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May the farce be with you: On Las Vegas and consumer infantalization
... Our interest in alternate motives stems from the following researchbased arguments. Holbrook (1994; supports that customers can be less concerned with value gained from the purchased item itself and more compelled by the shopping and purchasing activity (see also Rintamaki et al, 2006;Chanson, Wansink and Laurent, 2000;Belk, 2000;Babin and Attaway, 2000). We propose in free-to-play games that the payment, that is, transferring funds to the developer, may be for some players more important than the item itself. ...
... Existing literature has not previously drawn attention directly to this distinction. However, a body of work that supports that the motivation for shopping transcends the value in the items sought provides some indirect support, finding that people are often motivated to go shopping for the experience of shopping itself rather than the need for a specific item (Holbrook, 1994(Holbrook, , 1999Belk, 2000;Babin and Attaway, 2000). Although this is not explicit within the literature, similarity can be drawn to motivations to buy charity-linked products -that is, when purchasing provides a donation to charity (see Proença and Pereira, 2008). ...
... Such purchases are motivated either hedonically (through gaining pleasure from 'reciprocity' with the developer), socially (through improving a player's social standing by showing his/her generosity to others), or utilitarian (by paying to keep the game alive). Prior knowledge from the marketing literature asserts that value can transcend the product or service and can be found in the shopping experience itself, even when a purchase does not take place (Holbrook, 1994(Holbrook, , 1999Belk, 2000;Babin and Attaway, 2000). Our findings extend on this notion by showing that, in the context of free-toplay games, there is value in the payment. ...
Free-to-play online games, funded by the sale of virtual items, are renouncing the sale of those which provide a competitive advantage for those which are purely cosmetic, in order to keep competition pure. Recent quantitative research has discovered several motivations for the purchase of virtual items in general, but no study has directly explored the motivation to purchase cosmetic items (i.e. non-functional). This paper contributes here, by exploring the motivations of non-functional virtual item purchase through 16 interviews with western hardcore gamers of League of Legends. The results reveal three superordinate purchasing motivations: hedonistic, social and social payments. The first two support existing knowledge in the field; however the latter provides novel contribution. This is akin with other sites, such as Wikipedia, where users are motivated to invest money with the intention to reward and support the developers and to ensure its future existence. Future research and marketing implications are provided.
... Alea is either absolute favour or total disgrace. Alea appears to be more attractive for adults and is foundational to many adult playgrounds, Las Vegas (Belk, 2000), online Poker (O'Leary and Carroll, 2013) and eBay (Molesworth and Denegri-Knott, 2008), for example. ...
... Consumer research examples include high-wire acrobats (Lyng, 1990), skydiving (Celsi et al., 1993), white-water rafting (Arnould and Price, 1993) and surfing . Many machines have been designed to induce ilinx, motorbikes (Murphy and Patterson, 2011) and carnival rides (Belk, 2000) provide a 'pleasurable torture' and turn people pale with dizziness, often to a state of nausea. Intoxication from alcohol or drugs is regarded as a corrupt form of ilinx. ...
... It also must be noted that behaviour that looks like play is not necessarily play (Anchor, 1978) (the blurred boundaries of a games room within a 'cool' working location, for instance). Children can legitimately play in capitalist society but adults cannot (Belk, 2000). Leisure rather than play is constructed as the acceptable term for adult non-work time (Giddens, 1964). ...
Play theory has been underutilized to understand consumer behaviour. In this article, we adopt a play theory perspective to understand how consumers respond to and navigate macrostructural influences. The marketplace culture stream of consumer culture theory (CCT) research is particularly well suited to macrostructural analysis from a play theory perspective. We develop an analytical framework derived from play theory to interpret the context of marketplace culture. We show how the types of play foundational to marketplace culture experiences act as expressions of order or disorder to wider macrostructural influences. In contrast to agentic perspectives, we show how marketplace culture experiences, despite their fun appearance, embody the underlying tensions of the intensifying rationality, regulation and competition structuring neoliberal society. Finally, we express concern over the marketer's control of playground expression and suggest CCT adopt a more critical stance to the commercialization of play.
... In this sense, clubbing is "a controlled and enjoyable de-controlling of affect and emotions" (Elias and Dunning 1986, p.54) that salves and ameliorates the boring or repressive qualities of everyday life. Like other extraordinary, high-risk or intensive affective forms of consumption, clubbing achieves this through the provision of excitement and the possibility of a return to a more primitive (Canniford and Shankar 2007), child-like (Belk 2000) or "reason-be-damned" (Belk, Østergaard and Groves 1998, p. 208) state of being. ...
... In a similar vein, gambling is illegal in many US states, however it is contained in geographically limited areas like Las Vegas, Reno or Atlantic City. Like clubbing, Las Vegas offers an alternative reality, where adults from all walks of life can collectively but temporarily disengage from their quotidian roles and responsibilities in an act of transformation to a more infantile state (Belk 2000). ...
Through pleasure, a foundational concept in consumer behavior, we offer an analysis of the history, development, and experience of clubbing, the postcursor of rave and the contextual focus of this article. On the basis of a 5-year study primarily involving participant observation and interviewing, we present an analysis of how the clubbing experience is cocreated by promoters, DJs, and clubbers themselves. We develop and demonstrate a biosocial conceptualization of pleasure and show how the shared experience of music and dance, the organization of space, and the effects of the drug ecstasy combine to produce a highly sought-after, calculated suspension of the rules and norms of everyday life. Further, we suggest that the club, as well as the pleasurable practices and experiences that it supports, has become a site of contained illegality. Here, the illicit, subversive practices of rave have now become shepherded and channeled into more predictable, manageable, and regulated environments facilitated by the "knowing wink" of club promoters, police, and state authorities. Implications for consumer research are discussed. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
... The analysis of these historical sites will utilize the concepts of Disneyfication and Disneyization to elucidate important features of the intended consumer experience. It is the goal of the contribution to add to the discussion concerning the distinction/sameness of Disney as a themed consumer environment and the outside world (Baudrillard 1996; Belk 2000; Fırat 2001; Gottdiener 2001; Ritzer 2004; Sorkin 1992). While some cultural critics regard the subject of Disney as passé (consider the " knee-jerk anti- Disneyism " described by Hebdige 2003), the influence of Disney globally cannot be denied and dismissed as outdated; neither is the cultural analysis complete. ...
... The gift shops are placed carefully so that they are visible inside the pavilion and serve as the exit point for the attractions. It was observed that the opportunities for shopping may infantilize adults who play " shopping spree, " many of whom were observed having their items delivered to their hotel or shipped home for a nominal fee (Belk 2000; Urry 1990). Performative labor is also integral to the visitor experience. ...
This paper uses the concepts of Disneyfication and Disneyization to discuss the (re)presentation of history at Disney’s American Adventure, Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Colonial Williamsburg. It is argued that these historical properties to varying degrees have adopted Disney principles. While the discussion focuses upon the Disney‐like experiences of colonial America at these sites, the piece concludes with a comment on the Disneyesque nature of everyday life in contemporary consumer culture.
