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Putting Consumer Experience Back into Consumer Research: The Philosophy and Method of Existential-Phenomenology
Abstract
Existential-phenomenology is presented as an alternative paradigm for conceptualizing and studying consumer experience. Basic theoretical tenets of existential-phenomenology are contrasted with more traditional assumptions and methods used in consumer research. The metaphors used by each paradigm to describe its world view are provided and their respective implications for consumer research discussed. One phenomenological research method is detailed, and examples of how the method is applied and the type of data it produces are provided. An epistemological analysis reveals that existential-phenomenology can provide an empirically based and methodologically rigorous understanding of consumer phenomena.
... Fueron realizadas entrevistas cortas de máximo 10 minutos ROTUR, Revista de Ocio y Turismo cada una con los participantes, según su disponibilidad. Las entrevistas se realizaron de acuerdo con la tradición fenomenológica (Thompson, et al, 1989). ...
Calonge es un municipio de Cataluña, España, conocido por sus dos formas de hacer vino: el vino payés, elaborado ancestralmente desde el siglo XIX, y los vinos de las Denominaciones de Origen, con procesos mecanizados y modernos. Estas dos realidades permiten crear diferentes historias a ser contadas a los turistas durante las visitas guiadas a las bodegas de la localidad. Este artículo explora la construcción de estas narrativas durante los tours que ofrecen dos bodegas, una inscrita en la Denominación de Origen y otra no. Se describen y comparan los elementos presentes en la dinámica entre turistas y guías de bodega. Se realiza un estudio etnográfico en donde las narraciones, entrevistas, observaciones y notas de campo se analizan a través de la teoría de la performance. La investigación apunta en la dirección de que las narrativas presentan una estructura similar, conteniendo cinco ejes principales. Además, revela que el enoturismo asume múltiples voces y que las visitas guiadas podrían servir tanto como herramienta de venta y marketing como asumir un papel de resistencia y transformación social en búsqueda de la preservación del patrimonio cultural de Calonge.
... the process of identifying the major themes was iterative and began during the transcription and early reading stages. the researchers identified key phrases and patterns of meanings to generate thematic similarities and differences, and subsequently, connect those sentiments based on the common descriptions of participants (Goolaup & Nunkoo, 2023;Malone et al., 2014;thompson et al., 1989). the key terms were derived from the participants' interpretations. ...
... After this we began our next round of second-phase analysis in which we read each other's reflections and, in turn, began to reflect upon these reflections, focusing on analytical codes, although this time in concert. In the third round of reflection, we began a phase of thematisation by hermeneutically (Thompson et al., 1989) going back and forth between transcripts, theory and reflections, while together formulating patterns as themes and writing these down. ...
... Experiences occur when customers encounter, undergo or live through an event or series of events that provide relational, emotional, sensory, behavioural and cognitive value (Schmitt, 1999;Gerhard et al., 2020). Some early studies on this topic took a different approach (Abbott, 1955;Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982;Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982;Thompson et al., 1989;Pine and Gilmore, 1998), applying a broader understanding of experiences by affirming that consumers desire memorable, engaging experiences instead of purely physical and material products. More recently, multiple researchers (Gentile et al., 2007;Brakus et al., 2009;Verhoef et al., 2009;Lemke et al., 2011;Schmitt et al., 2015) have adopted the proposal that customer experiences are the outcome of every service exchange and interaction with brands or companies. ...
Purpose
This study aims, first, to understand consumers’ perception of chefs as human brands (i.e. study one). Second, tests were run to assess the validity of a new conceptual model of the relationships between the factors of chef image, luxury restaurant image, both images’ congruity and consumers’ hedonic and novelty experiences and happiness and well-being (i.e. study two).
Design/methodology/approach
The first qualitative study involved using Leximancer software to analyse the data drawn from 43 interviews with luxury restaurant clients. In the second quantitative study, 993 valid survey questionnaires were collected, and the proposed model was tested using structural equation modelling.
