent a concept or meaning which, together with other signs (images, words, discourse), forms part of a system of meaning. Researchers inspired by social semiotics (Kress 2010) examine how meanings are made and reality is represented through sign systems. These systems include not only visual elements, but also discourse or language and the researcher explore the ideological bases of images as involved in the construction of notions of truth (Chandler 2002; Spencer 2011). For example, this could be applied to an examination of how words and visuals are used for constructing versions of sustainable consumption with the ideological base being framed by for example the company behind the product, thus serving the interests of the market and construct a specific image (truth) of what constitutes a sustainable market or product. Thus, such a semiologically-inspired analysis implies the interpretation of visual signs (in this broad definition) in relation to broader structures of cultural meaning and as they work to privilege a certain “reading” of the image that are in line with the company objectives. Arguably, such a conceptualization of the role of the visual in legitimacy claims dovetails with how building legitimacy for an organization involves promoting the notion or the idea of an implied congruence with the cultural environment, with the norms of acceptable behavior of the larger system.

The discursive strategies identified in previous legitimation research (e.g. Humphreys 2010; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013) have largely considered verbal (or textual) communication, but not explicitly considered other modes. But verbal (text, rhetoric, narrative) cover only a part of the means of expression and meaning making in legitimacy claims; visuals (and sounds) are also relevant in marketing communication (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001). My approach in this article is therefore to apply a discursive-visual approach to the legitimation properties of different modes for constructing legitimacy regarding game meat. This approach conceptualizes marketing as involved in practices of suggesting meaning to products and that in these processes, there is an interaction between visual and verbal modes of communication with distinct potentials that are applied for legitimacy-building purposes (Santos 2023). Arguably, it is realistic to expect that a discursive-visual approach toward legitimation enables an analytical potential that could unearth specific ways of how marketing practices apply different modes of visual and verbal legitimation strategies, and how the visual register of marketing matter in the pursuit of legitimacy (Meyer et al. 2013). Some specific properties of visuals identified in previous research contribute to understanding the potential of this approach. First, images have been shown to afford legitimacy claims implicitly, without the need for exhibiting textual (or other) justifications (Santos 2023). Second, visuals might be adequate to present legitimacy claims as facts since what is portrayed is visually presented as real (Santos 2023). And thirdly, visuals possess an immediacy that makes them disposed to being perceived instantly, even without the cognitive processing of their content, endowing visuals with the potential to engage audiences affectively, aesthetically, and emotionally (Hill 2004).

Thus, this research builds on previous efforts to apply institutional theory but includes a discursive-visual approach for the purposes of extending it. Based on a case study of the Swedish game meat market, the analysis in this paper reveals the strategic interventions that market actors have engaged in to unsettle the existing institutional norms and meanings surrounding meat markets and meat consumption. Consequently, I diversify our understanding of the marketing practices which work toward legitimizing the benefits of game meat and which can contribute toward the spread of sustainable consumption.

Empirical context, methods, and empirical data

Throughout history, and in many different cultural contexts, meat has given rise to moral conflicts and cultural contradictions, despite its widespread consumption (Aboelenien and Arsel 2022; Balnave and Patmore 2010). Criticism has been leveled at conventional meat production as regards animals’ living conditions and the contribution made by production processes to greenhouse emissions and climate change (Wiart, Özçağlar-Toulouse, and Shaw 2022). Consequently, there is an increasing demand for more ecologically- and socially sustainable meat, or food in general, as a major trend among consumers globally. Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis have simultaneously contributed toward further developing the complexity surrounding meat consumption, meat markets, the promotion of meat products and meat production (Bourne et al. 2022). Game meat is marketed as a sustainable and healthy alternative to conventional meat and mainstream meat markets (see, for example, www.sverigesnatur.org; https://www.foodunfolded.com/article/is-wild-game-meat-good-for-the-environment). This new image of game meat is in turn a consequence of both consumer and trader reactions to several concerns about conventional food production systems, i.e. climate risks, ethical aspects, and health-related issues (Aboelenien and Arsel 2022; Ilbery and Maye 2005). Despite the cultural, sustainability-related and economically advanced position enjoyed by game meat of various kinds, there are few, if any, studies examining game meat traders’ efforts to legitimize game meat production and consumption.

In most European countries, game meat is mainly derived from red deer, roe deer, fallow deer, wild boar, wild rabbit, and wild fowl. A common trait characterizing wild animal meat is that it has been found to have a positive impact on human health because of its nutrient composition (proteins, unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins, macro- and microelements) in comparison with livestock (mainstream) meat (Niewiadomska et al. 2020). Even though the high nutritional value of game meat is well documented, its consumption in Europe remains at a low level (Niewiadomska et al. 2020). Game meat is also frequently perceived as a prestigious and sophisticated food, with the game market remaining niche. As a market and product, it could very well be described as hard for consumers to attain (Niewiadomska et al. 2020). In countries with strongly rooted hunting traditions, and conditions favorable to hunting, like Sweden, game meat is argued to have the potential to become an alternative to mainstream meat produced via livestock farming. Several authors have argued that hunted wild game can respond to the ethical, health, and environmental concerns triggered by mainstream meat production. However, game meat does derive from hunting, which is sometimes related to consumers’ ethical concerns (Corradini et al. 2022). In this context, careful hunting and butchering procedures can legitimize the public and scientific debate concerning respect for animal welfare along conventional meat production supply chains. Finally, even if evidence remains limited, some studies (e.g. Fiala et al. 2020), estimate that the greenhouse gas emissions related to game meat are approximately one-third of those emitted by conventional beef farming.

