Negotiating subcultural authenticity through interpretation of mainstream advertising
Ilona Mikkonen
Helsinki School of Economics
Introduction
American marketers became interested in gay and lesbian consumer segments in the late 1990s. Several marketing studies have revealed that, at least statistically speaking, homosexuals form a potentially very lucrative market segment. Previously invisible in the commercial sense, the homosexual community was soon labelled a dream market (Kates 1999); better educated, higher than average incomes and (often) no children, and also willing to spend their substantial disposable incomes on personal luxuries such as shopping, cosmetics, dining out and travel (Sender 2002).
Yet, homosexual audiences’ interpretations...