... s a complicated task. Thus, shoppers unconsciously headed for the Las Vegas Strip to catch a cab and usually entered Paris, a hotel adjoining Aladdin. Thus, despite concentrating on an articulated design full of elaborate features, managers missed the most important issue, a convenient layout. Luxor Las Vegas also misinterpreted customers' desires. Belk (2000) reports that the headset-guided tour in Luxor's museum provided serious narrations, but very few customers took the time to listen and/or match the audio narrations with the corresponding displays. As Belk reports, this result can be explained by recognizing that many Las Vegas tourists wish to be entertained, not educated (Belk, 2000). ...
... Belk (2000) reports that the headset-guided tour in Luxor's museum provided serious narrations, but very few customers took the time to listen and/or match the audio narrations with the corresponding displays. As Belk reports, this result can be explained by recognizing that many Las Vegas tourists wish to be entertained, not educated (Belk, 2000). Thus, the managers of the Luxor hotel developed physical settings that were unique enough to entertain customers , but did not properly implement them. ...
Bitner (19928.
Bitner , M. J. 1992 . Servicescape: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees . Journal of Marketing , 56 : 57 – 71 . [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) provided an important contribution to the hospitality literature by extending the discussion of environmental psychology to the field of service marketing research. Her study introduced the importance of viewing service marketing through an environmental psychology lens. Our study extends her work through the application of environmental psychology to better understand how hospitality companies can deliver virtual world social networking and servicescape opportunities. This study develops a research model proposing specific propositions describing the relationship between virtual world social networks and the creation of positive word-of-mouth (WOM), through improved customer-to-business interaction, and customer participation in servicescape opportunities. Practical implications and future research are also discussed.
... Rofe (2013) uses the South Australian area of Snowtown, a rural landscape made famous by the horrific " Snowtown Murders " and its ensuing uptick in tourism activity. Outside of a dark tourism context, Belk (2000) describes Las Vegas as a type of dystopia whereby " resorts jointly participate in a theatrical farce meant to infantalize their adult patrons by creating a fantastic liminal time and place " (p. 101). ...
... 101). Both Belk (2000) and Rofe (2013) use the term " dystopia " as the opposite of " utopia, " and interestingly, this work contrasts with earlier ideas of utopia and consumption where there is a belief that utopian ideas and themes encourage the consumption of entertainment products (Dyer, 1977). Moreover, this literature suggests that entertainment products, in an effort to be acceptable and liked by target markets, should have a healthy degree of utopian elements (Jameson, 1979). ...
This paper discusses the rapidly emerging fascination with dystopian dark tourism. Using participatory observation, this exploratory study examines and analyzes three specific destinations where tourists engage with both death and dystopia. Through our examination of the Charles Manson ‘Helter Skelter Tour’ in Los Angeles, the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyeres, Switzerland and the Inferno Music Festival in both Lausanne, Switzerland and Oslo, Norway, we present a model of dystopian dark tourism that integrates dark aesthetics, simulation, emotional contagion and the current global cultural fascination with both utopia and dystopia. We posit that interest in dystopian dark tourism experiences is reflective of an increased insecurity about death, society and its relationship to violence and cultural production.
... Gottschalk's (1995) postmodern analysis on Las Vegas (conducted at the dawn of the casino-resort) describes the hyper-excesses of the strip as a means to quickly and unequivocally convey to tourists a new set of social expectations that emphasize a form of unrestrained and fun consumption unhinged from a tangible and consequential reality. In his sharp critique of the Las Vegas experience, media and marketing scholar Richard Belk (2000) analogizes resort-casinos as the adult version of the classic American theme park, where: "This triumph of fun and magical belief over purposive cognition and rationality is precisely the spirit associated with gambling" (pg. 116). ...
... The focus of gambling in the 21 st century is now oriented towards the experience of play, an experience that can only be enjoyed and explored so long as the wagers are continued reasonably uninterrupted (Reith, 2002). Russell Belk (2000) a marketing professor at York University has a much more bleak take on play, arguing that the landscape and culture of Vegas infantilize the visitor, ultimately removing any authenticity of experience with a convenient and hollow facade that ultimately produces the desire for compulsive need fulfilment. ...
This study looks at the incorporation of video game design and structure into contemporary slot
machines. The investigation was guided by theoretical and empirical works from a range of
scholarly fields: gambling studies, video-game studies, digital communication, psychology, and
sociology. Two methodological designs were employed. The first phase used a content analysis
that identified the distribution of video-game styles and design in the most recent slot games on
display at a major industry conference. The second phase employed semi-structured interviews
with both experienced and inexperienced slot players to assess the impact of different design
elements on their playing experience and motivation to play. Findings indicate that current slot
machines share some similarities with video game mechanics through the introduction of more
complex structure and multiple goals or games within games. Slot machines can resemble the
immersive elements video games with the use of sophisticated graphics and sound design as well
as the incorporation of complex themes and interactive animated characters. Eight gamblers
with experience ranging from novice to highly experience participated in in-depth interviews.
The interviews suggest that, like with video game players, some slot players might be more
attracted to complex game mechanics in slot machines while other players are more interested in
the immersive elements. The implications for the future of slot machine design, the study of slot
machine design on problem gambling, and the use of digital space to introduce play into
gambling are discussed.
... Many marketplace culture rituals, such as, 'Posse rides' (Fournier et al., 2001), 'Jeep Jamborees' (McAlexander et al., 2002), and 'Beamish Tours' (O'Sullivan et al., 2011), the World Series of Beer Pong (O'Sullivan & Richardson, 2013) can be conceptualised as " liminoid " (Turner, 1979; 1982 ) consumption-oriented 'playgrounds' , in which, participation provides subversion of daily structured life and access to a play world, of sorts (Goulding et al. 2002; 2009; O'Sullivan et al., 2011). An examination of the marketplace culture phenomenon from a play perspective will not only inform in a critical manner about the conceptual foundations of communal consumption but also the status of contemporary adult play and its growing reliance upon the market (Belk, 2001). ...
... Psychologist and educationalists have displayed considerable interest in play as a type of behavior inherent to children (Piaget, 1962). However, the social sciences have taken much less notice of forms of adult play (Giddens, 1964; Belk, 2001; Kavanagh, 2012). Play is a particularly recalcitrant phenomenon (Burke, 1971; Garvey, 1990): a profusion of speculations about nature of play have been discussed (Groos, 1898; Huizinga, 1955; Caillois, 1962; Piaget, 1972; Sutton-Smith, 2001, Henricks, 2006). ...
... Given the functional tendencies in the experiential consumption literature, much of the research that addresses these types of experiences attempts to show how consumers try to manipulate these inherently stochastic events to make them more functional and controllable (Fitchett and Smith, 2002;Kim and McGill, 2011;Szmigin et al., 2008). In fact, consumer research even labels the deliberate enjoyment of stochastic experiences as infantile, deviant, and pathological, and argues that these experiences need to be identified, labelled, and controlled (Belk, 2000;Fullerton, 2007;Rossiter and Foxall, 2008). Perhaps humans are predisposed towards functionality, which may explain the dominant focus on liberatory and performance experiences in the literature, but it appears that most consumers are at least tacitly aware of the anti-functional and stochastic aspects of life with some of those consumers wanting to actively engage these experiences. ...
