Alexandros Skandalis, John Byrom and Emma Banister
The aim of this paper is to explore how spatial taste formation and the interrelationships between place and taste can inform the development of contemporary place marketing…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to explore how spatial taste formation and the interrelationships between place and taste can inform the development of contemporary place marketing and/or place management strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on previous research conducted within the context of live music consumption and, in particular, within live musical spaces such as festivals and concert halls.
Findings
This paper illustrates how spatial taste formation can inform the development of topographies of taste which focus on the creation of field-specific experiences. It also offers insights for understanding the phenomenological uniqueness of various places and the role of place users and other stakeholders in the creation of place marketing and branding value.
Originality value
The paper elaborates upon the potential usefulness of spatial taste formation for place management and marketing research practice and draws out implications for future research. It advances a holistic and phenomenological understanding of place which illustrates how users’ perceptions of place are shaped by their experiences in various places and by the interplay of these experiences with their individual tastes and vice versa.
Details
Keywords
Athanasia Daskalopoulou and Alexandros Skandalis
This study aims to explore how membership (initially as a consumer) in a given field shapes individuals’ entrepreneurial journey.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how membership (initially as a consumer) in a given field shapes individuals’ entrepreneurial journey.
Design/methodology/approach
The research context is cultural and creative industries and, in particular, the independent (indie) music field in which unstructured interviews were conducted with nascent and established cultural entrepreneurs.
Findings
The authors introduce and justify their theoretical framework of consumption field driven entrepreneurship (CFDE) that captures the tripartite process via which the informants make the transition from indie music consumers to entrepreneurs by developing field-specific illusio, enacting entrepreneurial habitus and acquiring legitimacy via symbolic capital accumulation within the indie music field. The authors further illustrate how these entrepreneurs adopt paradoxical logics, aesthetics and ethos of the indie music field by moving in-between its authentic and commercial discourses to orchestrate their entrepreneurial journey.
Research limitations/implications
This study holds several theoretical implications for entrepreneurship-oriented research. First is highlighted the importance of non-financial resources (i.e. cultural and social capital) in individuals’ entrepreneurial journey. Second, this study illustrates the importance of consumption activities in the process of gaining entrepreneurial legitimation within a specific field. Finally, this study contributes to consumption-driven entrepreneurship research by offering a detailed description of individuals’ consumption-driven entrepreneurial journey.
Practical implications
This study provides some initial practical implications for entrepreneurs within the cultural and creative industries. The authors illustrate how membership in a field (initially as a consumer) might turn into a source of skills, competences and community for entrepreneurs by mobilising and converting different forms of non-material and material field-specific capital. To acquire entrepreneurial legitimation, nascent entrepreneurs should gain symbolic capital through approval, recognition and credit from members of the indie music field. Also, entrepreneurs can acquire symbolic capital and gain entrepreneurial legitimation by either “fitting in” or “standing out” from the existing logics of the field.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the growing body of literature that examines entrepreneurship fuelled by consumption practices and passions with our theoretical framework of CFDE which outlines the transition from indie music consumers to indie music entrepreneurs.
Details
Keywords
The aim of this paper is to explore the role and potential of lived experiences in informing and shaping the formation of place identity within the sphere of the production and…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to explore the role and potential of lived experiences in informing and shaping the formation of place identity within the sphere of the production and consumption of craft objects.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is part of a larger funded research project and focuses on Manchester’s Craft and Design Centre. It draws upon a series of in-depth interviews conducted with craft makers and visitors.
Findings
The analysis and interpretation of textual data help to theorise an experiential identity of place, which revolves around the fusion of the cultural heritage and lived insideness of the physical setting; activity spaces and the micro-encounters of craft-making; and conflicting meanings and attachments to the Craft and Design Centre.
Originality/value
This study provides a novel perspective on the understanding of place identity in the context of craft-making by focusing on the lived experiences of various stakeholders and acknowledging the multi-faceted, dynamic and processual nature of place.
