Research Poster presented at Consumer Culture Theory Conference "Mapping Consumer Culture. Latitudes, Legends and Declination". June 26-29, Helsinki, Finland.

1. Consumer Culture Theory Conference
Mapping Consumer Culture. Latitudes, Legends and Declination
June 26-29, 2014 – Aalto University Department of Marketing, Helsinki, Finland
Gandolfo Dominici
Scientific Director B.S.Lab
Assistant Professor of Business Management,
University of Palermo, Italy
gandolfo.dominici@bslaboratory.net
Federica Palumbo
Secretary General B.S.Lab
Ph.D. student in Business Management
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
federica.palumbo@uniroma1.it
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Tattoos have a special status as markers of identity or group
membership (Goulding et al. 2004).
While in the past they were considered to be semiotic representation
of wicked stereotypes, nowadays we can assist to their process of
"marketization".
The media are playing a key role in depicting tattoos in the best light,
showing how more and more ‘nondeviant people’—such as
celebrities, doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople—are getting
tattoos, using tattooed models in advertising, and employing
traditional tattoo symbols in branding.
Although tattoo purists generally consider brands to be inappropriate
for tattooing, the symbolism of their tattoos is not without
relevance for marketing, and expresses a strong communicative
potential that can be exploited for the enhancement of symbiotic
relationships between the individual or consumer and the firm or
brand (Bjerrisgaarda et al., 2013; Dominici et al., 2013).
RQ1: What is the contemporary perception of tattoos?
RQ2: Are tattoos still a countercultural or deviant issue, or have they
become a mainstream fashion phenomenon?
RQ3: Do tattoos influence consumers’ style? And is tattoo design also
trendy for the fashion industry and other industrial goods?
RQ4: Is there a link between brand and tattoos? Is so, what is it?
Qualitative methodology: ethnographic interviews and participant
observation in the field (Velliquette et al., 1998).
• Phase 1: 11 semistructured field conversations from September to
April 2014 both with tattooed people and with tattoo artists.
• Phase 2: 75 structured questionnaires to tattoed people (students,
and clients of tattoo shops)
In the first stage of our research, we found that those who were keen to talk about their
tattoos are mainly tattoo purists. None of those who got tattoos for fashion purposes
agreed to talk or be interviewed about the tattoos.
Tattoo purist and people tattooed for fashion/trend can be considered as two different
clusters.
We didn’t find any correlation between being tattooed and the belonging to a specific
subculture.
We found there is no relation between gender, social class or any other classic social
cluster and being tattoed.
We found that there is an high percentage of tattooed people practicing sport in gyms
especially fighting sports.
Given these result of this preliminary inquiry we plan to make further research shifting
the focus towards:
1. Target fighting sports gyms as source of qualitative information and data ontattooed
people coming from different social classes.
2- investigate the social and psychological reasons why there is such incidence of
tattooed people practicing fighting sports and martial arts.
3- investigate the effect of tattooed models in advertising and try to find significant links
to our findings that may justify the widespread presence of tattooed people in
advertising.