... gambling that is not 'fixed' is more likely to be considered authentic), which is not fully captured in the more functional typologies of authenticity (Grayson and Martinec, 2004). In terms of fantasy, rather than engage in a fully realized and somewhat predictable imaginary world (Belk and Costa, 1998), it may be the disorienting nature of stochastic experiences (e.g. the surreal atmosphere of casinos) that some consumers actually seek (Belk, 2000). Lastly, stochastic experiences appear to be related to a particular type of play, notably paidia, which is defined as a spontaneous and unreflective activity that seeks to destroy the stability of perception, versus ludus, which is defined as a rule bound activity focused on achieving a goal (Caillois, 1958). ...
Experience has become a primary means by which we understand post-industrial, consumer societies. Whilst we have learned much about consumption experiences, most studies have relied on theories whose underlying assumptions have restricted our understanding of this important topic. More specifically, whilst the experiential literature has expanded our perspective of the broader structures of consumption experiences, it has limited our understanding by ascribing a function(s) to these experiences. By interrogating not merely the empirical findings but also the theoretical (and methodological) assumptions underlying the extant literature, this article aims both to critique and to extend our current understanding of consumption experiences. Towards this end, we propose a framework that examines consumption experiences on the dimensions of structural relations and functional consequences. Based on the corresponding sub-dimensions of structure, anti-structure, function and anti-function, we identify four primary types of consumption experience: performance, liberatory, stochastic and adventure. A detailed description of each type of consumption experience is provided, with special emphasis given to anti-functional experiences, the nature of which both challenges and expands our understanding of experiential consumption.
... This has proven to be fruitful, with consumer researchers examining "how consumers consume across a gamut of social spaces" (Arnould and Thompson 2005, 875), including work on: public areas, [e.g. cities (Belk 2000), urban locales (Visconti et al. 2010;Chatzidakis, Maclaran, and Bradshaw 2012), town squares (Warnaby 2013), parks (McEachern, Warnaby, and Cheetham 2012), stadiums (Bradford and Sherry 2015)], the private settings of the home and its varying expanses, [e.g. the living room (Money 2007), pantry (Coupland 2005), kitchen (Epp and Price 2008), garage (Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005;Hirschman, Ruvio, and Belk 2012)] and virtual spaces such as fan forums (Kozinets 1997), online games (O'Leary and Carroll 2013), and social media sites (Anderson, Hamilton, and Tonner 2016). These studies and others have contributed valuable insights and furthered understandings of consumption, markets and culture. ...
... Kozinets 2002), the structuring effects of space on consumption (e.g. Belk 2000;Hirschman, Ruvio, and Belk 2012), and how objects and practices relate in spaces (e.g. Epp and Price 2008). ...
Consumer research has offered a multitude of understandings of space. While these insights have contributed both to absolute and relativistic appreciations, the discourse has tended more often towards absolute representations. Through an examination of Irish road bowling, built from a four-year ethnography, we position Henri Lefebvre’s triadic model of social space as a heuristic device that may be used to further relativistic representations of space. In doing so we expose how Irish road bowlers produce space on public roads. We find that such space and the actions of road bowlers within it are deeply influenced by both historic and contemporary socio-cultural discourses. In this way, we highlight how Lefebvre can be used to get at the context of context and offer an alternative understanding of normative and existential communitas.
... Pantzar (2000) likens dystopia to a place where humans have become media zombies, dependent on media consumption for life. Belk (2000) uses the term ''dystopia'' to describe the early days of Las Vegas and its attractiveness. In general, while there has been significant thought on marketing, consumption, and utopia in the past 20 years, there has been a paucity of literature related to consumption and dystopia or anti-utopian visions. ...
This article examines aspects related to the dystopic consumption and production of the musical and performance art form known as black metal. Steeped in anti-Christian motifs, surrounded by a history of violence and brutal imagery, black metal is an extreme metal art form that has been growing steadily in popularity throughout Europe, South America, and the United States. We first examine black metal culture through the eyes of both artists and consumers, using mixed qualitative methodologies. Thereafter, we derive specific theoretical interpretations from the black metal subculture that are predicated on the emerging themes of signification, identity transformation, xenophobia, and a reconstructed mythology that all point to what we present as a dystopian consumption model. The model demonstrates how dystopia, in context, is at the heart of the symbiotic relationship between consumers and producers and is encapsulated by a specific set of processes and overarching conditions. Implications and relationships to utopian models are discussed.
... For example, the use of imitation construction materials (such as a linoleum imitation of hardwood floors) is likely to undermine the realism of the retail environment and allow customers to recall the everyday reality. Accordingly, interpretive research suggests that consumers want extraordinary retail environments to look and feel "more real than the real world" (Firat and Venkatesh, 1995, p. 252; see also Belk, 2000;Kozinets et al., 2004). ...
This research examines the effect of extraordinary retail environments on consumer self-concept. Two between-subjects experiments manipulate the extraordinariness of the retail environment and evaluate participants' self-concept in the environment. In both experiments, high-extraordinariness retail environments elicit a more atypical working self-concept than low-extraordinariness environments. Content analysis of participants' working self-concept in the two environments offers insight into the cognitive processes underlying the effect. The article discusses managerial and theoretical implications of the research.
... Through the festival engagement with life, Hellfest is also perceived as a place where everything is possible, a magical place to some extent. There is, thus, a kind of infantalization of the visitor (Belk, 2000). As in Las Vegas, Hellfest "fosters a willing suspension of cognitive, rational, adult control and a welcome succumbing to a dream world of possibilities. ...
In a culture of experiential consumption, themed consumer experiences have become highly marketable commodities, giving birth to new types of experiences. In this research, we explore these new forms of experiences that try to escape from commodification through syncretism. We conduct an ethnography of a highly themed festival, Hellfest in France. We identify that this festival offers an experience based on cognitive, sensory, and praxeological syncretism which aims to re-enchant as well as disorient consumers. Since syncretic experiences are perceived as several sub-experiences in one, we also show how these new types of experiences are rooted in a new conception of space-time in which consumers want productively to collect memorable experiences.
... The prostitution scene in Sunny Beach has a farcical element about it, which many of the Danes find both shocking and entertaining (Belk, 2000). After dark, in the center of the resort, the street prostitutes virtually chase down potential male customers, taking them by the arm, reaching for their crotch, holding them back, teasing, and playing mad pranks: ...
Drawing on data generated through quantitative and qualitative methods, this article explores the prevalence and experiences of substance use, casual sex, commercial sex and health problems among young Danish tourists at an international nightlife resort in Bulgaria. The article argues that the risks the tourists take should not be interpreted as a symptom of nihilism, pathology or escapist inclinations. Rather, the tourists intentionally engage in certain forms of risk in order to move far beyond the mundane and into states of drunken adventure and memorable excess.