In the Swedish context, several organizations and projects have recently been started to promote the increased consumption of game meat. Here we have examples such as viltmat.nu (wild food), Viltmatsveckan (Wild food week), Viltakademin (Wild Food Academy) and the trade association Svenskt Viltkött (Swedish Wild Food). The existing projects and trade associations related to game meat trading in Sweden make it plausible to assume that a lot of game meat traders know (of) each other and (sometimes) collaborate through the different associations and networks, with the aim of increasing knowledge of, information on and interest in game meat. According to surveys (www.st.nu/2009-10-02/de-flesta-svenskar-vill-ata-mer-viltkott, accessed 20231014), approximately 59% of the Swedish population would like to eat more game meat. In Sweden, the annual consumption of game meat amounts to approx. 16,000 metric tons, corresponding to 4% of total meat consumption (viltmat.nu, 2009). Elk is the game meat most served in Sweden, with this animal also being an important symbol for Sweden as a nation. According to Gunnarsdotter (2005), the annual hunt for wild game plays an important role in community building, and a lot of people return to their hometowns for the annual elk hunt, which lasts for a week.

Empirical data

The fieldwork for this study was conducted between 2019 and 2021 and includes both qualitative interviews and social media content. The participating game meat traders represent northern, central, and southern parts of Sweden. The sampling strategy applied was based on purposive and theoretical sampling, following a snowball method (Spiggle 1994). The participating game meat traders were identified via searches on Google and Facebook. The criteria for inclusion were based on a company’s product range, which needed to include products categorized as game meat. Initially, sixteen traders were identified and contacted by the author. Of these sixteen, six traders responded positively to participate in the study. Via these six traders, the author received advice about contacting two more. The intention was to recruit traders of different sizes to examine a heterogenous sample of participants who would disclose multiple views on a subject (Spiggle 1994). The study includes a balance between larger and smaller game meat traders based on measurements regarding numbers of employees; a total of eight participating companies. The participants have been anonymized and the companies have been given pseudonyms.² Those responsible for communication, marketing, and promotion, either employed by game meat traders or the owners of game trading companies, were interviewed. The interviews ranged between 1½ and 2½ hours, being recorded and transcribed in full. They were conducted by the author and in a digital setting using the Zoom video program. Interviews included questions covering themes such as the history of the company, product range, production procedures, marketing, customer relations and sales channels, local networks, community relations, rules and regulations affecting game meat. The social media accounts included in the study belonged to traders interviewed in the study and correspond to five social media accounts available at the time. In cases where company names appear in marketing communication materials, the author chose to “obfuscate” this information. The social media material included in the study consisted of the game meat traders’ Facebook feeds and Instagram profiles/accounts, which were saved by the author as PDF files. The material used for analysis corresponded to one year of activity (2020–2021). This material amounts to approx. 620 pages, including both text and visuals. The data collection strategy was informed by the conceptual framework and made sure to collect data on both discourse and the use of the visual mode of communication to legitimize game meat. The social media accounts of the companies were central as sources of empirical material due to several reasons. First, social media nowadays plays a central role as a site for communication intended to reach different audiences, including consumers. Second, social media contains relevant information that makes it important to address communication strategies. Third, social media are “multimodal” and allowed me to address both visual and verbal modes of communication. Thus, given my research aims and focus on discursive-visual elements of legitimation, social media was well-suited to the purpose of the study. The choice of limiting the data collection of online material to one year was justified by the aim of collecting marketing material that included all the seasons of that year and cover the whole hunting season, which naturally affects game meat’s availability to the trade. Informed consent regarding the use of the game meat trader interviews and digital communication material has been secured.

