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Why do consumers choose difficult analog technologies over their labor-saving digital counterparts? Through ethnographic investigations of three once defunct analog technologies that have experienced a resurgence (vinyl music, film photography, and analog synthesizers), we explore how the act of consumer work enables consumers to experience shifting dimensions of agency. We utilize the theoretical lens of serious leisure to introduce a four-stage work process (novice, apprentice, craft, and design) in which the experience of agency is dependent on the shifting relations between user, object, and context. The four stages are cumulative and conjunctive, representing the development of skills toward mastery while also being connected via three transition mechanisms (contextualization, schematization, and hypothesization) that address agency–alienation tensions. The transition through these mechanisms is necessary to sustain emotional engagement in consumer work. Our contribution lies in demonstrating the myriad of ways in which consumer work as serious leisure generates different experiences of agency and alienation and the ways in which consumers can sustain engagement in their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic risks––pandemics, economic recessions, professional precarity, political volatility, and climate emergencies––increasingly erode previously taken-for-granted stabilities and consumers' confidence in the future. How do consumers manage risk and uncertainty when economic and ontological security are on the decline? Traditionally, consumers have built a sense of security through solid consumption (e.g. home ownership, accumulating possessions). A four-year ethnography of digital nomadism, however, demonstrates that looming uncertainty can render solid consumption a source of vulnerability and an unwanted anchor in turbulent times that call for agility and adaptability. We outline the emergence of liquid consumer security, defined as a form of felt security that stems from avoidance of solid consumption and its risks and responsibilities. Liquid consumer security inheres in the absence of ownership, attachments, or rootedness, and is derived from circumventing the temporal demands, financial liabilities, and commitments that solid consumption requires, which emerge as sources of risk. It is achieved through a recursive process of engaging in three strategies: (1) solid risk minimization; (2) security reconstruction through the liquid marketplace; and (3) ideological legitimation. Contributions to consumer risk and security, liquid consumption, social theories of risk, and digital nomadism are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheres are experiences of place involving transformations of consumers' behaviors and emotions. Existing marketing research reveals how atmospheric stimuli, service performances, and ritual place-making enhance place experiences and create value for firms. Yet it remains unclear how shared experiences of atmosphere emerge and intensify among groups of people during collective live events. Accordingly, this article uses sociological interaction ritual theory to conceptualize "social atmospheres": rapidly changing qualities of place created when a shared focus aligns consumers' emotions and behavior, resulting in lively expressions of collective effervescence. With data from an ethnography of an English Premier League football stadium, the authors identify a four-stage process of creating atmospheres in interaction ritual chains. This framework goes beyond conventional retail and servicescape design by demonstrating that social atmospheres are mobile and cocreated between firms and consumers before, during, and after a main event. The study also reveals how interaction rituals can be disrupted and offers insight as to how firms can balance key tensions in creating social atmospheres as a means to enhance customer experiences, customer loyalty, and communal place attachments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on cultural branding research, we examine how brands can craft national identity. We do so with reference to how brands enabled New Zealand's displaced Pākehā (white) majority to carve out a sense of we-ness against the backdrop of globalization and resurgent indigenous identity claims. Using multiple sources of ethnographic data, we develop a process model of how brands create national identity through we-ness. We find that marketplace actors deployed brands to create and renew perceptions of we-ness through four-stages: reification, lumping, splitting, and horizon expansion. From this, we make three primary contributions to the consumer research literature: we develop a four-part process model of how brands become national identity resources, explore the characteristics of the brands that enable the emergence of and evolution of we-ness, and explore how our processes can address a sense of dispossession among displaced-majorities in similarly defined contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a roundtable discussion at the 2022 GENMAC Conference, a group of researchers specializing in religiosity and spiritual consumption, using examples from their own fieldwork, reflected on how (i) researchers' subject positioning—including their gender and sexuality—shape fieldwork in multifaceted manners; (ii) investigations of religious/spiritual fields would benefit from a heightened sensitivity to issues of gender and sexuality; and (iii) greater sensitivity to aspects of religion and/or spirituality can help gender and sexuality scholars better understand consumers and markets. Based on the above, in this commentary paper, we call for intersectional reflexivity, attention to vulnerability and discomfort during fieldwork, and critical sensitivity to the religious "context of context" during theorization. Furthermore, we argue that specific spiritual/religious imaginaries can foster new research approaches that can contribute to more nuanced fieldwork and theorization in marketing and consumer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers increasingly turn to the marketplace in search of spiritual well-being. In this introduction to the special issue, we unpack the concept of consumer spirituality. We define consumer spirituality as the interrelated practices and processes engaged in when consuming market offerings (products, services, places) that