... Bristor and Fischer, 1993; Holt, 1997; Murray, 2002; Shankar et al., 2006). Furthermore, such CCT researchers will have ready access to many ontological frameworks that have gained currency as postdualistic alternatives to the humanistic/experientialist legacy, such as Bourdieu's theory of practice (Holt, 1998); cognitive anthropology (Ringberg et al., 2007); Gidden's structuration theory (Lamla, 2008) ; Foucault's account of power/knowledge, governmentality, and technologies of the self (Thompson, 2004; Zwick et al., 2008); Butler's theory of performativity (Maclaran et al., 2009; Peñaloza, 1998; Schroeder and Borgerson, 1998); Bakhtin's dialogism (Belk, 2000; Brown et al., 1999); Elias's figurational sociology (U ¨ stüner and Thompson, 2012); Luhmann's social systems theory (Giesler, 2003; Luedicke, 2011 ), Latourian actornetwork theory (Epp and Price, 2010; Giesler, 2012 ); and Morin's writings on the coconstitutive relations between individual and society (see Askegaard and Linnet, 2011) and a gamut of other poststructuralist formulations, which all cohere around the precept that ''human social action is at once 'structured' and 'structuring''' (Calhoun, 2013). In the interpretive context of the humanistic/experientialist ontology, consumers' emic narratives were all too easily represented in ahistoric terms that betrayed problematic tendencies toward psychological reductionism and methodological individualism (Stinchcombe, 1968). ...
We offer a genealogical perspective on the reflexive critique that consumer culture theory (CCT) has institutionalized a hyperindividualizing, overly agentic, and sociologically impoverished mode of analysis that impedes systematic investigations into the historical, ideological, and sociological shaping of marketing, markets, and consumption systems. Our analysis shows that the CCT pio-neers embraced the humanistic/experientialist discourse to carve out a disciplinary niche in a largely antagonistic marketing field. However, this original epistemological orientation has long given way to a multilayered CCT heteroglossia that features a broad range of theorizations integrating structural and agentic levels of analysis. We close with a discussion of how reflexive debates over CCT's supposed biases toward the agentic reproduce symbolic distinctions between North American and European scholarship styles and thus primarily reflect the institutional interests of those positioned in the Northern hemisphere. By destabilizing the north–south and center–periphery relations of power that have long-framed metropole social science construc-tions of the marginalized cultural ''other'' as an object of study—rather than as a producer of legit-imate knowledge and theory—the CCT heteroglossia can be further diversified and enriched through a blending of historical, material, critical, and experiential perspectives.
... Bristor and Fischer, 1993;Holt, 1997;Murray, 2002;Shankar et al., 2006). Furthermore, such CCT researchers will have ready access to many ontological frameworks that have gained currency as postdualistic alternatives to the humanistic/experientialist legacy, such as Bourdieu's theory of practice (Holt, 1998); cognitive anthropology (Ringberg et al., 2007); Gidden's structuration theory (Lamla, 2008); Foucault's account of power/knowledge, governmentality, and technologies of the self (Thompson, 2004;Zwick et al., 2008); Butler's theory of performativity (Maclaran et al., 2009;Peñaloza, 1998;Schroeder and Borgerson, 1998); Bakhtin's dialogism (Belk, 2000;Brown et al., 1999); Elias's figurational sociology (Ü stüner and Thompson, 2012); Luhmann's social systems theory (Giesler, 2003;Luedicke, 2011), Latourian actornetwork theory (Epp and Price, 2010;Giesler, 2012); and Morin's writings on the coconstitutive relations between individual and society (see Askegaard and Linnet, 2011) and a gamut of other poststructuralist formulations, which all cohere around the precept that ''human social action is at once 'structured' and 'structuring''' (Calhoun, 2013). ...
... But despite this risk, Schouten (1991) sees these states of anxiety as liminoid (Turner, 1974) which refers to enhanced consumption as ritual and freedom to play around with new categories of meanings in secular, industrialised societies. However, even if the play dimension of the liminoid concept indeed has been emphasised in tourism, leisure and consumer research (Belk, 2000;Kozinets et al., 2004), Turner also saw it as a state characterised by isolation and loneliness as opposed to the state of collective support (communitas) that archaic societies provided during the liminal phase. ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this article is to argue that consumers experience conflict not only when in identity transitions or social status transitions but also in-between these two, and that the relationship between these two is becoming increasingly important to address. First, this is done by identifying how status transitions (vertical movements) overlap but differ in some important respects from identity transitions (horizontal movements), and second, the consumption strategies used by people when these movements lead to an experience of conflict between one’s (new/old) identity role and (new/old) status position have been demonstrated.
Design/methodology/approach
– In this multi-sited, qualitative data collection, the phenomenological and ethnographic interviews have been conducted with 35 urban middle-class consumers in their homes at three culturally and historically different sites (Sweden, Turkey and the USA).
Findings
– The importance and kind of a consumption strategy to resolve the status–identity incongruence relates if it is mainly a vertically or horizontally determined transition. To consumers with a main focus on status change – characterised by hierarchical and competitive dimensions that identity role transitions are free from – the engagement in consumption becomes more important and intense.
Practical implications
– Marketers have historically mainly been engaged in static categorisation and segmentation of consumer lifestyles. By instead emphasising consumers’ life transitions and their accompanying status–identity conflicts, marketers may consider the implications for market communication.
Social implications
– Given that liquid modernity (Bauman, 2001) and its loose social structures forces the middle-class to become increasingly socially mobile, matches and mismatches between identity and status positions ought to become more common and the resulting consumption strategies more sophisticated. This research offers a first, tentative framework for understanding these conflicts in relation to consumption.
Originality/value
– Although lifestyle transitions have often been elaborated on in consumer research, the differences between social status transitions and identity transitions, and especially the conflict in-between these two, have not been paid its deserved attention. Based on multi-sited, qualitative data collection, concrete consumption strategies following the experience of status–identity incongruence have been identified. The results also contribute to a better understanding of the growing uncertainty and volatility of social status positions in contemporary middle-class consumer culture.
... -Visual Netnographic Observation (Photograph may be accessed from: www.bpong.com/wsobp-archive/the-world-series-of-beerpong-ii) While the inclusion of such 'novelty' teams served to maintain an aspect of the carnivalesque, already associated with the consumption setting of Las Vegas (Belk, 2001) and provided for an opportunity for male players to enact the male gaze (Patterson and Elliott, 2002), it also served to limit the feminine roles that could be enacted within the WSOBP consumption space. The free play of possible personalities, essential to the liminoid (Kavanagh et al, 2011), was not available to female participants. ...
... Several studies have presented detailed analyses of the rich experiences created in marketplace interactions: looking at thematized spaces (Gottdiener, 1997;Kozinets et al., 2002;Kozinets and Sherry, 2004;Maclaran and Brown, 2005), cultural consumption in museums (Goulding, 2000;Hollenbeck et al., 2008) and 'spectacular consumption' (Sherry, 1998b;Peñaloza, 1999;Belk, 2000). In these studies, consumption experience has been seen as culturally constructed. ...