Analytical approach

To analyze the game meat traders’ marketing practices, I applied qualitative content analysis (Finfgeld-Connett 2014). The empirical material was initially divided into groups of themes and analyzed using a combination of a “grounded theory” approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and an interpretive approach, in relation to previous research and the theoretical framework. During the analytical stage, I applied the three general mechanisms suggested by Scott (2014) and Suchman (1995) as the basis of legitimation processes, i.e. the frameworks of regulative legitimacy, normative legitimacy, and cognitive legitimacy, to identify themes emerging from the empirical data. This method functions as a tool for discovering relevant discourse and visuals in empirical material as being relevant to understanding their role in the legitimation process (Corbin and Strauss 2008; Finfgeld-Connett 2014). Although this approach focusses partly on discursive practices, including verbal and text-based accounts, it is important to acknowledge that visuals fulfill informational and communicational roles for organizations (Bell, Warren, and Schroeder 2014). Thus, I applied a similar approach to visuals (photos, images, logos, etc.) as they help construct and display meaning through signs that shape an organizations’ communication practices (Meyer et al. 2013, 529). The findings include three recurring themes as part of the legitimation process: 1 aestheticization and exotic framing, 2 proximity claiming and localization, and 3 discrediting institutional norms. These themes cut across the three pillars of institutional theory mentioned above, and instead point to how marketing practices combine strategic means in their legitimacy claims. This means that a theme like “aestheticization and exotic framing” includes both normative and cognitive legitimation mechanisms but is held together empirically and therefore is better analyzed as a discursive-visual strategy that combines different forms of legitimacy claiming.

Aestheticization and exotic framing

In this first theme, I present how marketing practice operationalized a combination of normative and cognitive mechanisms in their efforts to legitimize game meat discursively and visually through means of aestheticization and exotic framing. This meant that game meat marketing paradoxically and simultaneously drew from, and distinguished itself from, cultural norms and values (discourses of pleasure and taste) as well as existing classificatory schemas in their legitimacy claims (e.g. normative and cognitive pillars of institutional theory, Scott 2014; Suchman 1995). The theme shows the somewhat contradictory employment of discursive elements associated with the exotic and extraordinary, and visuals capturing the aestheticized image of the gastronomic properties of game meat.

Marketing pursues alignment strategies to relate their interests, values, aesthetic preferences, and beliefs with those of their audiences (Humphreys 2010). In the context of game meat, normative legitimacy rests on creating linkages between consumer interests, dispositions (or tastes), and the values and goals of the product and trader. In the first theme, this linkage is created between game meat as a product, entailing benefits like taste, a heightened gastronomic experience, aesthetic value, and the unconventional niche aspect of eating game meat. The argument here is that these examples provide details of how marketing aligns itself with appreciated societal or consumer values (extraordinary taste, high-quality product) to normatively legitimize game meat while simultaneously using these strategies to position itself against mainstream meat markets. Similar strategies related to aestheticization have been found in previous studies analyzing how alternative markets work toward legitimizing their products (Valor, Ronda and Abril 2022).

In terms of meat, there’s a difference and also in terms of taste. And then also how the animals live and how they feel. There’s also a difference. So absolutely, there are differences. It makes it. I think it does and it’s also important to bring it out. […] it’s just like the coarse of nature and it’s also reflected in the taste of the meat. It’s a different thing from regular meat like pork. Where and how they live and what they feed them. Absolutely, you feel there’s a taste of game in it. More or less to do with the type of animal you’re eating. (A-wild, Naomi, Responsible for marketing and communication)

This first commonly occurring discourse surrounding game meat concerned the taste of game as a high-quality meat. The gastronomic experience of eating game was highlighted as an important element of these examples. Eating game meat was constructed not only as different from conventional meat, but also as a special experience in itself, depending on the animal. All game meat was presented as better tasting than conventional meat, and the variety of the game meat offered a gastronomic opportunity for diversity. This difference was framed in terms of the elusive attribute “game taste”; a value deemed important for the purposes of distinguishing game from conventional meat. The taste for game had its origins in the fact that the animals being hunted in the forest had had the opportunity to roam free and eat what was available there, unlike the animals being raised on large-scale factory farms. Descriptions of opportunities to communicate game meat’s unique taste qualities were common during the interviews, and game meat traders were careful to point out that the taste experiences associated with game meat consumption were key to encouraging consumers to eat more game meat:

But it’s also fantastically good tasting meat, and you want more people to be able to eat it, so it’s a bit of a win-win situation; we think that it’s very good and it can reach more people. (A-wild, Naomi, Responsible for marketing and communication)

In their positioning of game meat, marketers appropriated consumer goals for eating something extraordinary by promoting it as benefiting the welfare and pleasure of consumers, or as a win-win situation. By relating the unique taste and gastronomic pleasure of game meat to the way that its taste is bound up with the “naturalness” of how animals live and feel, the normative evaluation of game meat was strengthened. The most important strategy here might be the way that marketers positioned game as more exotic than mainstream meat, thus highlighting the taste qualities of game versus mainstream meat and simultaneously reproducing the dominant discourse of pleasure and taste being associated with high-quality (meat) products. Previous research on the normative legitimation of food has also highlighted how representational contextualization, for the legitimation of new forms of taste, often draws on sensemaking frames that include authenticity and exoticism (Johnston and Baumann 2007). Like my findings in this study, Johnston and Baumann (2007), in their study, found that these frameworks encourage audiences to understand a certain form of food consumption as being of high status / quality. The exotic frame, like gastronomic extraordinariness, is about breaking norms (against mainstream meat).

