Selling ‘cool’: The role of marketing in normalizing domestic air-conditioning in Jordan

Abstract

Use of air-conditioners (ACs) is predicted to rise globally. However, there remains a gap in understanding the role of media and emotions in normalizing AC. Guided by the social practice theory, this study investigates escalating use of ACs in Jordan, drawing on statistical data, advertisement content analysis, and expert interviews. From the marketing analysis, three periods were identified: seeding the need through prescriptions of ‘distinction’ (1971–1991), glamorizing the need prescribing ‘the good life’ (1992–2015), and need taking root with prescriptions of ‘normality’ (2016-present). Initially, AC was connoted with modernity, aesthetic taste, and luxury, embraced by affluent homeowners who shared similar aspirations with contracted newly trained architects. Prescriptions that followed deployed a wider range of emotions (family, safety, happiness, fear, envy) targeting the middle-class, with twice the ad exposure and 13-fold increase in AC uptake by 2013 compared to 1991. It is during this period that new rules, norms, and meanings around AC arguably took hold, co-evolving with the diffusion of new housing typologies and urban densification in Amman. Post 2016, drastic drop in AC advertising suggests that domestic AC has become collectively internalized in Jordan, supported by prescriptions of ‘normality’, with reduced use of positive emotions in marketing, and the demand driven by supply rather than necessity. The paper contributes to the emerging interest in understanding the role of emotions in reproducing (un)sustainable practices and recommends limiting emotional prescriptions mobilized by media, especially in countries with low AC uptake.