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This paper aims to understand how young people manage the dramaturgical dilemmas related to drinking alcohol and performing multiple identities.

Drawing on qualitative data collected with 16-18-year olds, the authors adopt Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective to examine youth alcohol consumption in relation to multiple identities.

Young people continuously and skilfully juggle multiple identities across multiple contexts, where identities overflow and audiences and interactions overlap. Techniques of audience segregation, mystification and misrepresentation and justification are used to perform and manage multiple identities in a risky health behaviour context.

The approach may facilitate some over- and under-claiming. Future studies could observe young people’s performances of self across multiple contexts, paying particular attention to how alcohol features in these performances.

Social marketing campaigns should demonstrate an understanding of how alcohol relates to the contexts of youth lives beyond the “night out” and engage more directly with young peoples’ navigation between different identities, contexts and audiences. Campaigns could tap into the secretive nature of youth alcohol consumption and discourage youth from prioritising audience segregation and mystification above their own safety.

Extant work has argued that consumers find multiplicity unmanageable or manage multiple identities through internal dialogue. Instead, this paper demonstrates how young people manage multiple identities through interaction and performance. This study challenges the neat compartmentalisation of identities identified in prior literature and Goffman’s clear-cut division of performances into front and back stage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The spouses or partners of serving members of the UK Armed Forces are often subject to similar constraints to those of enlisted personnel. This paper aims to examine the experiences and wellbeing of a group of army wives. In particular, it focuses on their shared experiences of consumer vulnerability and related challenges, exploring the extent to which membership of military wives’ communities can help them to cope.

Using an interpretivist approach, data were collected through four focus group discussions involving 30 army wives, and seven individual in-depth interviews.

The paper highlights shared experiences of consumer vulnerability and demonstrates how army wives’ approaches to coping incorporate both individual and community-based approaches. It proposes that communities of coping develop within the army wives community, providing women with both practical and emotional support.

The paper acknowledges that there is a range of factors that will impact military spouses’ experiences of consumer vulnerability and strategies for coping. This heterogeneity was difficult to capture within a small exploratory study.

The UK Government should consider their duties towards military spouses and children. This would entail a significant cultural shift and recognition of military personnel’s caring responsibilities.

This research contributes to understandings regarding the potentially shared nature of both consumer vulnerability and coping strategies. The study introduces the relevance of communities of coping to consumer contexts, highlighting how members can benefit from both practical and emotional support.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Purpose – To extend understanding of the rituals and practices of alcohol consumption through a focus on the consumption object (the Dirty Pint) as a central actant in the practices of extreme alcohol consumption.

Design/methodology/approach – Seventeen paired and group interviews were conducted with young consumers (aged 16–18). An Actor-Network Theory (ANT)-inspired approach to data analysis was used in conjunction with Bourdieu's key concepts of habitus, field and capital to present a detailed understanding of the practices and rituals of extreme alcohol consumption.

Findings – The same consumption object takes on a very different role and has different forms of agency, depending on the social space (field) in which it is embedded. The Dirty Pint acts differently within different social spaces or sub-fields of the field of adolescence, particularly when combined with individual subjects of differing habitus to produce an object+subject hybrid.

Social implications – Paying attention to all the relevant actants (both human and non-human) involved in the practice of alcohol consumption could lead to more novel and relevant alcohol-harm reduction strategies or campaigns that young people can both relate to and take more seriously.

Originality/value of paper – We stress the need to grant greater agency to objects in studying consumption practices and identity enactment and contribute to the literature on identity by extending Gergen's (2009) ‘relational being’, conceiving of the self as embedded in both inter-subjective and inter-objective interactions and relationships (Latour, 1996).

We discuss the use of creative qualitative techniques for research studies focusing on young participants and encourage the development of what we term a “child‐centric” approach. We hope that by sharing our experiences we can help move forward the discussion of child‐centric approaches and methods, providing a useful starting point for researchers considering conducting qualitative research with children, and food for thought for those experienced at researching the lives of young consumers.

We begin our paper with a general overview of approaches to childhood as a social category, discuss methodological approaches to research with children and review the literature that informed our methodological approach. In the second part of the paper we focus on an empirical investigation, outlining a methodology with which we sought to embrace children's active participation. Our qualitative approach incorporates the following: quasi‐ethnographic methods; interviews; projective techniques and photography.

It is suggested that by shifting our research focus from a top‐down perspective into one that embraces childhood as a culture in its own right, we can greet children within their own language, using terminology they understand, and ultimately providing the context for a more fruitful and exciting data collection process. Our research design was effective in providing children with a voice with which to relate their experiences, and in this way we saw ourselves as facilitators, letting children tell us their own story in their own words.

We argue that it is only by recognising and taking on board some of the recommendations that have emerged from the debate concerning research with children that consumer researchers will discover a fuller appreciation of the participants we seek to understand. Lessons from this approach can also be fruitfully used to enhance the experiences of research involving participants other than children who should also benefit from more participant‐centred research designs.

Purpose: Curatorial consumption studies have hitherto focused on the consumption of family heirlooms. By exploring curatorial consumption within the context of vintage outlets, the authors extend its usage to other consumption sites, allowing them to further develop the construct.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Participant observation was employed at vintage outlets alongside in-depth interviews with 15 vintage traders incorporating object elicitation.

Findings: The authors identify the potential for curatorial consumption to help further develop understanding of individuals’ relationships with their possessions. The authors present a re-contextualization of curatorial consumption, which expands the term beyond caring for family heirlooms, allowing them to incorporate additional contexts. The authors identify vintage traders’ roles as guardians for their merchandise and their sense of responsibility to ensure objects’ circulation to future generations. The authors develop the findings around themes related to curation: acquisition, preservation, and transference. Running through these themes is an overarching concern for historical objects.

Originality/Value: While few studies loosely refer to curatorial consumption, the construct remains underdeveloped. The re-contextualization allows to unpack its potential to enhance understanding of individuals’ relationships with their possessions. In contrast to existing curatorial consumption work that emphasizes the sense of continuity with ancestors, the authors extend this to consider how connections with the past can be maintained beyond local family settings.

Self‐esteem is an important motivational drive for consumption involving both the acceptance and rejection/avoidance of symbolic goods. This paper examines the relationship between self‐esteem and the rejection of goods and brands within the context of fashion consumption by young professionals. A conceptualisation which accounts for consumers’ use of various strategies in their efforts to maintain or enhance their self‐esteem is suggested. A small‐scale exploratory study is used to examine first, how consumers invest products and brands with negative symbolic meanings; and second, how this leads consumers to reject products and brands. The importance of understanding negative symbolic consumption when marketing high involvement products such as fashion goods is identified; and the implications for fashion retailers and marketing management are discussed.