In contrast to earlier studies focusing on spectacular retail store environments, this study concentrates on examining ordinary retail stores and everyday retail experiences. The article explores how different sorts of retail environments influence consumers' experience and behaviour. The research uses a comparative case study and employs the theoretical framework of geosemiotics. Investigating three different stores from the perspective of architectural style reveals that cultural meanings are firmly attached to interior style design, and these can be traced in customers' retail experiences. Our findings suggest, firstly, that stores' focusing solely on functional aspects such as the efficient use of space, standardization and self-service rather than also considering aesthetic issues leads to rather neutral and uninteresting retail experiences. Secondly, they show that the retail store environment affects the social relationships that consumers establish in commercial locations. Thirdly, the study indicates that customers' overall retail experience is linked to their perceptions of the store's social and environmental responsibility and moral values. On the whole, this research advances our theoretical understanding of everyday consumption experiences. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Regarding the semi-public scale, our research brings to the fore the political role played by some servicescapes. Servicescapes are usually portrayed as commercial venues where people can also find friendship (Debenedetti et al. 2014;Oldenburg 1989), respite from oppression (Fiske 2000;Kozinets et al. 2004), or self-transcendence (Belk 2000;Joy and Sherry 2003). An exception is Karababa and Ger's (2011) historical account of the creation of the consumer subject in the Ottoman Empire, where coffeehouses became places for some patrons' identity politics. ...
Consumers can pursue a wide range of market-mediated identities in contemporary culture. However, some consumer identities are more valued than others, creating a form of cultural inequality. The present research considers consumers' deliberate efforts to assert greater cultural value for their identities, a phenomenon termed a "politicized consumer identity project." Specifically, this research focuses on consumers' intentional use of space, a resource that is ubiquitous in social life but has, nonetheless, received limited theoretical attention regarding this type of identity project. This ethnography uses mixed methods to study a sample of women embedded in the new cult of domesticity, an ethos that induces participants to use various spaces as a way of claiming greater value for feminine consumer identities that are often demeaned by others. The results reveal a system of spatial practices that consumers employ to contest this cultural devaluation across a broad range of sites in their lives, from their homes to commercial and public venues. We conceptualize these practices as spatial affirmation, repurposing, and incursion, showing their ideological and material interdependencies. This research advances understanding of the ties among consumer identities, space, and cultural politics.
... Bristor and Fischer, 1993;Holt, 1997;Murray, 2002;Shankar et al., 2006). Furthermore, such CCT researchers will have ready access to many ontological frameworks that have gained currency as postdualistic alternatives to the humanistic/experientialist legacy, such as Bourdieu's theory of practice (Holt, 1998); cognitive anthropology (Ringberg et al., 2007); Gidden's structuration theory (Lamla, 2008); Foucault's account of power/knowledge, governmentality, and technologies of the self (Thompson, 2004;Zwick et al., 2008); Butler's theory of performativity (Maclaran et al., 2009;Peñaloza, 1998;Schroeder and Borgerson, 1998); Bakhtin's dialogism (Belk, 2000;Brown et al., 1999); Elias's figurational sociology (Ü stüner and Thompson, 2012); Luhmann's social systems theory (Giesler, 2003;Luedicke, 2011), Latourian actornetwork theory (Epp and Price, 2010;Giesler, 2012); and Morin's writings on the coconstitutive relations between individual and society (see Askegaard and Linnet, 2011) and a gamut of other poststructuralist formulations, which all cohere around the precept that ''human social action is at once 'structured' and 'structuring''' (Calhoun, 2013). ...
We offer a genealogical perspective on the reflexive critique that consumer culture theory (CCT) has institutionalized a hyperindividualizing, overly agentic, and sociologically impoverished mode of analysis that impedes systematic investigations into the historical, ideological, and sociological shaping of marketing, markets, and consumption systems. Our analysis shows that the CCT pio- neers embraced the humanistic/experientialist discourse to carve out a disciplinary niche in a largely antagonistic marketing field. However, this original epistemological orientation has long given way to a multilayered CCT heteroglossia that features a broad range of theorizations integrating structural and agentic levels of analysis. We close with a discussion of how reflexive debates over CCT’s supposed biases toward the agentic reproduce symbolic distinctions between North American and European scholarship styles and thus primarily reflect the institutional interests of those positioned in the Northern hemisphere. By destabilizing the north–south and center–periphery relations of power that have long-framed metropole social science construc- tions of the marginalized cultural ‘‘other’’ as an object of study—rather than as a producer of legit- imate knowledge and theory—the CCT heteroglossia can be further diversified and enriched through a blending of historical, material, critical, and experiential perspectives.
... Among the women whose responses we estimated to be valid, 8.4% reported going to a strip club. The prostitution scene in Sunny Beach has a farcical element about it, which many of the Danes find both shocking and entertaining (Belk, 2000). After dark, in the center of the resort, the street prostitutes virtually chase down potential male customers, taking them by the arm, reaching for their crotch, holding them back, teasing, and playing mad pranks: Jeppe: They just pull down your pants as you are withdrawing money from the ATM machine! ...
... For them, the increase in choice, in availability, and access to products and services serves as a form of emancipation; an emancipation from 'normality' through escape and play, which is heavily embedded in objects of consumption . As Belk (2000) astutely observes, 'we need play because it is a joyful self transcending part of life which fulfils a higher order need in affluent society' (p118). ...
This paper proposes a framework for analyzing and understanding communal centered consumption based on the concept of 'theater'. The focus of attention is the Gothic community, a consumer tribe that may be described as extraordinary and spectacular. Goths are also a group that has associations with the 'dark' side and in particular with the vampire. We draw on a longitudinal grounded theory study conducted at the bi-annual Whitby Goth festival in the North East of England which involved participation, observation, interviews, and videographic data. We examine the co-constructed experience of the festival and propose an analytical framework based on the fundamental concepts of theater. We suggest that theatrical co-construction may be understood in terms of three components: theater as 'transformation', theater as 'transcendence', and theater as 'temporality'. This perspective also provides a novel approach for festival event management.
... While brandfests are effective at satisfying consumer desires for transcendence and sociality (Canniford, 2011;Schouten et al., 2007), consumers seek out a broad range of marketplace experiences. The increase in organised festivals (Maclaran & Brown, 2005;Maffesoli, 1996); carnivalesque servicescapes (Belk, 2000;Langer, 2007;Sherry et al., 2007); illicit servicescapes (Goulding, Shankar, Elliott, & Canniford, 2009); dystopian-themed environments (Podoshen, Venkatesh, & Jin, 2014) and dark tourism (Dalton, 2014); the emergent culture of intoxication (Cocker, Banister, & Piacentini, 2012;Hackley et al., 2013); and popularity of dangerous edgework practices (Cronin, McCarthy, & Collins, 2014;Murphy & Patterson, 2011;O'Sullivan, 2015;Van Hout & Hearne, 2014) suggest that consumers desire a range of consumption experiences, which are not mimetic, but more carnivalesque and less controlled in nature. Consumers appear to be gravitating towards non-mimetic consumption experiences. ...
