John Sherry

• University of Notre Dame

Marketers recognize the contributions that consumer rituals make to their organizations. They endeavor to have such contributions persist as they support consumers in enacting those rituals. This ethnographic study examines the temporal aspects of ritual, termed 'ritual vitality.' We explain how marketers can influence ritual vitality through engag...

Ritual, which connects participants within brand communities, is a vehicle for creating and understanding time. Consumer and marketplace rituals have been theorised with respect to staging, enactment, outcomes, and place-making, but little consideration has been devoted to the timescapes that shape them. The study of time in marketing research is b...

luxury brand consumption in China

Like homes, neighborhoods, and cities, retail locations offer significant opportunities for attachment far from domestic spheres. In commercial settings, consumers construct personal geographies, and find stable references for their lives. Our work advances previous consumer research by showing how these relationalities are situated, implicitly uns...

Incorporating Illouz’s theory of emotions, this study examines how specific emotions drive consumption, as embodied by escalating conflicts between Hong Kong and the PRC luxury consumers. When affluent Mainlanders pursue status signifiers via consumption of relatively affordable luxury goods in Hong Kong, local residents’ disdain triggers a nexus o...

Tailgating is an institutionalized form of public revelry and emplacement of brand community that occurs within the context of a consumption encampment. In this ethnographic investigation of tailgating in an American collegiate football setting, we explore the dwelling practices of stakeholders involved in the event. In the duration of a tailgate,...

Throughout North America, the open air public feasting and drinking that surrounds an athletic event, most commonly football, is labeled “tailgating.” In this article, we explore how consumers infuse their place-creating activity with a well-modulated aura of revelry that energizes tailgating without jeopardizing either its immediate or long-term v...

Using a semiotic square to study placeway rituals, we theorize one particular sanctuary, a secular ritual we term “vestaval”—and specifically, its manifestation in the form of tailgating—as a site of popular communion. Vestaval demonstrates the power of consumption to stimulate social and civic engagement. We employ an ethnographic team methodology...

Through an ethnographic study of how consumers perceive and experience Louis Vuitton flagship stores, we show that luxury stores are becoming hybrid institutions, embodying elements of both art galleries and museums, within a context of exclusivity emblematic of luxury. We create the term "M(Art)World" to capture the essence of this aesthetically o...

This study introduces the construct of Perceived Marketplace Influence (PMI) and investigates its role in mediating the relationship between environmental concern and sustainable consumption behavior. A nationwide survey shows that Perceived Marketplace Influence plays an important role in mediating the relationship between concern and behavior, pr...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the author’s involvement in the paradigm wars of the 1980s in marketing and consumer research. In this paper, the author describes his role in the ecological succession of the discipline at a critical juncture between the early efforts of the pioneering scholars and the establishment of a matur...

The experiences of African American expatriates in South Africa are explored to explain how acculturation in circumstances of hyperfiliation influences cross-cultural consumption for the purposes of performing cultural citizenship. The acculturation sub-processes of revision, restoration, and retroversion are analyzed to examine the ways in which s...

This ethnographic study of Feng Shui discourses and practices in Hong Kong examines consumer hope embedded within a specific sociocultural context, supplanting the current understanding of hope as purely an individual psychic phenomenon. The study investigates hope as a collective emotion, informed by key Chinese cultural resources drawn from Taois...

We explore the phenomenon of gift registry as a specific ritual within a larger set of wedding rituals to understand interactions between consumers and retailers. We find that roles for retailers in family based rituals are expanding, given how consumers employ brands to negotiate meaning, experiences of identity, and the dispersion of social syste...

An ongoing tension between new ways of achieving novel, meaningful, and connected forms of expression is permeating the practice of advertising and igniting a lively academic debate. Novelty and social connection have long been preoccupations of art worlds. In this paper, we explore the creative tensions and synergies between countercultural and co...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to expand the scant literature related to retail branding ideology and the application of mythotypes to flagship stores within the Chinese setting. The study explores the transplantation of a retail brand ideology in the form of complex home‐country cultural content to a host culture whose local retail narratives di...

