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Literature from across design studies and innovation management, as well as food marketing research evidence, is examined to highlight the interdisciplinary and experiential research approaches to food consumption and well-being. This conceptual paper aims to address the need to expand the food industry’s goals by considering its contributions to the consumer’s overall food well-being. Food experience design (FED) seeks to understand how food professionals can design healthy and pleasurable food experiences aimed at enhancing people’s food well-being. FED does so by proposing a holistic and integrative framework.

This approach examines design thinking by conducting an analysis of the multidisciplinary literature. This paper addresses the gap in the literature by advancing the theoretical and empirical understanding of food design thinking through the lenses of experiential theory and consumer well-being.

This review paper clarifies the scope of FED scholarship and offers a call for collective efforts to establish a focused body of knowledge that leads food marketing professionals and scholars to adopt an experiential perspective to food consumption and production focused on experiential pleasure of food as a driving force for consumer’s well-being.

The review paper addresses the need to expand the food industry’s goals by considering its contributions to the consumer’s overall food well-being. FED seeks to understand how food professionals can design healthy and pleasurable food experiences aimed at enhancing people’s food well-being. FED does so by proposing a holistic and integrative framework.

This research provides designers with the operative tools to create innovative food experiences and increase the food well-being of consumers. Toward that end, designers need to extend their skills and evolve their language and competencies to create valuable dialogues with other stakeholders involved. Collaboration requires many other premises. This paper contributes to the discussion by identifying and clarifying them.

This research highlights the imperative to take multidisciplinary, transformative and experiential approaches to researching food innovation strategies from a consumer’s well-being perspective.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the role individual fantastical thinking (FT) plays in increasing the returns of value co-production by using technology-based services (TBSs).

This research combines 3 laboratory experimental studies with a survey, collecting data from 373 participants in total. An ad hoc customization Web-based tool – TBS - was created for the purpose of the studies.

FT increases the outcomes of value co-production via a chain reaction, as follows: FT increases the perceived ease of value-production; perceived ease of value coproduction increases enjoyment; enjoyment increases a broad range of key outcome variables of value co-production, namely, attitude and purchase intention toward the co-designed products; the number of interactions and time of interaction in the value co-production process, which measure its efficiency; expert perceived quality and novelty of the co-designed products; ordinary perceived quality and novelty, satisfaction and willingness to pay for the co-designed products.

The procedure to activate FT requires relatively long training for participants, which might reduce the applicability of the procedure in other settings.

This study suggests a way to prevent failures in value co-production at the design stage mediated by TBSs. The proposed framework supports a decrease in task complexity for the consumer, thus reducing the stress experienced by participants. As a side effect, this study presents a useful framework to better highlight the benefits and costs associated with value co-production, thus making the return on investment measurement easier to perform.

The relevance of the findings to existing marketing literature lies in the advancement of knowledge related to value co-production processes by introducing the role of FT, a cognitive process designed specifically for consumer research and marketing.

This paper aims to explore the role of surprise in reducing the negative impact of an undesired emotion, such as embarrassment, on the attitudes and behavioral intentions of consumers taking part in an event.

In total, 220 consumers took part in a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental within-subject design. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings show that an in-store social event designed to elicit young customers’ surprise and feelings of romantic love might also give rise to a relevant negative emotion such as embarrassment, and that surprise can act as a powerful managerial tool in limiting the negative effects of this negative emotion. Moreover, brand attitude and purchase intention are outcomes of positive emotions elicited by the event.

The study shows that event marketing is an appealing but risky strategy. Evoking surprise is an effective way to manage negative emotions such as embarrassment that can arise unintentionally during an event.

The research contributes to the understanding of the role of contradictory emotions in a specific social experience, namely, the event, and focuses on unplanned and undesired the affective contributions of customers.

Contemporary art organizations play a key role in driving cultural tourism, offering visitors memorable experiences. Among the segments of visitors, young adults represent a key target because they are the most interested customers in contemporary arts and they represent 23% of the international travelers. Despite their relevance, little is known about their customer experiences in contemporary arts, and the resulting arts engagement. Although their contemporary arts experiences are expected to generate great benefits in terms of social, ethical, and economical values for the entire society, the relationship between young adults and contemporary arts is typically difficult to understand and, consequently, to facilitate. To address this issue, we run a complex qualitative research project. Distinguishing young adults between those who are familiar with contemporary arts and those who are not, we conduct four research projects by applying two qualitative techniques: the in-depth interview and the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (Z-Met). Further, we extend the in-depth interviews to the contemporary arts experts. In total, 70 consumers and 10 experts participate in the research project providing cognitive and emotional insights by exploring barriers and benefits of consumption in contemporary arts. Our findings show that arts engagement is the key concept, linked to three levels of consumer reactions – cognitive, emotional, and social responses – and that it is caused by three antecedents, namely – involvement, sharing, and comprehension. Implications for the actors in the world of contemporary arts and cultural tourism are discussed to obtain higher levels of arts engagement among young adults, and, consequently, their attractiveness.