yield 'spiritual utility'. The market offerings are purposely designed to quench consumers' thirst for meaningful encounters with one's inner self or a higher external power. We identify three vehicles – materiality, embodiment, and technology – that consumers engage with to access consumer spirituality. By unpacking the concept of consumer spirituality along three themes - (1) shaping markets for consumer spirituality, (2) the means for accessing consumer spirituality, and (3) making sense of and researching consumer spirituality - we provide a future research agenda to advance scholarly explorations of consumer spirituality and to facilitate a systematic development of this nascent body of literature in marketing and consumer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People increasingly seek out opportunities to escape from a sped-up pace of life by engaging in slow forms of consumption. Drawing from the theory of social acceleration, we explore how consumers can experience and achieve a slowed-down experience of time through consumption. To do so, we ethnographically study the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain and introduce the concept of consumer deceleration. Consumer deceleration is a perception of a slowed-down temporal experience achieved via a decrease in certain quantities (traveled distance, use of technology, experienced episodes) per unit of time through altering, adopting, or eschewing forms of consumption. Consumers decelerate in three ways: embodied, technological, and episodic. Each is enabled by consumer practices and market characteristics, rules, and norms, and results in time being experienced as passing more slowly and as being an abundant resource. Achieving deceleration is challenging, as it requires resynchronization to a different temporal logic and the ability to manage intrusions from acceleration. Conceptualizing consumer deceleration allows us to enhance our understanding of temporality and consumption, embodied consumption, extraordinary experiences, and the theory of social acceleration. Overall, this study contributes to consumer research by illuminating the role of speed and rhythm in consumer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a review of the past 30 years of videographic research and outputs in the field of marketing, we highlight the key contributions that videography has made to the marketing literature and identify the key issues facing videographic research today. We develop a typology that identifies four ways that videography can contribute to theory development and verification, presenting new criteria for assessing academic videographies. We note that making theoretical contributions is one of the most difficult issues facing videographic researchers and that this is an area in need of significant developments to help the field progress. Finally, we envision what the future of videography might look like and consider the implications of new forms of videographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2021, the ETHOS Research Center at Bayes Business School, along with the CRIS Research Center at Royal Holloway University of London, hosted an event entitled Decolonizing the Business School. Over 500 attendees participated, from all business disciplines, testifying to the strong levels of interest in this topic. Marketing was particularly active, with over 100 participants. In this article, I (Giana Eckhardt, one of the organizers of the event) speak with the marketing break out room facilitators – Russ Belk, Tonya Bradford, Susan Dobscha, Güliz Ger and Rohit Varman – in a wide-ranging conversation about what decolonization means to the field of marketing, and what marketing academics can do if they would like to explore these ideas further. First, we offer a brief introduction to decolonization. Also, a list of resources for the interested reader is presented as well as ideas for further exploration in this nascent domain at the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since Veblen and Simmel, luxury has been synonymous with conspicuous consumption. In this conceptual paper we demonstrate the rise of inconspicuous consumption via a wide-ranging synthesis of the literature. We attribute this rise to the signalling ability of traditional luxury goods being diluted, a preference for not standing out as ostentatious during times of economic hardship, and an increased desire for sophistication and subtlety in design in order to further distinguish oneself for a narrow group of peers. We decouple the constructs of luxury and conspicuousness, which allows us to reconceptualise the signalling quality of brands and the construct of luxury. This also has implications for understanding consumer behaviour practices such as counterfeiting and suggests that consumption trends in emerging markets may take a different path from the past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We explore emerging dynamics of social status and distinction in liquid consumption. The new logic of distinction is having the flexibility to embrace and adopt new identity positions, projects, and possibilities and the ability to attract attention. The importance of flexibility and attention as resources emerged from the social sciences literature in the domains of digital, access based, and urban consumption as being the most important for achieving distinction in the contemporary marketplace. We then conceptually reexamine conspicuous consumption and taste and show that status signaling now relies upon inconspicuousness, non-ownership including experiences, and authenticity based on knowledge and craftsmanship, all of which are difficult to emulate. Our contribution lies in integrating disparate literature on social status and consumption within one conceptual space. We also build upon the concept of liquid consumption by outlining exactly how liquidity affects status and distinction, an area which has not been explored to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents abstracts of various articles within the issue, including "Auditory and Visual Brand Identifiers in Chinese and English," by Nader T. Tavassoli and Jin K. Han, "Identifying Brand Image Dimensionality and Measuring the Degree of Brand Globalization: A Cross-National Study," by Ming H. Hsieh and "Cultural Paradoxes Reflected in Brand Meaning: McDonald's in Shanghai China," by Giana M. Eckhardt and Michael J. Houston.