Rita Denny, Ph.D.
Rita Denny, based in Chicago, is an anthropologist specializing in American consumer culture, focusing on culturally based meanings of products and services in everyday life. She applies these findings to new product and brand development, retail display, and communication strategies.
For the past 20 years, Rita has applied an anthropological framework to consumer behavior, calling on linguistic, semiotic and symbolic traditions for interpreting consumer attitudes, perceptions and behavior. Some of Rita's favorite projects have included cultural analyses of dogs and their owners, book and music lovers, integration of technology into home life, living with art, the talk of drugs, shopping for shoes and the culture of corporate giving.
Rita is especially interested in 'the talk' of clients, consumers and products - a preoccupation that leads her to textual or semiotic analyses of advertising, packaging, retail display or magazine editorial. It also accounts for near obsessive attention to ways clients and consumers talk - alone or together - about products, advertising and consumption.
Rita's clients have included Anglogold Mining, Advanta Corporation, Apple Computers, AT&T Broadband, The Boeing Company, Borders Books & Music, Daimler-Chrysler Corporation, Darden Restaurants, Detroit Institute of Arts, e-Pods, Entergy, FCB Worldwide, General Motors, J C Penney, Miss America Pageant, Nissan North America, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Perich + Partners, Pernod Ricard, Quaker Oats Company, S.C. Johnson, The Texas Coffee Company, Verizon and Whirlpool Corporation.
Rita holds Masters of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Her many publications on applying anthropology to business span academic and professional audiences in both anthropology and marketing. She is an invited speaker by both professional societies (MSI, INMA, ESOMAR) and universities. With Patti Sunderland she is the author of the book, Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research, (Left Coast Press, 2007).