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This chapter explores the symbolic connections between coming of age liminality and identity-oriented consumption practices in postmodern American culture, specifically among adolescent girls.

Forty-two female participants (ages 20–23) participants were asked to answer the general question of “Who am I?” through creating identity collages and writing accompanying narrative summaries for each of three discrete life stages: early adolescence (past-self), late adolescence (present-self), and adulthood (future-self). Data were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach.

Coming of age in postmodern American consumer culture involves negotiating paradoxical identity tensions through consumption-oriented benchmarks, termed “market-mediated milestones.” Market-mediated milestones represent achievable criteria by which adolescents solidify their uncertain liminal self-concepts.

In contrast to the traditional Van Gennepian conceptualization of rites of passage, market-mediated milestones do not necessarily mark a major transition from one social status to another, nor do they follow clearly defined stages. Market-mediated milestones help adolescents navigate liminality through an organic, nonlinear, and incremental coming of age process.

Rather than traditional cultural institutions (e.g., church, family), the marketplace is becoming the central cultural institution around which adolescent coming of age identity is constructed. As such, organizations have the power to create market-mediated milestones for young people. In doing so, organizations should be mindful of adolescent well-being.

This research marks a turning point in understanding traditional rites of passage in light of postmodern degradation of cultural institutions. The institutions upon which traditional rites of passage are based have changed; therefore, our conceptions of what rites of passage are today should change as well.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the holistic perception of the customer vis‐a‐vis the creation of an ideal store by using the projective technique of collage. In particular, it discusses the role of the factor of atmosphere which a distributor must privilege to satisfy the expectations of current customer.

To this end, a qualitative exploratory survey based on the technique of collage has been carried out with a sample of 30 individuals. The information were collected through the drawings and the technique of “complete the following sentence”. The collages were analyzed using a holistic approach.

The results show that the new customer refers to all the stimuli of the environment of purchase in order to satisfy his utility, hedonic and even social needs. The companies, and in particular the distributors, must direct the atmosphere of their store towards the vectors of attraction, gratification and distraction.

The projective technique of collage made it possible to go further than a declaratory matter collected by questions about the concept of the environmental factors. Indeed, in spite of the limited number of the individuals relied upon for the study, the images that were stuck on paper were enriching and made it possible to explain what evokes for the consumer the concept of “ideal store”; his feelings or his hidden emotions.

From a managerial point of view, the noted results can give way to a significant number of actions for the distributors. Indeed, in order to ensure the perennial aspect of their business, the persons in charge should follow this practice by considering the atmosphere as a sum of factors which should be managed in a coherent and harmonious way and not in an intuitive way; thus constituting sources of creation of value for the consumer. In other words, the distributors must implement the factors necessary to generate the comfort of purchase as well as the pleasure of consumption.

This paper is distinguished compared to the majority of the researches undertaken on this subject. It proposes an indirect qualitative study (projective study) making it possible to certify the passage of the consumer from an atomized vision towards a holistic vision including informing the distributors on the atmospheric components most adapted to the new requirements of the current consumer.

The purpose of constructing the collage and stimulus instruments was to assess the learners’ attainment of the learning outcomes of the life skills learning programme. The collage is a compilation of pictures and concepts representing the different skills included in the life skills learning programme, and the pictures and concepts acted as the stimulus instruments. Subsequently, the collage and stimulus instruments were used in a first assessment directly after the learners had completed the life skills learning programme. The development of the data category classification enabled the researcher to evaluate and interpret the responses of the learners in the assessments and to ascertain to what extent the learning outcomes of the life skills learning programme were attained. It was found that the collage and stimulus instruments were effective in assessing the learners’ attainment of the learning outcomes of the life skills learning programme. However, it must be noted that the findings on the behavioural changes in the learners again highlighted the difficulties in assessing the affective domain in life skills.

Although there has been some research into young consumers, for instance their approaches to product categorization; their decision‐making strategies; and their role in family decision making, considerable work remains to be done to understand how young consumers develop brand loyalty, brand preference and reliance. This paper reports the initial findings from an exploratory study of over 200 young consumers (aged 7‐10) which examined perceptions of branded fashion clothing; and the impact of social influences on young consumers’ evaluations of branded fashion products. The findings indicate that product/brand imagery is clearly established among young consumers, particularly for branded fashion sportswear; and the results suggest that research design must take account of both age and gender differences when choosing methods for eliciting data from young consumers.

The children returned and Ms. Lee had them go to their desks. There was so much excitement in the air … . Ms. Lee has rearranged the desks again and I like how there are such frequent shifts in seating. Ms. Lee spoke of their photographs and their collages. She then said I would give the guiding question for their work on the citizenship education project today in their small sustained response groups. I fumbled badly and said something about who they are and how they belong. Ms. Lee wrote it on the board. As Ms. Lee continued to speak, I went and changed the words to “Who I am and how I belong.” Ms. Lee spoke to the children of how they were going to start putting their photos on their poster boards and to think about how their photographs were representations of who they were and where they belonged. No glue or scissors at this point. She also showed them the paper where she wanted them to write about their photographs.The children got their individual pieces of bristol board for their collages and Ms. Lee said they might want to choose a spot on the floor as they did this work. They were intent and focused on their own photographs but were also sharing with their neighbours. At one point, I commented to Ms. Lee, Simmee, and Jennifer about how impressed I was with their intentness. I spent some time with Logan who had some magnificent photographs … he has an eye for the aesthetic. I pointed out to him how much I liked the photographs. I also spent some time with Taylor who had three photographs of clothes: one Chinese outfit, one Korean outfit, and a long white dress that she said she did not know what it was. I asked if it was a christening dress and she said she thought so, that her mom had taken the photograph. She also had a close up of a Canadian flag. I spent some time with Sophie who had rejected some of her photographs as not interesting. When I pointed out what I saw as interesting things in her photographs, she started to see them more positively. I asked a few children what they planned to put in the centre of their collages. I realized, even as I asked that question, that I was privileging the centre photograph. Liam had his dad's photo clearly in the centre. He was busily writing words. He said he wasn't sure what to write about his dad but then wrote something about family being important. (Field notes, April 2, 2007)

