ABSTRACT
The ‘new dominant logic of marketing’ switches the view of firms as the principal economic producers and value creators to one in which customers are actively engaged in the value creation and marketing process (Normann and Ramirez, 1993; Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Wikström, 1996). This chapter examines how subcultures play an important role in enabling consumers to act proactively and productively in the market as entrepreneurs. Subcultures have often been conceptualized as the catalyst for counter-hegemonic strategies of resistance (Kellner, 1995); however, they are also cultures of consumption which involve consumers as innovators in the active creation of markets along with the development of products and services to meet the needs of these markets. This chapter reports some of the research which we have conducted into the ‘Gothic’ subculture, a micro-community that emerged from the punk rock generation of the late 1970s and continues to flourish. Based on
our findings, we propose two inter-related concepts which are relevant to this book. These are the tribal entrepreneur, and the subcultural commodification process.