In addition to the talk of game meat as a sensational gastronomic experience, that too few consumers get the chance to enjoy, several participants also communicated this framing via social media, using images, video, and captions. Visuals included meat and meat dishes (sometimes raw and sometimes cooked) being presented in contexts where people delivered, sold, and cooked game meat products. Marketing work in this sense could be interpreted as working toward challenging mainstream consumers’ expectations of meat in terms of its sensory properties and taste, thus opening an unfamiliar field of food (cf. Steadman et al. 2023). These visual practices reflect what Vialles (1988) called a “zoophage” carnivore approach whereby the origin of the animal is valued as a part of the gastronomic experience, but we are also reminded of Bååth’s (2018) discussion on how meat production in Sweden, with its focus on tasty meat, often aestheticizes parts of the animal to attract the consumer. These engagements offer ways of observing how game meat traders strategically played on the aesthetic and sensory properties of game meat to suggest the “good” and “natural” of game meat thus contributing toward shaping consumer perceptions. For these purposes, marketing employed the aesthetic and affective power of visual registers to communicate directly with audiences for purposes of legitimacy (Hill 2004) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Text and hashtags that accompanied the photo to the left: Start the week with a lovely dinner! Wild boar roast, mustard dressing and mango/chili sauce. Simple, useful, tasty and naturally organic! Recipe on our website: https://x/cookedwildboarsteak/#wildboar #steak #dinner #mondayrecipe #x #eatmorebore #swedishmeat #quality #natural#ecological #love #game. The photos in the middle and to the right are further examples of aesthetization and exotic framings.

The aesthetic presentation of meat, including the aestheticization of the gastronomic image used for communicative purposes to attract consumers, dovetails with how conventional market communication about meat looks and can thus be said to share practices regarding the legitimization of eating and cooking game meat (Bååth 2018; Rogers 2008; Wiart, Özçağlar-Toulouse, and Shaw 2022). It is related to the comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness of meat market communication based on similar gastro-aesthetic values, as used in meat marketing. This strategy is aligned with cognitive-cultural forms of legitimation whereby game meat marketing draws on a practice and an aesthetic regime known and commonly understood by consumers. Arguably, this example is evidence of a way in which game meat marketing has tried to fit a relatively new, or unknown, practice (eating and cooking game meat) into already-existing cognitive schemas, thus making it more comprehensible to local consumers by familiarizing them with game meat (cf. Coskuner-Balli and Ertimur 2017).

My analysis shows how visual elements were employed to further the potential of legitimacy claims, thus aesthetically exhibiting justifications through the immediacy of visual presentation that played on the aesthetic and sensory properties of game meat (raw and cooked pieces of meat presented up front with strong colors of brown and red combined with grit and fiber from surrounding props). To sum up, this theme shows how marketing practices combined discursive and rhetorical elements associated with the exotic and the extraordinary and associated visuals capturing the aestheticized image of the gastronomic properties of game meat. In so doing, marketing aligned both normative and cognitive-cultural mechanisms employed for game meat legitimacy claims in somewhat contradictory ways.

Proximity claiming and localization

Because game meat traders are typically localized, the social norms set by local communities affect traders’ understanding of what constitute feasible activities. Game meat traders may be assumed to be perceived as legitimate if they are seen to match their social and cultural context (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Tost 2011). In the second theme, I present how marketing practice worked to legitimize game meat by drawing from cultural norms and values and classificatory schemas based on images and rationales for hunting and places that work as determinants of identity, thus familiarizing consumers to game meat through proximity. These legitimacy claims display strategies linked to the normative and cognitive-cultural pillars of institutional theory.

By means of familiarizing an audience, or consumers, by appropriating game meat as a sign of national and local cultural heritage in their marketing work, game meat traders can work toward strategically normalizing and making cognate their practices and legitimate game meat (Scott 2014; Suchman 1995). Similar strategies have been found to be important aspects of legitimization, and, also, as regards the successful branding of locally sourced and -produced meat products. This means that place-experience, locality, and proximity need be recognized, articulated, and formalized using marketing communications to enable authentic communication with consumers (Rodriguez 2020). Using strategic choices, marketers have explicitly aimed at shaping the meaning and perception of game meat as a part of local traditions and values, something natural and claimed to be a part of their local and national communities. Marketers used various discursive and visual devices to accomplish this:

“We often get questions, and many customers want their reindeer to come from Jämtland this weekend, to come from the forests of Norrland and things like that, so that a restaurant or something like that can write it on the menu. Because it’s usually finer products and stuff like that. When you cook something like this, you want it to be quality. We’ve noticed that it must come from Sweden. It’s important to have local involvement in some way, or a connection.” (G-wild, Sara, Responsible for marketing and communication)

Many participants described similar strategies of embedding their product in a national and/or local setting for proximity and local connection used for marketing purposes. These aspects were also easily identified on social media accounts where game meat traders often made references to local connections. For example, names like “Swedish,” phrases like “from Swedish forests” and regional names (e.g. from Norrland, from Skåne) were implemented and accentuated how the local connection helped legitimize game meat.

