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Ancient and universal, fantasy was most likely the first mainstream literature rather than the naturalism later recognized as mainstream. Every generation of every culture tells and retells tales based on psychological archetypes, the elements of fantasy. For instance, the Celtic tale “Leir and His Daughters” has been reworked and updated by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Diana Paxson (The Serpent's Tooth, Morrow, 1991). One of the old English/Scottish ballads collected by Francis James Child in the late 19th century (Child ballad No. 37) has recently reappeared as the novel Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner (Morrow, 1991). Similarly, retellings of the Arthurian legend are legion, from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Malory to Tennyson to such modern writers as T.H. White, Mary Stewart, Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Mists of Avalon, Knopf, 1982), and Guy Gavriel Kay (The Wandering Fire and The Darkest Road, Collins, 1986).

Fantasy is a concept often used in everyday life and in academic research. While it has received attention in consumer research due to its connection to desires, community creation, meaning evocation, and identity development, it lacks a commonly shared understanding. This paper explores and theorizes consumers’ experiences of fantasy as performed in real-life situations.

The research was conducted as an ethnographic study of live action role-playing games (LARP) and analyzed through the lens of performance theory.

LARPs are performances that take place between imagination and embodied reality, with participants drawing on each realm to enrich the other. Consumption elements of LARP include media products and materials used in creating settings, costumes, and props. LARPers gain various benefits from the performance of fantasy, including escapist entertainment, self-reflection, personal growth, and participation in social criticism. Fantasy performance is, therefore, an important and under-theorized vehicle for consumer identity development and social interaction.

This research theorizes the experience of fantasy as a performance that takes place between reality and imagination. As such, it involves both embodied and social aspects that have largely been ignored in prior research. A richer theorization of fantasy performance promises greater insights into research areas including the dynamics of consumer identity projects and of consumption communities.

This chapter explores the media coverage of the 2016 Presidential campaign and reveals the corruption fantasy themes that emerged. Media coverage of corruption can uniquely affect voter attitudes and public policy formulation and implementation, as revealed in previous scholarship on media coverage of corruption. By tracing the competing narratives offered in media coverage utilizing the constant comparative method, the dramatic characters, Crooked Hillary and Corrupt Businessman Trump, are identified and their storylines are explicated. Analysis reveals these dramatic fantasy themes chained through social media, evincing and promoting the narratives that drove media coverage of our political leaders and public policy results. The chapter illustrates that the narratives involving corruption were prominent and negative, further indicating that the media’s obsession with scandal contributed to and supported the narratives that portrayed both candidates as corrupt, adding pollution to the 2016 U.S. political environment.

This research aims to extend brand relationship theory to the domain of online gaming by augmenting the understanding of the role played by fantasy state in digital game in impacting gamers' immersive relationships with digital game brands. In this quest, the research examines how fantasy state in game (FSG) creates game brand immersion (GBI) through the mediation of emotional game brand attachment (EGBA) and the roles of individual's need for escapism (NE) and anxious attachment style (AAS) in moderating the aforementioned relationships.

The research employs a pre-test followed by two quantitative studies. Quantitative data were analyzed using the PROCESS macro.

Results from Study 1 illustrate that perceived fantasy in game generates EGBA, which, in turn, predicts GBI. Further, Study 2 establishes that the effect of fantasy in game on EGBA is moderated by gamer's NE. The moderating effect of NE is moderated by individual's AAS.

Value of the study lies in extending consumer–brand relationship theory to digital gaming domain which enhances the understanding of how fantasy state in digital game can lead to GBI and the roles played by individual personality characteristics like escapism motivation and AAS in the process.

This study investigates the effect of consumers' brand attitude changes according to the fashion film type. Furthermore, it examines the psychological mechanism by engagement and consumer fantasy proneness. This study is meaningful because it provides a more in-depth understanding of the use of fashion film as a means of consumer-oriented persuasion communication.

This research uses a 2(fashion film type: narrative vs non-narrative) × 2(consumer fantasy proneness: high vs low) mixed factorial design to test the hypotheses. ANOVA and the PROCESS macro mounted on SPSS was used to test hypotheses.

The group with high consumer fantasy proneness showed more changes in brand attitude when exposed to non-narrative than narrative fashion films, but the group with low consumer fantasy proneness showed no significant difference in brand attitude change according to the fashion film type. In addition, when consumer fantasy proneness is high, media and brand engagement for non-narrative fashion films increase sequentially, resulting in a greater change in brand attitude, whereas these psychological mechanisms do not work in groups with low consumer fantasy proneness.

Fashion brands should identify their respective target group when producing fashion films and choose differentiated narrative forms. In the case of pursuing a fantastic aesthetic value, the non-narrative type induces more attention and curiosity from consumers than the narrative type, which affects the feeling of a special bond or relevance with the brand.