Details
Keywords
Polymeros Chrysochou, Ulrich R. Orth, Alexandros Skandalis and Linda Brennan
Chloe Preece and Alexandros Skandalis
While the spatial dimensions of augmented reality (AR) have received significant attention in the marketing literature, to date, there has been less consideration of its temporal…
Abstract
Purpose
While the spatial dimensions of augmented reality (AR) have received significant attention in the marketing literature, to date, there has been less consideration of its temporal dimensions. This paper aims to theorise digital timework through AR to understand a new form of consumption experience that offers short-lived, immersive forms of mundane, marketer-led escape from everyday life.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors draw upon Casey’s phenomenological work to explore the emergence of new dynamics of temporalisation through digitised play. An illustrative case study using AR shows how consumers use this temporalisation to find stability and comfort through projecting backwards (remembering) and forwards (imagining) in their lives.
Findings
The proliferation of novel digital technologies and platforms has radically transformed consumption experiences as the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, fantasy and reality and play and work have become increasingly blurred. The findings show how temporary escape is carved out within digital space and time, where controlled imaginings provide consumers with an illusion of control over their lives as they re-establish cohesion in a ruptured sense of time.
Research limitations/implications
The authors consider the more critical implications of the offloading capacity of AR, which they show does not prevent cognitive processes such as imagination and remembering but rather puts limits on them. The authors show that these more short-lived, everyday types of digitised escape do not allow for an escape from the structures of everyday life within the market, as much of the previous literature suggests.
Practical implications
The authors argue that corporations need to reflect upon the potential threats of immersive technologies such as AR in harming consumer escapism and take these into serious consideration as part of their strategic experiential design strategies to avoid leading to detrimental effects upon consumer well-being. More nuanced conceptualisations are required to unpack the antecedents of limiting people’s imagination and potentially limiting the fully fledged escape that consumers might desire.
Originality/value
Prior work has conceptualised AR as offloading the need for imagination by making the absent present. The authors critically unpack the implications of this for a more fluid understanding of the temporal logics and limits of consumer escapism.
Details
Keywords
Athanasia Daskalopoulou, Josephine Go Jefferies and Alexandros Skandalis
Service research has previously documented service providers’ role in addressing the barriers of technology mediation, mostly at the service delivery level. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Service research has previously documented service providers’ role in addressing the barriers of technology mediation, mostly at the service delivery level. The purpose of this study is to enhance our understanding about the role of service providers who hold strategic and operational roles, as well as investigate the impact of coordinated, organization-wide initiatives in dealing with the demands and associated emotional ambivalence of technology-mediated services.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study draws from a series of in-depth interviews with health-care service providers who hold strategic and operational roles in health-care organizations along with participant observation to develop an understanding of the broader organizational context of telehealth services.
Findings
This paper outlines the strategic sense-giving process and highlights how health-care service providers who hold strategic and operational roles enact the sense-giver role. This study illustrates that strategic sense-giving involves the recognition of sense-making gaps; identification of sense-giving opportunities; and provision of templates of action.
Originality/value
This study illustrates that sense-giving can be performed by a number of organizational members in a more formalized way which extends informal sense-giving efforts at the peer-to-peer level. The importance of strategic sense-giving in providing templates of action for service providers and consumers is highlighted. This study also shows how strategic sense-giving safeguards against confusion and errors by communicating appropriate ways of using technology. Finally, the role of strategic sense-giving in helping service providers and consumers cope with the emotional ambivalence of technology-mediated service interactions are demonstarted.
Details
Keywords
Alexandros Skandalis, John Byrom and Emma Banister
The aim of this paper is to explore how the paradox of individualism/tribalism is brought into play and negotiated by consumers in the wake of the post-postmodern era.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to explore how the paradox of individualism/tribalism is brought into play and negotiated by consumers in the wake of the post-postmodern era.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on netnographic and interview data from the Greek football manager (FM) online gaming community. FM is a simulation strategy game in which players act as “real-life” managers from the screen of their computer.
Findings
A central paradox and a set of four supporting paradoxes are identified. These paradoxes give rise to a transitional mode of experience, which lies on the borders of reality and fantasy, and is realised both at the individual and the tribal levels.
Originality/value
This study makes a threefold contribution. First, it advances the understanding of the paradoxical aspects of consumption experiences in light of post-postmodern consumer culture. Second, it shows how these paradoxes are negotiated by consumers between individual and tribal levels. Third, it extends the understanding of the nature of consumption experiences through the development of the concept of the transitional consumption experience.