Complementing direct references to locality, most of the highly aestheticized social media feeds featured enhanced images of forest landscapes where animals would run free, with an emphasis on a natural color palette where various shades of green predominated. Many images depict forests, lakes and fields in their attempts to locate traders aesthetically and geographically in Sweden using a forest-related pictorial convention, with the Nordic animal flora represented. It was also common to use snow-covered forest landscapes to position game in a Swedish context. This way of communicating game meat creates powerful sociocultural associations with concrete places, and place can work as a symbolic determinant of identity. Also, it shows the potential of visuals in their power to afford legitimacy implicitly and make claims by portraying “facts” (the naturalness of Swedish game) through visual presentations (Santos 2023). These strategies offer consumers ways of using their awareness of regions and places, also shaping their perceptions of the qualities of regional products (cf. Bowen and Bennett 2020) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Text that accompanied the photo to the left: “Dare to choose game on your plate. The advantages of eating Swedish game meat are many: both for your health and for the environment. Here are some of reasons: Game meat is nutritious, and it is low in fat. It is also environmentally sustainable.” Many images depicted forests, lakes, and fields to locate traders aesthetically and geographically in Sweden using a forest-related pictorial convention including the Nordic animal flora.

Within this discursive-visual arrangement, game meat traders build further on the iconic conventions of pastoral landscapes and communities living in harmony with nature and natural systems. Game meat, hunting and wild animals were positioned in these contexts as ethical alternatives, simultaneous to an apprciation of rural values as morally sound (see Andersson Cederholm and Sjöholm 2021 for a discussion of game hunting as a part of the moral discourse on wild animals). These activities can be said to exemplify ways in which game meat marketing worked toward legitimizing game meat using positive associations by means of conveying morally favorable traits and projecting game meat as something linked to heritage outcomes and community values.

Another closely linked strategy for the normative and cognitive legitimation of game meat was working toward enhancing the transparency aspect of production involved in game meat. This included the dissemination of images and rationales for hunting, thus familiarizing audiences or consumers using real and imagined forms of proximity between producer and consumer. This specific type of market engagement is associated with Sweden’s cultural heritage in its attempts to market alternative ways of consuming, often concerning traditional practices that sometimes represent an image of Sweden and its consumption as it might have looked before the industrialization of meat production (see Jönsson 2020 for a historical analysis of Sweden’s pre-modern food culture). Speech and texts emphasizing mottos such as “Game meat direct from forest to table” and images where hunting is presented as a part of meat production, or as cultural heritage, often appeared in the material. These arrangements used rhetorical-visual techniques that present game meat as natural and as something “good,” with clear references to opportunities to follow the meat’s entire journey from “hunt to plate.” Transparency and proximity to game meat appear as key aspects of this marketing practice, with the relationship between humans, animals and nature explicitly stated as something positive (Figure 3).

Figure 3. “After a magic hare hunt last weekend this year's hunting season is over and you will find fresh hares in the store. Take the opportunity to cook a luxurious dinner for someone you love.” Text on the photo to the right: “The Swedish way of hunting with dogs is now classified a cultural heritage.”

This type of marketing is based on ideas about changing the consumer’s relationship with meat products and consumption practices, by placing animals front and center in images, text, and speech. It was about reducing the gap between the consumer and the origin of his/her food, but also about the distance from game meat traders. Marketing strategies that use hunting in their communication material, or other aspects of game meat production, help to portray the game meat trade as a transparent and locally rooted operation associated with local values. Information in the form of, for example, images from slaughterhouses and the cooking of animal meats could also be included in this form of communication (see Gyimóthy and Mykletun 2009 for a discussion on similar ways in which entrepreneurs successfully market unconventional meat as nostalgic and authentic). One game meat trader described this strategy:

Researcher: “Is hunting important in relation to the company: Do you mention it when talking to customers for marketing purposes?”

Yes, it really is. Both small customers and large as well. This could be a matter of someone doing a newspaper article about us, for example, or if we spend some time on our website or other forms of marketing. There’s always a shared thread between the hunters and their food. And we hunt a lot. […] It’s a requirement that it’s [the game] hunted in the wild. There shouldn’t be any fences or anything like that. And maybe then it’ll be a little bit more expensive. It’s good financially for us to work that way and we’re very passionate about this. I want to work in a way that keeps things honest all the way. (P-wild, Sonny, Owner and co-responsible for marketing and communication)

This way of engaging in game market legitimization evidenced efforts of making it distinct as a product and as an alternative category of food. In this way, marketing work was aimed at legitimizing game meat and facilitating its spread by inserting it into specific patterns of sociocultural meaning. This might conceptually be associated with both the normative and the cognitive pillars of the legitimation process, whereby actors, by anchoring and inserting game meat into existing institutions and embedding the product category into community values, build a broader level of acceptability (Humphreys 2010; Scaraboto and Fischer 2013). This theme shows how marketing practice through a combination of discursive and visual devices managed to apply normative and cognitive legitimacy claims for game meat by associating pictorial conventions of locality and cultural heritage with accounts of hunting and proximity. Positioning game as a locally rooted and transparent practice was pertinent to reducing the gap between the consumer and the origin of his/her food as well as constructing an alternative category of food.

