Ethnic segregation of consumption in Estonia: mythologies and practices.

The segregation of consumption between the Russian- and Estonian-speaking populations residing in Estonia has been common knowledge in the popular imagination, mass media publications, and academic papers. Rather than undertaking an impossible mission to identify whether these narratives are true, in this article, I show how this repertoire of stories has fostered special marketing strategies and document the emergence of a special marketing niche of companies promising to teach how to market products to mainstream or minority consumers based on their presumed mental differences. Deriving from ethnographic fieldwork, I demonstrate how mythologies about ethnic segregation in consumption paradoxically result in integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]