Findings
The results reveal that consumers perceive chefs as human brands and the associated narratives include both performance- and popularity-based characteristics. The findings support the conclusion that individuals give great importance to chefs’ image and the congruence between chefs and their restaurant’s image. In addition, luxury restaurant image only affects novelty experiences, and both hedonic and novelty experiences have a positive effect on customers’ happiness and well-being.
Research limitations/implications
This research focused on Portuguese luxury restaurants. The consumers’ happiness and well-being needs to be replaced by other outcomes to confirm if the model produces consistent results.
Practical implications
The results should help luxury restaurant managers understand more fully which pull factors are valued by their clients and which aspects contribute the most to their pleasure and welfare.
Originality/value
This study adds to the extant literature by exploring consumers’ perceptions of chefs as human brands and the role these chefs’ image play in customers’ luxury restaurant experiences and perceived happiness and well-being.
In this article, we focus on relational labour as a form of emotional labour associated with the use of platformised possessions, such as pins, messages, photos, videos and playlists hosted on digital platforms, to maintain relationships with friends and family. We argue that this ongoing effort is a type of consumer labour because it generates profitable engagements for digital platforms, which intentionally exploit negative emotions, namely, anxiety and guilt, associated with maintaining social connections. Drawing on 47 depth interviews with people living in the South of the UK, we identify the direct (communication via platforms) and indirect (information gathered via platforms to attain relational goals) relational work undertaken by consumers via their platformised possessions. We then consider the emotional experiences related to this work, demonstrating how such experiences differ from reports of possession work on material goods, while maintaining platform profits. Recognising that this work is the basis of much platform engagement, and hence profit, we further show how this effort becomes a form of unpaid labour. We thus contribute to the nascent literature on platformisation and emotion, to broader studies of possession work, and to critical marketing scholarship on consumer labour.
Purpose
This study aims to explore stigma in payday borrowing by investigating how the stigma associated with using such a service may spill over and affect other people, entities and relationships beyond the user within a service ecosystem.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews exploring consumers’ lived experiences and stigma were combined with publicly available reports from key stakeholders within the payday loan (PDL) industry to create a qualitative, text-based data set. The transcripts and reports were then analysed following thematic protocols.
Findings
Analysis reveals that the stigma associated with using a stigmatised service spills over, affecting not only the borrower but other actors within the service ecosystem. The analysis uncovers three important interactions that spilled over between the actors within the stigmatised service ecosystem (SSE), which can be damaging, enabling or concealed.
Research limitations/implications
This study introduces and explores the concept of “SSEs” and investigates the impact of stigma beyond the dyadic relationships between service providers and users to consider the actors within the wider ecosystem. The findings reframe existing understandings about stigma, as this study finds that stigmatised services can play both a positive (enabling) and a negative (damaging) role within an ecosystem, and this study uncovers the role of stigma concealments and how they can affect relationships and value co-creation among different actors.
Practical implications
This study provides evidence for more robust policies for addressing stigma in different SSEs by mapping the effects of stigma spillover and its effects on the borrower and other actors.
Originality/value
This study contributes to reframing marketing priorities by extending existing work on consumer stigma by showing how the stigma of a PDL may spill over and affect other actors within a service ecosystem. Significantly, the interactions between the actors may have positive as well as negative outcomes.
Uses an everyday naive account of the event of a woman's criminal victimization, called an individual phenomenal description, to analyze the individual (idiographic) and general (nomothetic) psychological levels of the experience. At each level the general constituents involved in the researcher's participation are elaborated and then exemplified by referring to the present author's (1983) study of being criminally victimized. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Consumer behavior depth interviews are grouped with other kinds of story telling-fairy tales, novels, psychological test responses, and myths-as imaginative statements that can be qualitatively interpreted for their functional and symbolic content. Drawing upon the Claude Lévi-Strauss approach to the analysis of myths, a structuralist interpretation illustrates application to the age, sex, and social status dimensions of food consumption.