Discrediting institutional norms

The third theme will show how game meat marketing combined regulative legitimacy and normative modes of engagement as a part of legitimacy claims (Suchman 1995). I will first present examples related to normative legitimation working to ally game meat with consumers’ interests and values (an affirmed interest in sustainable consumption, ethical and welfare values) through discrediting institutional norms. Second, game meat marketers associated themselves and their products with powerful non-market authorities, which were prominent in terms of their acclaimed expertise and merits regarding sustainability and health issues related to food. This strategy aligns with regulative legitimacy defined as working toward aligning a business, product, category or consumption practice with institutional regulations, official guidelines, and professional requirements (Suchman 1995). This form of legitimacy often refers to legitimacy that is based on the mandated use of a product by formal authorities (Kaganer, Pawlowski, and Wiley-Patton 2010).

In several cases, game meat traders emphasized the relationship between game meat and nutritional content (low fat content, free from hormones, antibiotics, and additives, and rich in minerals) as key advantages for consumers choosing to eat game meat. This was part of a discourse on the consumer’s ability to make responsible choices which not only contribute toward his/her own health and wellbeing, but also contribute toward more sustainable consumption, i.e. the common good. Below are two examples of that type of marketing communication (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Text that accompanied the photos to the left and in the middle: “Game meat is among the best and most nutritious meat that you can eat, and many accessories can be found in the forest. […] What is your choice? Your choice of meat on your plate affects both the environment and your health. We want to take care of the ecological game meat in nature and make it accessible in retail.” The photo composition to the right consists of a close-up image of the forest and the words ‘climate smart' with reference to the choice of eating game meat being naturally climate friendly.

Here, conventional meat is framed as less useful and worse for one’s health, for example due to potential additives and toxins, while game meat is communicated as the right choice for consumers wanting to protect their health, to focus on their wellbeing, and simultaneously contribute toward sustainable consumption. Svetlana Ristovski-Slijepcevic has shown that the relationship between alternative meat, health and responsibility is a common way of legitimizing the consumption of meat, something also found in the material used in this study. Furthermore, the game meat traders reproduce an ongoing negotiation between conventional (mainstream) meat products and game meat products (alternative), something which is also found on other markets, e.g. alternative and conventional dairy products (Fuentes and Fuentes 2017). But not only textual discourse was employed for these purposes. Visual associations with nature, landscapes, forests, wild animals, and things organic (see images above using nature as a symbol for sustainability) were also used to legitimize game meat as something “naturally organic” and therefore more sustainable than conventional meat. This was a way of communicating within the framework of an ecological discourse and a pictorial convention of natural sustainability that in combination worked as a strategy for legitimizing game meat in relation to the consumer. An important part of this framing of game meat was the notion of portraying responsible meat consumption as “eating better meat but less of it,” i.e. game meat, and a more authentic lifestyle featuring a healthy relationship between animals and humans. This relationship was presented in both negative and positive terms. First, an alternative relationship to meat consumption was a matter of acting as a counterforce to the “cruel” treatment that animals are subjected to during industrial meat production:

You don’t have to eat a lot, but what you do eat should be nice and they [the animals] should live very well while it lasts. […] Many people think it’s very good that they’re wild animals. They live freely and have not been bred in any way, like indoors or under particular circumstances, but they’re wild animals and many people think, or most people think, that this is great as well. And this has been picked up on to some extent in the public debate, even when features about eco-certified farms, and those kinds of things that have been on TV, come up. This could be a matter of not following rules and things like that. Then we noticed that people were becoming more interested in game meat instead. Many people are very interested in what they eat and where the meat comes from. And people like to buy Swedish meat, so it feels like we’re right on cue with game meat. Because people are becoming more aware. The animals must have been treated properly. (A-wild, Naomi, Responsible for marketing and communication).

As a counterforce, this framing asserts the responsibility we have toward animals and the respect they deserve. It is also a framing of game meat that suggests we can continue to eat meat if we treat animals with respect. Secondly, this involves reminding ourselves of where the meat comes from, assuring that the animals have enjoyed a good quality of life, and also offering animals a kind of peaceful death in connection with being hunted. It is a discourse that emphasizes game meat traders as responsible businesses focusing on the wellbeing of animals and having an ethical relationship with them. This type of marketing has been identified in previous studies, with the demand for ostensibly “good” meat products being constructed via texts and images that describe food products in terms of being non-toxic, natural, organic, and locally produced without reporting on the ways in which this contributes toward ecologically sustainable consumption (Binnekamp and Ingenbleek 2008). These categories should instead be interpreted as symbolic strategies (Humphreys 2010) for legitimizing game meat through the introduction of new values, and as a contribution toward sustainable consumption where the consumer is offered a way of acting responsibly. It is thus a form of marketing that associates game meat with a discourse surrounding the role attributed to the consumer in the trend toward more sustainable consumption, where the market plays a clear role in that work by offering the customer sustainable alternatives with which to do good (Alkon and Norgaard 2009; Fuentes and Fuentes 2017; Hopkinson 2017; Tregear 2011).