This ethnography outlines experiences of the marketer-facilitated World Series of Beer Pong. Consumers, in carnival spirit, augment marketer-facilitated mimetic (moderate, controlled) forms of experience with non-mimetic (dangerous, uncontrolled) consumption rituals, enacted in pursuit of contemporary excitement. Consumers serendipitously hijack the facilitating brand’s ideology resulting in the promotion of marketplace tensions. This study contributes to marketing and consumer culture theory by extending current experiential marketing frameworks via the introduction of the branded carnival, a non-mimetic communal brand-centric phenomenon; showing how non-mimetic excitement emerges in marketplace contexts; highlighting the implications for experiential and brand community marketers; and positioning the branded carnival within a broader cultural gravitation towards non-mimetic behaviour opposing marketplace ideology. Finally, limitations are discussed, and directions for further research are suggested. Readers are encouraged to engage with carnival spirit: profanities go uncensored.
Received April 2009 Revised September 2009 Accepted January 2010
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This article explores the expansion of brand meaning within a spectacular, retail environment. Spectacular retailing environments include themed retailing, brandscapes, flagship brand stores, themed entertainment brand stores, themed flagship brand stores, and brand museums. This research uses an extended case-study method to investigate the World of Coca-Cola brand museum located in Atlanta, Georgia. A brand museum is a type of themed flagship brand store, but there are some unique aspects. One key feature of brand museums is the resemblance to traditional museums, but, in the former, the brand is positioned within historical and educational contexts. Within the brand museum context, this study explains how brand meaning can be expanded along seven dimensions: humanization, socialization, localization, globalization, contextualization, theatricization, and characterization. Retailing implications are discussed.
How do changes in public discourse and regulatory structure affect the acceptance of a consumption practice? Previous research on legitimacy in consumer behavior has focused on the consumer reception of legitimizing discourse rather than on the historical process of legitimation itself. This study examines the influence of changes in the institutional environment over time on the meaning structures that influence consumer perception and practice. To study legitimation as a historical process, a discourse analysis of newspaper articles about casino gambling from 1980-2007 was conducted. Results show that the regulatory approval of gambling is accompanied by a shift in the semantic categories used to discuss casinos and that journalists play a role in shaping these categories. Further, journalists shape the meaning of a consumption practice in three ways: through selection, validation, and realization. Interpreted through the lens of institutional theory, these findings suggest that studies of legitimation should consider changes in public discourse and legal regulation in addition to consumer perceptions of legitimacy. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
Abject poverty and rampant consumerism are twin ills of global capitalism. This short paper serves to encourage discussion on the role of Fair Trade in healing those ills. After describing the benefits of Fair Trade for producers, a paradox concerning the joys and blights of contemporary consumption is presented. Drawing on an autoethnographic method, the author indicates how Fair Trade resolves this paradox in the consumer interest.
Writing is a core scholarly competence. Not only is it a skill that every academic must acquire, regardless of their methodological, philosophical or empirical affiliations, but also it is ‘a substantial differentiating characteristic of eminent researchers’. This article offers an analysis of the writing style of one of the field's most eminent researchers, Russell W. Belk. It identifies five literary devices that help Belk's writing stand out from the crowd and, while the article does not claim to contain the secret of writing success, it considers the crucial part writing plays in the consumer research process.
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This study explores the spaces of globalization by the globalized businesses of gambling, entertainment, and resort operations. In particular, it re-examines how the real estate development, finance, and entertainment industries have allied in the early twenty-first century in two unusual spatial settings: a newly returned territory to the People's Republic of China (PRC), or the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), and Clark County, Nevada in the United States of America (USA) with the city of Las Vegas at its core. Neither of these sites is known for its cosmopolitan sophistication, but socio-economic networks of the global gaming, resort, shopping, and entertainment industries are using the theme park motifs rooted in huge new casino properties to generate a simulated cosmopolitan allure, which could be characterized as 'casinopolitanism'. This paper analyzes how the fantasy destination spaces built by gaming corporations unfold as packaged globalist cultural revolutions and casinopolitan modes of life in the otherwise (un)(under)valorized spaces of Macau and Nevada.
Based on previous studies and theses developed on the subject by scholars from different disciplines, the authors investigate (1) if thematization is a phenomenon of our time or if it has been around for a long time, and (2) laypersons’ thoughts and feelings about thematization compared to the academic perspective. To understand the phenomenon, this article explores the construction and features of themed environments, such as Las Vegas, theme parks, and themed restaurants, as well as cities originally constructed for people to live in that can now be perceived to be themed, as in the case of San Antonio, Texas. The authors present findings from interviews conducted with visitors at the EPCOT theme park in Walt Disney World. The investigations show that intellectuals and scholars have a greater interest in maintaining a distinction between the thematic and the everyday than the ordinary public.
In dark tourism affects are generated in a relational manner by the tourists and the locations visited by them. Exploring affective meanings of Banksy’s Dismaland via socio-spatial theories of emotion and affect is a way to contribute to the understanding of dystopian tourism. The dystopian touristic experience of Dismaland evolves from the interaction of a dystopian atmosphere, a displacement strategy and productive negative intensities. Whilst the affects produced vary according to the artist’s intentions, through innovative and politicised forms of dystopian dark tourism, Banksy creates atmospheres where productive negative intensities are able to be developed. In spite of the shades of dystopia and darkness in the artist’s work, a hopeful form of tourism could be generated. The implications are that affect in the dark tourism context has different layers of meaning where the materialising dystopian experiences, as simulacra, range from pure attraction to social change. Dismaland’s dark tourism experience reveals the role that political and ethical matters play in socio-affective encounters as exemplified by the commodification of the tourism industry, the Mediterranean refugee crisis and the glorified/sorrowful death of Diana, princess of Wales.
Siegfried and Roy figure among the foremost symbols of the New Las Vegas. The duo played Steve Wynn’s Mirage Hotel from 1990 until a white tiger, Montecore, attacked Roy onstage in 2003 with devastating consequences. Though their performing career seems to be over, their influence in Vegas continues to be felt. Their show Siegfried and Roy: Masters of the Impossible, alongside several offshoot enterprises, helped transform the role of entertainment in the Las Vegas tourist market during the 1990s. In this decade, Las Vegas hotels changed from casinos garnering most of their profits from gambling into multifaceted tourist destinations that coupled gaming with fantastical themed hotels, lavish performances, fine food, and high-end shopping. “One after another,” writes Marc Cooper, “the old Rat Pack-era hotels were dynamited and in their place rose staggering Leviathans of modern, market-based entertainment” (12). The Mirage was the inaugural edifice of the New Las Vegas, and it was the prototype of a shift that is still ongoing. A page entitled “Siegfried and Roy’s Las Vegas,” from Siegfried and Roy’s website, lays claim to their trendsetting role in this history:
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. Technology and screens are important to this form of play, which exhibits a transcendent character built of liminoid elements and consumer fantasy. Yet, even in ostensibly overpowering spectacular consumption environments, consumption still is negotiated dialectically; consumer and producer interests are embedded in one another in a process of “interagency.”
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to re-evaluate the sustainable attitude-behavior gap by reconsidering the cognitive-rational aspects of consumer purchase behavior. We aim to show how companies can benefit from focusing on hedonic aspects of consumption in their marketing of sustainable products. We claim that consumer culture research needs to examine the link between hedonic, aesthetic, and cognitive-rational aspects of sustainable consumption.