Science is analyzed as a special case of marketing-the marketing of ideas in the form of substantive and methodological theories. The marketing mix, target markets, and marketing objectives are developed for the scientific arena, and a formal analysis of a relativistic/constructionist view of science is used to support the approach. This view is contrasted with the positivistic/empiricist perspective of science currently dominant in marketing and other social sciences. Recommendations are offered for improved methods of developing knowledge.
As the conception of what marketing is has evolved, so must the methods of inquiry also evolve. Marketing now is viewed as a socially constructed enterprise. Thus, what is needed are inputs from the humanistic modes of inquiry developed specifically to address socially constructed phenomena. The author discusses three central aspects of humanistic inquiry, (1) the philosophy and metaphysic of humanism, (2) the methodology of humanistic research, and (3) the criteria appropriate for evaluating studies conducted in the humanistic mode. Humanistic inquiry is compared specifically with the positivist approach currently used by most marketing researchers. Guidelines are provided to assist researchers who may wish to implement the humanistic approach in their own research programs.
Marketing thinking is profoundly dominated by the empiricist world view and the logical empiricist paradigm. This article argues that marketing can be enriched by opening up to alternative paradigms that capture subjective experiences, conflicts, and liberating forces.
Only recently have marketing scientists become concerned with issues in the philosophy of science. This paper points to one neglected area- the implications of a theoretical tradition for the selection of research methods (design, data collection, and data analysis). It is argued that marketing has been relying primarily on only one theoretical tradition. The dominance of this philosophy has led to marketing science growing more rapidly in the area of hypothesis testing than in the development of new, rich explanatory theories. Several suggestions are made to achieve a balance in theory construction and testing, with implications for reducing methods bias by a process of triangulating methodologies.
Discusses the distinction between the Context of Justification and the Context of Discovery introduced by H. Reichenbach (1952/1938). The distinction is used to clarify the difference between the reasons that a scientist holds a certain view and the viewpoint's truth value. Addressed are some of the assumptions and interpretations that go with this distinction that make it less than universal and unsuitable for certain types of psychological research, namely, those that call for descriptive endeavors and analyses of psychological meaning. Also discussed are the potentialities of a phenomenologically based descriptive science for psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Discusses the confused understandings of phenomenology and its value for the interpretation and practice of psychological research within the psychological community. Ten differentiations of phenomenology from other methods or concepts with which it shares characteristics are delineated. Phenomenology is defined as the study of the phenomena of the world as experienced by conscious beings and as method for studying such phenomena. A phenomenological analysis of a research situation is performed to demonstrate what is essential to it regardless of the theoretical perspective that a psychologist may hold, and whether or not a correct understanding of phenomenology as applied to psychology can meet the essential features of a research situation is considered. It is concluded that if this can be demonstrated, then the phenomenological perspective should have its place within psychological research so that it can be judged by its fruits rather than dismissed a priori because it appears, on the surface, to be different. (65 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Questions the validity of the qualitative research interview, and outlines concepts and procedures for ascertaining the validity (truth value) of interview results. The primacy of what is studied, the purpose of an investigation, and how an investigation is validated are discussed. The results of an interview study must be validated in a concrete situation. Improving the quality of qualitative research is not mainly a technical question of developing appropriate methods; the basic issue is the quest for a valid theory of social reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
As the first AAAI Presidential Address, this paper focuses on a basic substantive problem: the nature of knowledge and representation. There are ample indications that artificial intelligence is in need of substantial work in this area, e.g., a recent SIGART special issue on Knowledge Representation edited by Ron Brachman and Brian Smith. The paper proposes a theory of the nature of knowledge, namely, that there is another computer system level immediately above the symbol (or program) level. The nature of computer system levels is reviewed, the new level proposed, and its definition is treated in detail. Knowledge itself is the processing medium at this level and the principle of rationality plays a central role. Some consequences of the existence of the knowledge level and some relations to other fields are discussed