The phrase “fast fashion” refers to low-cost clothing collections that mimic current luxury fashion trends. Fast fashion helps sate deeply held desires among young consumers in the industrialized world for luxury fashion, even as it embodies unsustainability. Trends run their course with lightning speed, with today’s latest styles swiftly trumping...

7th Consumer Culture Theory Conference University of Oxford, UK. 'During a career that spans over sixty-five years, I have seen many professional careers in action and professors come and go,including students and young scholars who have created distinguished careers. I believe I am capable of judging the ability of members of our field as I obse...

This "paper" is a rough transcription of the Presidential Address delivered at the Oxford CCT conference on August 18, 2012. I have attempted to retain the conversational style and informal structure of the original speech, but have added some connective transitions to render the talk more legible. I examine some key strengths and prospects for the...

In the consumer research literature, the automatic consideration of one’s knowledge of self in the evaluation of others is taken for granted. The ‘idea of the other’ – which the authors here term ‘representational subjectivity’ – is at the heart of consumer decisions. Philosopher Emanuel Levinas suggests another path: the concrete relation to the o...

Consumer research has paid scant attention to public goods, especially at a time when the contestation between categorizing public and private goods and controlling public goods is pronounced. In this multisited ethnography, we explore the ways in which active consumers negotiate meanings about the consumption of a particular public good, public sp...

In this paper we theorize and empirically investigate how female consumers' attitudes and preferences relating to bodily appearance are linked to their perceptions of the aesthetics of fashion. Our theoretical work is informed by three streams of research: aesthetics of production, aesthetics of reception and aesthetic labor. These three converge t...

5th Consumer Culture Theory Conference, June 10-­‐13, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. "Poetry, together with other art forms such as film and music, has played a key role in Consumer Culture Theory research to help understand the creative and expressive aspects of consumer behaviour. Roel Wijland has been at the forefront of the poetry move...

An ongoing tension between new ways of achieving novel, meaningful, and connected forms of expression is permeating the practice of advertising and igniting a lively academic debate. Novelty and social connection have long been preoccupations of art worlds. In this paper, we explore the creative tensions and synergies between countercultural and co...

This account of a field experience is written in the form of a reverie, to match the conditions that gave rise to it. It emerges from my long-term study of the Burning Man festival, a massive countercultural communal celebration of aesthetic immediacy held annually in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Marked by the suspension of ordinary commerce in...

Although there is growing interest in themed brandstores, we still know very little about the source of these retail environments’ power to affect consumers profoundly. Utilizing an ethnographic study of American Girl Place, a culturally rich and highly successful retail environment, we find that effective retailing in these contexts is an intensel...

This paper uses visual and verbal analysis to delve into the multi-faceted ways in which individuals construct their own meanings and shape their own experiences with the Internet. We build on the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique, and the principles of visual rhetoric to show how perceptual processes affect picture choices, and how these choi...

This article describes an investigation of the American Girl brand that provides a more complete and holistic understanding of sociocultural branding. Recent research on emotional branding, together with prior work on brands' symbolic nature and their role as relationship partners, represents a significant shift in the way marketers think about bra...

Conceptual blending occurs at the moment of perception and creates new meanings out of existing ways of thinking. Analysis of data collected in phenomenological interviews reveals the blending processes consumers use to “make sense” of advertisements. We recognize subtle similarities and differences between metaphor and blending, and examine their...

This account reflects an effort to address the crisis of representation emerging from some of my recent fieldwork on pilgrimage in the postmodern era. Bracketed by the relatively dispassionate field note and the reasonably narcissistic journal entry, each of these particular poems is a liminal playground for the contest between introspection and ex...

Anthropologists have long wrestled with their impact upon the people they study. Historically, the discipline has served and subverted colonial agendas, but views itself traditionally as an advocate for the disempowered and as an instrument of public policy. Marketing is now among the pre-eminent institutions of cultural stability and change at wor...