In other cases, the game meat traders worked with their market communication to clarify the link between game meat and ecological sustainability by referring to powerful non-market actors such as the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). By doing so they associated game meat’s positive contribution to sustainability by reproducing a scientific/non-market discourse offering game meat legitimacy (Lerner and Kalof 1999) (Figure 5).

Figure 5. The SLU meat guide as cited and circulated on social media accounts (photo to the left) “Did you know that… Game meat is naturally ecological and the most environmentally friendly meat alternative.” Source: Swedish Hunters' Association. (photo to the right) The photo of a carbon dioxide calculator based on collected data associated with WWF: s database on food emissions distributed on social media provided a scientific discourse to meat legitimacy.

By referring to and distributing images of food guides such as the SLU meat guide (image above) and the WWF food guide, resources that provide scientific knowledge of game meat being a more sustainable type of meat, traders constructed game meat not only as a sustainable meat alternative for the consumer, but also as a positive counterpoint to “conventional” meat and mainstream markets. It is thus a matter of offering the consumer an alternative with as little negative impact on the environment as possible, without rejecting meat consumption. Notions of healthy eating can be interpreted as representations produced and framed using available discourses, as seen for example by reference to the nutritional content presented in food guides explaining the relationship between healthy eating and wellbeing in a Western, or Swedish, context (Lerner and Kalof 1999). Through these market engagements, people are expected to learn the content of the message, but also to incorporate discourses on nutritional content and health into everyday food consumption (Ristovski-Slijepcevic, Chapman, and Beagman 2008). Importantly, the non-market authority link was not only accommodated by discursive means, but through replicating and distributing images (and links) of for example officially sanctioned food guides including the logos and pictures associated with these organizations (e.g. SLU and WWF). This power of logos and visualities as present in artifacts like leaflets, handbooks, and guides that connects visuality with legitimacy is evidenced in few empirical studies and seldom recognized (Drori, Delmestri, and Oberg 2015), but it played an important role for understanding how game meat marketing applied regulatory mechanisms for legitimacy purposes.

In this section, I showed how marketing work draws on different aspects of regulative and normative legitimation. This happened through strategic means of discrediting institutional norms of conventional meat and by associating with non-market authorities. Normative legitimation worked toward allying game meat with consumers’ interests and values (an affirmed interest in sustainable consumption, ethical and welfare values), which previous research has shown to be vital to the successful introduction of new products (Coskuner-Balli and Ertimur 2017). The fact that marketing linked their legitimacy efforts based on the formal authority of actors such as the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the World Wildlife Fund, reveals how companies worked toward framing their activities and products using an expert discourse on the sustainability, nutritional and health aspects of game meat; a legitimacy mechanism shown to matter when building the legitimacy of new or innovative products (Kaganer, Pawlowski, and Wiley-Patton 2010). I identified visuality as present in a set of artifacts (guides, logos, images) that was particularly useful to understand how legitimation relies on visuality also in the register of regulatory mechanisms. These efforts revealed how game meat legitimacy claims employed authorization by invoking the authority of organizations already vested in sustainability authority as per visual as well as discursive means.

Discussion, conclusions, and contributions

This research differs from most previous consumption research on cultural understandings regarding sustainable consumption. It does so by presenting a different conceptualization based on institutional theory and a discursive-visual approach. Sustainable consumption has been conceptualized as radicalized identity projects (Cherrier and Murray 2007; Connolly and Prothero 2008), community building (Moisander and Pesonen 2002), the re-enchantment of consumption (Thompson and Coskuner-Balli 2007), and status competition (Carfagna et al. 2014; Elliott 2013). Previous studies tend to neglect how actors like companies shape sustainable consumption. I have complemented this gap by addressing two research questions about how companies in the game meat marketplace work toward legitimizing the benefits of game meat, and in so doing contribute to the spread of sustainable food alternatives.

