💄✨ Status… Moi? Status and Beauty—the Power Couple in the Digital Age.

Today (Feb 13, 2025) I had the pleasure of presenting at Näringslivets Hus in Stockholm, at an event arranged by KoHF, the Swedish industry organization for cosmetics and hygiene corporations, in front of 100 representatives from leading retail and manufacturing brands in the beauty industry.

In my talk, I explored:
✨ Why status is so important to people—but so taboo to admit.
✨ The painful twin of status: envy.
✨ What has been considered status throughout history—and what it is today.
✨ How status-striving is and has been systematically restricted.
✨ And how status today is deeply entwined with all consumer categories, especially beauty.

Pär Svahnberg did an excellent moderation (and for the book! 📖), as well as to the audience for their engagement and great conversations afterward.  Before me, Josefin Liljeteg, Chief Innovation Officer at Hardford,  expertly unpacked what “advanced skincare” really is (and isn’t!), and Annika Svedberg, Director of Pharmacy, Quality & Sustainability at Apoteket Hjärtat, who discussed their bold and media-hyped 2024 initiative to introduce an age limit on advanced skincare products.

Not only was it a fantastic event, but I also loved revisiting my “old” PhD topic of status, which—unsurprisingly—never seems to go out of style!

“Declining Middle-Classes and Consumption”, Session Organizer at the 3’d ISA Forum 2016, Vienna, Austria

At one of the world’s most renowned conferences within sociology (the 3’d international Sociological Association Forum: “The Futures we Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a better world)  within Jean-Pascal Daloz’z research committee on comparative sociology, I organised a session on the shrinking of the middle-classes and what consequences this has for classical theories on consumption. Took place in Vienna, Austria, 10-14 July, 2016. Very exciting papers were presented, e.g. by Professor Louis Chauvel, and the room was packed. Not only by audience but also with discussions.

Read more:

the-isa-forum

Formuesdagen 2014, Oslo: Philanthropy and Future Consumption.

Humbled by great company (e.g. Open Society Foundations) I talked in Oslo to Formuesforvaltnings clients, about possible future philanthropic and political consumption. In the movie below you can find my speech at 2.01 and twenty minutes forward.

Status movements- Published in European Journal of Marketing 2014

In an economically polarizing world (Piketty 2013), with a growing “precariat” (Standing 2011), previously middle-class consumers around the world increasingly experience that their status position is not as guaranteed as it used to be. This calls for research which explores these experiences of status movement and how it influences consumption. In this article I and Jacob Ostberg set out to do so, and the article is published in European Journal of Marketing 2014 vol 48 (5/6).

Read it here:

UlverOstberg2014.pdf