ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the ways in which consumers respond to the work of celebrities as the means for generating insights regarding contemporary consumer culture. Celebrities are a key element in consumer culture. The chapter draws from literature on celebrity in marketing and consumer behaviour, film studies, Madonna's body of work, critics' accounts of her work and two surveys of consumers' interactions with Madonna. It develops a model of celebrity consumption by analysing the meanings consumers attribute to Madonna and their uses of these meanings. The chapter reviews four categories of meanings: sex, love, social difference and commercialism. Madonna's success has been credited less to her talent than to her ability to tap into and challenge established social conventions and hierarchies of gender and sexuality. The chapter provides a tentative glimpse into the complex subject of celebrity consumption by investigating the meanings attached to Madonna, as a particular example of celebrity, and the strategic uses of these meanings.