Einzelhandelsmärkte sind diversifizierter und fragmentierter denn je; sie konfrontieren die Konsumenten mit einem Übermaß an Informationen und Alternativen. Um die Konsumenten anzuziehen, haben die Handelskonzeme begonnen, ihre Häuser und Einkaufstätten atmosphärisch aufzuladen, um den Konsumenten dadurch ein deutlich einprägsameres und attraktiver...

This item is a book review.

In this account of our long-term ethnographic investigation of the Burning Man Project, we examine the emergence of nomadic spirituality among the citizens of Black Rock City, Nevada. We describe this emergence as a reaction to consumers’ increasing dissatisfaction both with conventional religious denominations and with consumption as an existentia...

This essay uses Reeves-Ellington's discussion of the timescape as a departure point for describing one way in which marketing managers have responded to consumers' lived experience of time. It focuses on the retail theatrics of the retroscape as a source of meaning for beleaguered consumers. It then extends the notion of the liminal to account for...

The purpose of this chapter is to rethink the concept of reflexivity within consumer research and to highlight the complexities and various levels of reflexive thought. In doing so, we were inspired by the work of Kristen Campbell, in particular her article, 'The promise of feminist reflexivities: developing Donna Haraway's project for feminist sci...

Market orientation is a foundation of marketing and is increasingly important in other fields, such as strategic management. Research in marketing has identified the characteristics of market-oriented organizations. However, how organizations change to become more market oriented has received less attention. In this article, the authors conduct an...

Market orientation is a foundation of marketing and is increasingly important in other fields, such as strategic management. Research in marketing has identified the characteristics of market-oriented organizations. However, how organizations change to become more market oriented has received less attention. In this article, the authors conduct an...

The purpose of this book chapter is to rethink the concept of reflexivity within consumer research and to highlight the complexities and various levels of reflexive thought. To do so, we discuss the ramifications of three main reflexive streams: the anthropological “Radical reflexivity”, Bruno Latour’s “Infrareflexivity” and feminist critiques’ “Di...

This study of art galleries in the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC) uses a political economy approach to examine the contours of the art world and the art market. A Chinese art market based on the Western and Japanese models was created in the early twentieth century, but was abolished in 1949 when the PRC, under Chairman Mao, adopted a social-ist...

The consumption of spectacular experience is of increasing interest to consumer researchers. Much of this consumption occurs in themed environments. These environments arouse and motivate consumers in multifaceted ways. In this article, we explore the ways in which gendered behavior is elicited and enacted in a sports bar venue. Using ethnographic...

This article focuses on consumer movements that seek ideological and cultural change. Building from a basis in New Social Movement (NSM) theory, we study these movements among anti-advertising, anti-Nike, and anti-GE food activists. We find activists' collective identity linked to an evangelical identity related to U.S. activism's religious roots....

Spectacular, themed environments have been theorized as places where play is limited and consumer agency is overpowered. In a multiperspectival ethnographic engagement with ESPN Zone Chicago, we find consumers resisting the rules, but only to a limited degree. Spectacular consumption possesses a do‐it‐yourself quality unrecognized in prior theory....

Our chapter is based upon our ethnographic fieldwork at Burning Man in 1999 and 2000. As we will describe, altars are central in many ways to Burning Man. Altars are perhaps best recognized as the ground of alterity, the celebratory loci of otherness. Burning Man is an experiment in temporary community that celebrates the practice of radical self e...

Spectacular, themed environments have been theorized as places where play is limited and consumer agency is overpowered. In a multiperspectival ethnographic engagement with ESPN Zone Chicago, we find consumers resisting the rules, but only to a limited degree. Spectacular consumption possesses a do‐it‐yourself quality unrecognized in prior theory....

The relationship between art and market can be rendered visible only by closely examining the actions of contemporary artists, art critics, and writers, and the efforts of gallery and auction house merchandisers. A market orientation is just one way of evaluating the activities of the art world. Art and market are not reducible to each other, no ma...