I applied the three pillars of institutional theory (normative, cognitive, and regulative logics) for analyzing the legitimation work and legitimacy claims made by game meat marketers. I showed how they employ strategic means to legitimize game meat by associating it with normative and moral values (communities, locality, sustainability), re-framing it for purposes of cognitive-cultural positioning and categorizing it as a specific meat product (healthy, tasty, sustainable, high status), and associating game meat with scientific and non-market authorities. I identified three central discursive-visual strategies that market actors engage in to unsettle existing norms and logics: 1 aestheticization and exotic framing, 2 proximity claiming and localization, and 3 discrediting institutional logics. As a result, this research provides a more diverse understanding of how sustainable consumption practices are shaped and enabled by the legitimization work that organizations carry out, with implications for the potential mainstreaming or normalization of alternative markets and products (McDonagh and Prothero 2014). Thus, this paper empirically shows how game meat markets, as alternative sustainable markets, hold the potential for understanding how marketing can contribute toward the spread and legitimization of sustainable food alternatives. Similar types of legitimation mechanisms, including the normative, cognitive, and regulative frameworks used for shaping the perception of products by consumers and society in general, have been shown to be successful strategies in previous studies. Coskuner-Balli and Ertimur (2017), as well as Humphreys (2010), show how the mainstreaming of products undergoing these forms of legitimation has reached large market segments, in addition to being transformed into something that is normatively accepted.

Further, the article makes a theoretical contribution and develops the institutional approach toward consumption. It does so by identifying and analyzing how game marketing legitimacy claims involved both verbal and non-verbal (e.g. visual) accounts and that signs including images, logos, advertisements, and social media were employed in legitimation activities. To my knowledge these insights have not previously been conceptualized to marketing efforts toward sustainable products as such, nor in institutional approaches toward sustainable consumption. Previous research on market legitimacy tends to rely on ideational and discursive approaches of legitimation. Yet, marketing has become increasingly iconographical, and visuals are important properties of legitimacy claims. By applying a theoretical approach toward legitimization inspired by semiotics (Kress 2010; Meyer et al. 2013) and the study of signs, I examined how meanings were made and represented through discursive-visual sign systems as they shaped game meat communication practices. These mechanisms disclosed the discursive and visual traces that actors provided and opened for novel insights into legitimation and impression management techniques (e.g. Meyer et al. 2013). For example, although game meat legitimation drew on discursive registers to communicate cultural norms, values, and classificatory schemas, these were also impregnated with images (pictorial conventions, visual associations, identity determinants). These visual resources helped make game meat “natural,” reduce the need for explicit justifications (by naturalizing game meat through direct visual means), and, importantly, employed the direct, affective, and sensory cues available in images and other visuals that carry the potential to impact an audience. This was for example evidenced in the ways that game meat marketing communicated the aesthetic properties of game meat. Visuals complemented verbal accounts and rationales and provided means for moralization, thus claiming legitimacy within systems and judgments of values related to sustainability. This was promoted through employing ideas related to utility regarding game meat (nutritious, healthy, and tasty) as well as naturalization (through presenting game meat as effortlessly and naturally sustainable) and authorization (through claiming legitimacy by invoking the authority of tradition, custom, and organizations vested in authority). These combinations were employed as strategic arrangements with the aim of managing the impression of game meat.

Future research could build upon the ideas presented in this research and advance systematic analytical approaches toward the role of visual elements in institutional theory as applied in consumption research. The opportunities to further conceptualize the specific contributions of visuality as a unique register of legitimacy claims could be further developed and gain analytic power through more empirical research in different market- and consumption contexts. Also, a discussion about the role of discursive-visual strategies employed for legitimization purposes concerning different sustainable products and services would suffice to challenge and/or strengthen the ideas and findings developed in this article. Finally, a more explicitly critical theoretical framework applied to examine the ideological and cultural implications of discursive-visual marketing practices could be developed for necessary insights about the role of marketing in promoting sustainable consumption.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FORMAS [2017-02096].

Notes on contributors

Niklas Sörum

Niklas Sörum holds a PhD in Ethnology, Associate Professor in Business Administration, and a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Borås. He is also the Director of and Senior Researcher at the Center for Consumption Research (CCR) at University of Gothenburg. His research interests are digitalization of consumer culture, circular consumption, sustainable consumption, and ethics related to digital marketing and personalization. His research has been published in scientific journals such as Consumption, Markets and Culture, Journal of Consumer Policy, Journal of Cultural Economy, and Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management.

Notes

1 The development of this paper is very much the product of the generous and creative comments from anonymous reviewers and the journal editors. The author of this paper is grateful for their productive feedback while developing the main argument, contribution and framework of the paper.

2 See Appendix 1 for overview of participants.

Appendix 1.

Participant overview

Table

Company pseudonym	Participant pseudonym	Bio
A-wild	Naomi, app. 40–45 years old	Responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app. 8 years
E-wild	Marie, app. 45–50 years old	Responsible for marketing and communication online. Been employed for app. 5 years
G-wild	Sara, app. 30–35 years old	Responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app. 5 years
K-wild	Ann-Louise, app. 40–45 years old	Responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app.12 years
N-wild	Greta, app. 30–35 years old	Responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app. 5 years
P-wild	Sonny, app. 50–55 years old	Owner and co-responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app. 20 years
R-wild	Ines, app. 35–40 years old	Co-owner and responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app. 3 years
V-wild	Terry, app. 55 years old	Co-owner and co-responsible for marketing and communication, online and offline. Been employed for app. 16 years