تغییر ماهیت تجربیات برجسته در فرهنگ مصرف کننده پست مدرنیسم
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Theoretical background
3- Research context and methods
4- Findings
5- Discussion
6- Conclusion
References
Abstract
Prior experiential marketing research suggests that extraordinary consumption experiences take place within antistructural frames, i.e. outside the realms of everyday life. This paper challenges that notion, through an ethnographic study of consumers attending the Primavera Sound music festival in Barcelona, Spain. We demonstrate that festival attendees perceive their experiences to be extraordinary, despite these occurring within ‘everyday’ structural frames. Consumers' extraordinary experiences unfold through their negotiation of a series of structural and antistructural marketplace tensions, including commercialism/authenticity, ordinary/escapist, and immersion/communing. We outline the theoretical implications of our research for the changing nature of extraordinary consumption experiences, in light of post-postmodern consumer culture. We conclude with managerial implications and provide suggested avenues for future research.
Introduction
The rise of postmodern consumer culture has been associated with the proliferation of experiential marketing approaches (Arnould & Thompson, 2005; Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982; LaSalle & Britton, 2003; Pine & Gilmore, 2011). Consumer behavior research no longer positions consumers as purely rational information processing agents, but also as emotional and irrational human beings who are influenced by symbolic meanings, hedonic responses, and aesthetic criteria (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). The study of extraordinary experiences - those that stand outside the structures of everyday life as memorable and/or magical - has come to be one of the core postmodern theorizations of experiential marketing research (e.g. Arnould & Price, 1993; Belk & Costa, 1998; Kozinets, 2002). However, the ability of postmodern discourses to explain contemporary market and consumption phenomena has started to be questioned; some researchers highlight the need for novel theoretical approaches to explore the rise of a post-postmodern era (Cova, Maclaran, & Bradshaw, 2013; Cronin, McCarthy, & McCarthy, 2014; Skandalis, Banister, & Byrom, 2016). Recent studies incorporate understandings of contexts where both structural and antistructural characteristics come into play, giving rise to negotiable marketplace tensions and eventually leading to extraordinary consumption experiences (e.g. Canniford & Shankar, 2013; Husemann, Eckhardt, Grohs, & Saceanu, 2016; Tumbat & Belk, 2011). Such tensions include nurturing joint versus limited interactions, pursuing common versus singular goals, searching for communal integration versus individual immersion, and living sacred and authentic versus profane and commercial experiences (Husemann et al., 2016).