Methodology/approachWe use the electric vehicle marketing strategy in the United States as an example of an approach to bridge the attitude-behavior gap. More specifically, we focus on the car manufacturer Tesla as an example of marketing a sustainable product.
FindingsWe find that Tesla’s marketing strategy focuses on aesthetics and hedonics-ludic performance. Similarly to other luxury cars, Tesla markets itself with a full compliment of consumer benefits. Compared to economical electric vehicles, sustainability is not the primary focus of Tesla’s marketing communication strategy.
Research limitations/implicationsSustainable consumption theory benefits from examining the interlinking of hedonic, aesthetic and cognitive-rational aspects product purchasing and use. Future research in the development of sustainable consumption theory in additional complex product categories is needed.
Practical implicationsGreater regard for consumer experience in sustainable consumption offers the potential for additional strategies to bridge the attitude-behavior gap and marketing of sustainable goods.
Originality/valueWe move beyond the attitude-behavior gap by not only focusing on expressed attitudes of sustainability, but also focusing on the hedonic aspects at play in sustainable consumption.
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 to describe and analyze the phenomenon. We theorize the eversion mechanism that animates vestaval, and sets it apart from other social forms including spectacle, festival and carnival well-known to consumer research. We explore how vestaval turns the domestic world inside out, and offers a template both for the temporary suspension and potential remaking of the social relations of market and polity. We detail a set of practices within four themes, location, construction, customization, and inhabitation, which enables the conversion of private space to public place and the creation of community from a confederacy of consumption encampments. These dynamics are presented as a Mobius strip to emphasize not only the simultaneity of stages, but also the constant sharing of energy. By examining how Midwestern American tailgaters in a collegiate setting personalize public place and publicize personal place, we demonstrate how individuals negotiate two of the fundamental consumption ideologies of public space.
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. Technology and screens are important to this form of play, which exhibits a transcendent character built of liminoid elements and consumer fantasy. Yet, even in ostensibly overpowering spectacular consumption environments, consumption still is negotiated dialectically; consumer and producer interests are embedded in one another in a process of “interagency.”
Russell Belk is one of the most distinguished thought leaders in marketing and consumer research. He is also one of its most distinctive. This paper examines the distinctiveness of Russell Belk’s remarkable writing style, arguing that it exemplifies the ‘academic gothic.’ Five characteristically gothic traits are found in his published corpus – excess, monstrosity, irony, supernaturalism, doubling – and the implications for writing marketing research are considered.
Alan P. Fiske's (1991) Relational Models typology is the latest rigorously developed framework in the social sciences for conceptualizing social interactions. A relational model (class) is a set of schemata, rules, and scripts that people use to construct and construe their interactions with others. Fiske defines six relational models (classes): communal sharing (CS), equality matching (EM), market pricing (MP), authority ranking (AR), asocial (AS), and null. In this chapter, we discuss the implementation of Fiske's Relational Models framework to customers' relationships with for-profit service marketers. Customer relationship management is especially important for service firms because face-to-face interactions between consumers and company representatives are essential to many service industries. It is therefore imperative that customers' perspectives on their relationships with service marketers are well understood. This chapter describes how consumers use the relational models in Fiske's framework to construct their relationships with service organizations. We demonstrate that consumers implementing different relational models are likely to react differently to success and failure encounters with the service marketer. For each relational model, we outline strategies that a service organization may use in order to establish the model in its interactions with consumers. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a customer's use of multiple relational models for the same service marketer.
Firm authenticity is conceptualized as a dual-component hierarchical model, suggesting that authenticity is manifested at different organizational (employee, leadership, and strategic management) levels, as well as in the organization’s marketplace presence (products, brands, and corporate identity). Firm authenticity is distinguished from trustworthiness, corporate social responsibility, and market orientation, providing insight into the strategy’s theoretical boundaries. Drawing on signaling and stakeholder theories, a mediated conceptual model capturing a series of research propositions is advanced. Signaling theory suggests that signaling authenticity can be effective, and stakeholder theory proposes that firm authenticity appeals to all stakeholders, resulting in increased shareholder value and potentially shielding the firm from negative consumer reactions, whereas signaling theory proposes that it positively influences consumer related outcome variables (loyalty and purchase intentions). Managers are encouraged to integrate authenticity into their organizations, while research extensions that operationalize the construct and test its nomological validity, using latent variable modeling, secondary data analysis, or a combination thereof are recommended.
We explore key changes in orientations toward encountering and experiencing the ‘other’ in new consumption venues as a result of the transformations in globalization and modern culture. Our research aims to provide insights into how ‘experiencing the other’ is increasingly sought in high-society bazaars by both upper and lower social classes, respectively representing the westernized and traditional social elements in Turkey, where the West meets the East. Findings unravel the means that enable people to construct new constellations of identities and experience the other in these consumption spaces. As a result, we revisit and extend different theoretical insights on identity construction and otherness by recognizing more recent cultural trends and sensibilities that guide and motivate people to seek multiplicity and to experience difference.
Bauman’s liquid modernity has been influential among consumer culture theorists in recent times. A key element of this thinking is that old social structures have broken down, consumers being less encumbered by their structural origins and freer to pursue more diverse lifestyles. The ensuing three commentaries critically examine the claim that old social structures have become less relevant. Caldwell and Henry detail some of the critiques of Bauman and point out that consumers’ management of liquidity versus solidity can be usefully understood using a Bourdieusian lens. Their arguments are informed by contemporary literature focusing on social class, family life cycle and mythical role preferences. Thompson and Kumar argue that inconspicuous consumption masks social class-based differences in the distribution of resources that act to maintain structural inequalities. Parsons and Cappellini explore how conditions of liquidity mean that some people can accrue value much more easily than others. These authors argue that the enabling capacities that prevail under conditions of liquidity (e.g. flexibility, idiosyncratic taste) are not new but rather have long been known to act as enablers of success among advantaged classes.
Purpose
This study aims at understanding how consumers engage with and perceive value in “spectacular” versus “spontaneous” designs of tourist experiences. Building on the idea that experiences unfold over time through consumers' interactions with multiple touchpoints composed of assemblages of material and interpersonal elements, how these designs can be conducive to various dimensions of the consumer experience value is shown.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative comparative “embedded case study” (Yin, 2018) of the tourist experiences at In Vino (pseudonym), a traditional winery located in the Vale dos Vinhedos (Valley of the Vineyards) in southern Brazil, was conducted. Based on initial archival research into relevant and noteworthy experiences, two distinct tourist experiences for In Vino were designed. Both experiences were implemented, and participant observations and interviews with participants were conducted.
Findings
The two experiences effectively lead visitors to unique and separate interpersonal, temporal and materially engaging experiences. Both generated educational, entertainment, esthetic and escapist value when well executed, and the comparative analysis by the authors helped in outlining a potential combination of the characteristics of spectacular and spontaneous designs that can enhance authenticity value for tourists.
Practical implications
This study provides practical information to help companies develop positive consumer experiences in tourism by employing different combinations of temporal, material and interpersonal elements to emphasize different types of value. It also suggests guidelines for what to do and what to avoid in order to create this value.