This article focuses on somatic experience--not just the process of thinking bodily but how the body informs the logic of thinking about art. We examine the links between embodiment, movement, and multisensory experience insofar as they help to elucidate the contours of art appreciation in a museum. We argue that embodiment can be identified at two...

Retro brands are relaunched historical brands with updated features. The authors conduct a "netnographic" analysis of two prominent retro brands, the Volkswagen New Beetle and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, that reveals the importance of Allegory (brand story), Aura (brand essence), Arcadia (idealized community), and Antinomy (brand par...

Retromarketing is all around. From the rereleased Volkswagen camper van to the recent relaunch of Charlie cologne, retro is one of the most pervasive marketing trends of our time. This article examines and empirically investigates the rapid rise of retromarketing. It explains the demographic, socio-economic, cultural, and organisational factors tha...

Consumer researchers are wrestling with the crisis of representation that has challenged contiguous disciplines over the past decade. Traditional or conventional prose articles seem increasingly insufficient as vessels for representing our understandings and experiences. In this article, we demonstrate how poetry contributes to the research enterpr...

The flagship brand store is an increasingly popular venue used by marketers to build relationships with consumers. As we move further into an experience economy in the new millennium, retailers are refining the flagship brand store into new forms such as the themed retail brand store. This new form not only promotes a more engaging experience of th...

The flagship brand store is an increasingly popular venue used by marketers to build relationships with consumers. As we move further into an experience economy in the new millennium, retailers are refining the flagship brand store into new forms such as the themed retail brand store. This new form not only promotes a more engaging experience of th...

Experiential consumption is a topic of growing interest in the social scientific and managerial literatures. While consumer experience is profoundly shaped by the built environment, a critical eye has been cast on the oppressive nature of themed environments. While offering multisensory sensual opportunities, themed retail environments cater primar...

“This emphasis on extravaganza, simulation, and implosion draws consumers into a web of secular sport-oriented sacraments that loom in a larger-than-life liminal state... ”

Marketing-driven consumer culture is often indicted in the degradation of the ecosphere. Futurists envision an ecological crisis in the new millennium. Marketing and consumer research can be enlisted in the aversion of this crisis. Political and philosophical regimes of environmental reclamation and redemption must be mobilized by conversion experi...

Three challenges of intellectual, political, and moral significance confront our discipline in the new millennium. First, a thorough understanding of sense of place must be harnessed in the service of ecolate dwelling. Second, our inquiry into materiality must expand to encompass the numinous dimension of technology. Finally, we must resolve the cr...

Foreword - Sidney J Levy Introduction - John F Sherry Jr PART ONE: ORIENTATION Marketing and Consumer Behavior - John F Sherry Jr Into the Field PART TWO: APPREHENDING THE PRODUCT: ARTIFACTUAL DIMENSIONS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR Active Ingredients - Dan Rose Consumer Behavior Reflected in Discards - MasaKazu Tani and William L Rathje A Case Study of Dr...

In this paper, I use an anthropological perspective to explore the dimensions of “coffeeworld” as it is depicted on prime time network television programming. I do not examine coffee commercials, but rather the programming context that conditions in part viewers’ perceptions of coffee, which ostensibly delivers a receptive audience to prospective m...

The field of consumer–object relations has recently emerged as a significant area of inquiry. Renewed attention has been devoted to understanding the meanings of gift giving as a result of this emergence. In this study, we employ projective techniques to uncover meanings that are less accessible by more direct measures. We analyze these meanings, a...

Probing of the semiotic significance of gift exchange behaviors has recently been resumed. The symbolic exchange value of the gift is especially amenable to investigation via ethnographic methods and projective techniques. In this paper, negativity and ambivalence in gift exchange, a theme derived from a comparative ethnographic study of two midwes...

An ethnography of a midwestern farmers' market captures patterns of farmer/vendor behaviors and buyer-seller interactions. We used a variety of methods and media to produce a thick description of this periodic urban marketplace and to reveal a series of successful marketing practices. The paper uses an extended case study format as a baseline for i...