The objective of this study is to explore adolescent girls' knowledge about the types of beauty valued in contemporary American popular and commercial culture.

Eighty girls ranging from seven to thirteen years old participated in a card sorting and collage construction exercise using 47 advertisements that featured models.

Differences were found among girls according to age. Preferred beauty types were more complex with age. Furthermore, older girls made more product and brand associations.

The findings indicate that the beauty match‐up hypothesis holds among young girls.

Advertisers may be overlooking the audience of young women by neglecting to use models who represent their desired type(s) of beauty. They may even be alienating young girls by using anti‐ideals such as nudity and sexiness. Furthermore, advertisers must use models who convey the appropriate personality traits to create persuasive ads.

This study is important because it expands upon previous work that has assessed how and why young girls are affected by highly attractive models in ads. However, instead of conceptualizing physical attractiveness as a simple bipolar continuum from “attractive or pretty” to “unattractive or ugly”, this work considers the complex, multidimensional properties of beauty.

The authors explore the coproduction of a digital archive with 50 2SLGBTQ+ youth across Atlantic Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to catalyze broader public participation in understanding 2SLGBTQ+ youth-led activism in this place and time through art production.

Through a mail-based participatory visual research project and an examination of collage, zines and DIY facemasks, the authors highlight how the production, sharing and archiving of youth-produced art adds to methodological discussions of exhibiting and digital archiving with 2SLGBTQ+ youth as a form of activist intervention.

In reflexively examining the cocuration of art through social media and project website, the authors argue that coproducing digital archives is an important part of knowledge mobilization. Also, the authors consider how the work has been interacted with by a broader public, so far in an exclusively celebratory manner and note the benefits and challenges of this type of engagement to the youth and to the understandings of 2SLGBTQ+ youth archives.

The authors suggest that these modes of engaging in participatory visual research at a distance offer original contributions in relation to how participation can be understood in a digital and mail-based project. The authors see participant control of how to share works within digital archives as a contribution to the understanding of people's capacity to negotiate and take ownership of these spaces. These strategies are participant-centered and suggest ways that archiving can be made more accessible, especially when working with communities who are socially marginalized or otherwise excluded from the archival process.

Qualitative researchers working with young people consistently face challenges in trying to ethically gain insight into their inner thoughts and worlds. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the use of generative tools in conjunction with qualitative interviewing with young people can enhance creativity and reflexivity, while mitigating adult-child power dynamics.

This paper draws upon ethnographic research conducted by the author examining the interplay between emotion, communication, and schooling at a public high school. Participant observation, use of generative tools to make collages representing each student’s experience, and in-depth interviews guided by the student-created visuals were triangulated to more fully understand the students’ experiences.

Generative tools foster reflexivity in both researcher and participants, lesson adult-child power dynamic concerns, and foster creativity without the requirement of drawing ability. Integrating the collaging process into in-depth interviews enabled students to privilege their primary thoughts, experiences, and concerns related to the issues being studied, mitigating concerns over adults overpowering and controlling the focus of the interview.

Generative tools can complement and enhance time-honored qualitative methods to alleviate ongoing concerns about ethical and accurate research with young people. Researchers are encouraged to embrace creative methods to engage young people in ethical and thoughtful reflection on and sharing of their experiences. Creative methods are also useful in empowering young people to imagine their world otherwise creating new possibilities for the future.

Research problems focused on sustainability, such as changes to procurement practices, are new which necessitate new approaches to research methods. The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of an arts‐based inquiry technique to supplement a mixed‐methods approach.

This paper presents an application of arts‐based inquiry techniques as part of the qualitative analysis regime to communicate the approaches adopted by Australian organisations introducing sustainable procurement utilising the medium of collage.

Arts‐based inquiry is found to offer organisational research several complementary features. It engages multiple audiences in different “ways of seeing” and engaging with research.

Arts‐based techniques demonstrated in this paper offer sustainability and other researchers a complementary method of inquiry, to communicate change in society by opening the discourse between art, transdisciplinarity and sustainability, and to engage with multiple audiences in the process of change.

The Corporation of London Library and Art Gallery Electronic (COLLAGE) identified the relative inaccessibility of their extensive visual collections – the prints, maps, photographs and ephemera held by Guildhall Library and the 4,000 plus works of art held by the Guildhall Art Gallery – as a challenge. Direct consultation with staff and existing users suggested that digitisation could enrich the catalogue and ensure wider access to the resources while ensuring the preservation of the originals for future generations. The public user interface is already online and, as resource discovery is the primary driver for the project, a direct link between COLLAGE and the library OPAC is planned to allow users to search “traditional” resources seamlessly alongside the images.