This paper describes the personal history and intellectual development of Morris B. Holbrook (MBH), a participant in the field of marketing academics in general and consumer research in particular.

The paper pursues an approach characterized by historical autoethnographic subjective personal introspection or HASPI.

The paper reports the personal history of MBH and – via HASPI – interprets various aspects of key participants and major themes that emerged over the course of his career.

The main implication is that every scholar in the field of marketing pursues a different light, follows a unique path, plays by idiosyncratic rules, and deserves individual attention, consideration, and respect … like a cat that carries its own leash.

In the case of MBH, like (say) a jazz musician, whatever value he might have depends on his originality.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of edutainment consumption and to analyze how new technologies influence it. It discusses a new theme, both with reference to the selected context (the phenomenon of edutainment itself and its consumption), and to the object itself (artistic consumption mediated by technological applications).

This paper addresses the research question previously mentioned by conducting an analysis of the marketing literature as it has been developed. The main areas of investigation are the experiential interpretation of consumer behaviour, entertainment and education. This paper is multidisciplinary in nature. An in‐depth analysis of the main object of the research and an original model of analysis of cultural experience are provided.

The use of new technologies that stimulate all the senses of the individual allows the re‐creation of the content of the message, both in terms of education and entertainment. A new form is given to the message, which is set in a new virtual environment, a “virtual edutainment environment” (VEE), where the interaction with the customer takes place. In our review of the marketing literature analysis we highlight the reasons that give rise to the VEE as a particular kind of cyberspace. A VEE is an environment in which one or more consumers experience the re‐created message. In this context, the users may interact amongst each other, but what is essential is that the information be elaborated in one complex way, utilizing multimedia tools in order to affect the consumer's senses. Hence, consumers are immersed in a deep experience of edutainment.

The convergence of education and entertainment, favoured by the diffusion of technology and its use, involves a very high risk for institutions that are trying to cling to their past history and their traditional managerial behaviour. Institutions like these need to use technological applications to increase the value of what they can offer to the consumer. For example, the learning process of the visitors of a museum will not be impaired by the entertaining use of new technologies. Instead, the memory of their experience will be reinforced and reinvigorated. The experiential interpretation of consumer behaviour has been one of the most innovative fields of study in the last 20 years, and it is even more promising for the future of marketing, as it is spreading into product categories that are far from being hedonistic.

The value of this paper is based on the proposal of an original model of analysis of cultural experience. The definition of the VEE takes its roots in other marketing concepts, such as the computer‐mediated environment and cyberspace, but it differs from them since it highlights the particular features of a cultural experience mediated through technological applications. The same is true with regard to the edutainment immersion experience, which is a particular interpretation of this kind of interaction between customers and the message.

This paper aims at interpreting the epistemology of marketing. The paper investigates several research questions, proposing some initial reflections concerning their impact on marketing.

The paper addresses the research questions by conducting an analysis of the marketing literature. An analysis of philosophical postmodern literature is also carried out. The paper's attempt constantly to create links between the level of philosophical elaboration and that of marketing research leads to a proposal of new approach to marketing research: experiential research.

In the paper's review of the marketing literature the traditional pragmatic approach of marketing as a discipline is highlighted. Its strong managerial perspective has partly diverted researchers’ attention from the theory, and focused it mainly on the method. This has created an increasingly marked distinction between the marketing literature aimed at management, and that aimed at the academic community. The postmodern perspective on marketing calls for a rethinking of the “scientific nature” of marketing as an investigative field.

The main point is that marketing cannot be a scientific discipline only by adopting a scientific method. Marketing research is by definition different in nature: it cannot generate better but only different knowledge. This perspective shift has an impact on all research components. First, the field of research widens enormously, because researchers can deal with everything arousing their interest and to which their accumulated knowledge can be applied. Since the discipline does not become scientific, the researcher can use any method. All methods can originate scientific theories, and therefore incremental knowledge. Hence science is neither objective nor absolute.

This paper analyses the philosophical roots of postmodernism, in order to understand its impact on postmodern marketing better. It also focuses on the impact of postmodernism on marketing research, and proposes a new approach. This paper then explores the features of the experiential research in marketing, and its effect on the processes of generating knowledge.