Originality/value
This paper shows that it is the very union of elements from two apparently antagonistic types of encounters that provides positive values in tourism-related experiences. It also extends the notion of authenticity as an outcome that can potentially be perceived in both types of experiences. Finally, it introduces guidelines on how to manage the different values in order to help companies offer a positive tourist experience.
This paper extends consumer culture theories of branded retail environments by analyzing the consumer experiences of the everyday site of the branded grocery store. The analysis suggests that McCracken's (1989) 'homeyness' framework succeeds to understand the orientations inflected in the everyday branded retail experience, as opposed to the 'mythotypic' (see Kozinets 2002) that explicates the power of the more spectacular. The implications for theoretical transferability in consumer research are discussed.
The impact of globalization on the consumption patterns of the Less Affluent World are examined, drawing on examples of consumer culture contact with the More Affluent World. We find that rising consumer expectations and desires are fueled by global mass media, tourism, immigration, the export of popular culture, and the marketing activities of transnational firms. Yet rather than democratized consumption, these global consumption influences are more apt to produce social inequality, class polarizations, consumer frustrations, stress, materialism, and threats to health and the environment. Alternative reactions that reject globalization or temper its effects include return to roots, resistance, local appropriation of goods and their meanings, and especially creolization. Although there is a power imbalance that favors the greater influence of affluent Western cultures, the processes of change are not unidirectional and the consequences are not simple adoption of new Western values. Local consumptionscapes become a nexus of numerous, often contradictory, old, new and modified forces that shape unique consumption meanings and insure that the consumption patterns of the Less Affluent World will not result in Western consumer culture writ globally.
Various researchers have promoted the use of ethnographic accounts in subjective descriptions of postmodern spaces. The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas represents such a space, embodying several key features of postmodern culture. These features include the commodification of image signs and popular culture, the commercial neutralization of signifying practices subversive to capitalism, ephemeral architecture informing ephemeral social relationships, and the creation of spectacles of ironic pleasure. The author merges his experience of the Hard Rock Hotel's opening night, his interaction with the space and others in it, and his thoughts relating these to a postmodern moment/ethnography.
A discursive analysis of cultural images, social practices, and space adds a new level of social critique to the usual explanations of urban growth and decline. Instead of focusing on either "objective" or "subjective" factors, a discursive analysis assumes a coherence between social and spatial arrangements that is derived in and through cultural meanings attached to specific places and has a material effect on their growth and decline. Both the conscious manipulation and slow accretion of images are important, as they are diffused by mass media and interpreted by ordinary men and women. Taking the decline of Coney Island and growth of Las Vegas as examples, a discursive analysis emphasizes how these public spaces of amusement represent low-class and high-class spaces, racialized spaces, and different eras of capitalism-culminating in a national rejection of urban populism for freewheeling speculation and privatization.
Various authors interested in postmodernism suggest that Las Vegas is a particularly strategic site that promotes and even exaggerates a postmodern logic and “structure of feeling.” The present ethnographic fragments seek to evoke this postmodern logic through its subjectively experienced structure of feeling. The approach used to produce these fragments consists of juxtaposing postmodern insights; unstructured interviews with, and interventions by, a wide variety of individuals encountered in Las Vegas; and self-reflexive observations in the rapidly disappearing space separating the mediascape from the everyday.
May 1968 in Paris was a utopian revolt which failed; America is a utopia which has been achieved. It is the original version of modernity. This article examines the logic of Biosphere 2 a miniature version of the entire planet, but which means the society is already living with the prospect of a catastrophe affecting its utopia, it is a zoological museum in anticipation of its own destruction.
This paper uses visual ethnographic methods, specifically participant observation and photography supplemented with interviews, in its investigation of the consumption of spectacle at Nike Town, Chicago. Spectacular consumption behavior was participative in nature, involved explicit knowledge of its production, and entailed the consumption of space, cultural meanings and products in this hybrid combination of store and museum. Central aspects of spectacular consumption processes were consumers’ movement through the interspatial architectural design and interactions with intertexual displays of celebrities, products, and corporate narratives. As consumers moved through the site, its design and displays placed them in altered referential positions with images of celebrity athletes and with artifacts. The trajectories of visual fields consumers’ movement formed and animated played a key role in producing cultural meanings of competition, exceptional performance, style and recreation. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of experiential and spatial dimensions of consumption. Methodological contributions map out the propriety and limitations of visual methods in consumer research.
1. The Classification of Rites2. The Territorial Passage3. Individuals and Groups4. Pregnancy and Childbirth5. Birth and Childhood6. Initiation Rites7. Betrothal and Marriage8. Funerals9. Other Types of Rites of PassageConclusions
Analysis of the reported experiences of people involved in various play-forms (i.e., rock-climbing, chess, dance, basketball, and music composition) suggests that the qualities which make these activities enjoyable are the following: (a) a person is able to concentrate on a limited stimulus field (b) in which individual skills can be used to meet clear demands, (c) thereby forgetting personal problems, and (d) her or his own separate identity, (e) at the same time obtaining a feeling of control over the environment, (f) which may result in a transcendence of ego-boundaries and consequent psychic integration with metapersonal systems. The concept that certain experiences are intrinsically rewarding and its usefulness in understanding human motivation are discussed. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Christmas is, for the predominantly Christian western world, the distilled essence of contemporary consumption. By analyzing and contrasting two films about the Christmas shopping experience (Miracle on 34th Street and Scenes from a Mall), produced at the close of World War II and at the beginning of the 1990s respectively, it is possible to examine the changing role of shopping in this key consumption celebration. Based on the evidence of these two films and additional historical observations of shopping and consumption, it is concluded that Christmas has become a postmodern spectacle and that Christmas shopping increasingly reflects the search for the disintegrated self while it decreasingly reflects the celebration of home and family.
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This dissertation critiques, develops and applies a form of spatial semiotics, specifically topological semiotics, as a means of interpreting and analyzing the design, operation, use and ideological issues of West Edmonton 'Mega'-Mall (WEM) in the context of postmodern culture. Doing so promotes an understanding of the theoretical and analytical utility and limitations semiotics and postmodernism may hold for landscape studies, while furthering our knowledge about the design and social life of multi-purpose, indoor environments. Drawing from several key geographical concepts (landscape, place, placelessness), semiotic notions (icon, language, myth, sign, signification), postmodern issues (heterotopia, the crisis of interpretation, the linguistic turn), and empirical data (on-site observations, off-site questionnaires, secondary academic, government and corporate studies), the concepts of placial icon, simulated landscape and elsewhereness are developed to critique a "way of seeing" and explain what was viewed at the mega-mall. WEM's postmodern, heterotopic milieu of myths and elsewhereness is argued to collapse due to the mall's dual role as tourist centre/civic centre, making WEM an unoriginal, placeless, homotopic nowhere. Despite their theoretically overburdened and methodologically underdeveloped status, semiotics and postmodernism are shown to be useful catalysts for posing questions and initiating criticisms relevant to contemporary social theory, landscape studies and substantive social issues.
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