This study has value in that it demonstrates the rationale for why a fashion brand needs to select a differentiated content structure according to the aesthetic value pursued when making a fashion film in branding work.

This study aims to examine the impact of conscious and unconscious processes on risky investment intention. In this framework, the effect of individual cultural values and phantasy on risky investment intentions was investigated. In addition, the mediating role of phantasy in the relationship between individual cultural values and risky investment intentions was also analyzed.

Data were collected between May 14, 2020 and June 01, 2020, when our graduate students voluntarily shared the online survey link on their social networks. In this way, 1,934 people in total answered the questionnaire. To test the study model, structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed using the AMOS program. In addition, ANOVA and independent sample t-test analyses were conducted using the SPSS program to analyze whether individual cultural values and risky investment intent differ according to demographic variables.

According to the analysis results, power distance, collectivism, masculinity and long-term orientation are seen as antecedents of phantasy. While a positive relationship was found between power distance, collectivism and risky investment intention, a negative relationship was found between uncertainty avoidance and risky investment intention. Statistical findings regarding the mediating effect of phantasy on the relationship between individual cultural values and risky investment intentions were also determined. In addition to these, the differences in individual cultural values and risky investment intentions according to age, education level, sex and marital status were investigated. Individuals with the highest uncertainty avoidance level were in the 41–50 age group. Individuals with the highest long-term orientation level were individuals aged 41 and over. Individuals with the lowest risky investment intentions were in the +51 age group. Collectivism and power distance did not differ according to age. There were no differences in the relevant variables according to the level of education. Males have higher levels of risky investment intention, power distance, masculinity and collectivism than females, and married individuals have higher levels of uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and collectivism than singles.

This study is the first to investigate the impact of conscious and unconscious processes on risky investment intentions together. On the other hand, the number of studies empirically investigating the relationship between phantasy and risky investment intention is quite limited, and the authors have also provided the findings for the existence of a relationship between these two variables.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute a constructionist perspective to debates in the strategy literature about the ways in which managers conduct strategy work. The authors build on observations that fantasy plays a central role in strategy work and aim to focus on the ways in which fantasies of self and other operate in the identity work of participants in the process of developing strategy.

The study presents an inductive approach based on extended participant observation in two different organizations. Each engagement lasted about three years and the analysis is based on data gathered in meetings, workshops, focus groups, interviews and other informal settings.

The paper presents four different types of fantasy, which were observed in the data set. These fantasies are labeled: helpful pairing; the arms race; the eternal optimist and the merchant of doom. It is also suggested that there are three useful dimensions that might be used to unpack the ways in which fantasies operate. These are role playing and role taking; temporal place and associated value; the relationship between fantasy and evidence.

The authors propose that future research on strategy should entail an understanding of the role of fantasy in what people say and do.

The paper offers four types of fantasy construction as a contribution to the extant literature and three analytical dimensions which can be used to consider the ways in which fantasy operates in the identity work of strategists.

While considerable critical energy has been devoted to unmasking the figure of the heroic entrepreneur, the idea that entrepreneurs are unique individuals with special abilities continues to be widespread in scholarly research, social media and popular culture. The purpose of this paper is to traverse the fantasy of the heroic entrepreneur by offering a reading of Richard Branson’s autobiography, Losing My Virginity.

The theoretical approach of this paper is informed by Slavoj Žižek’s concept of fantasy and his critical analytical strategy of “traversing the fantasy”. Žižek offers a theoretical framework that allows us to understand how narratives of famous entrepreneurs create paradoxical fantasies that produce desire.

By offering a reading of Richard Branson’s autobiography, Losing My Virginity, this paper serves to illustrate how the fantasy of the heroic entrepreneur creates the injunction to overcome oneself and become true to oneself, but also how this figure is ridden with contradictions and impossibilities. Branson’s book will eventually be shown to be a religious narrative, where the entrepreneur is responsible for redeeming the crises not only of the economy, but of being as such.

Rather than striving towards a processual approach that lays emphasis on the collective effort involved in entrepreneurship, this paper critically engages directly with the heroic entrepreneur by exploring how this figure is a fantasy that structures desire. This paper shows how critical entrepreneurship studies could benefit from an approach that analyses how the cultural representation of business celebrates the heroic entrepreneur as a source of value creation. The authors further argue that it is the contradictions and impossibilities embodied in the figure of the heroic entrepreneur that carry its far-reaching appeal.

This paper describes the forms of knowledge used by players of fantasy sports, games where players create ideal sports teams and compete to accumulate points based on professional athletes’ statistical performances. Messages from a discussion forum associated with a popular fantasy basketball game were analyzed to understand how players described their decision‐making strategies to their peers. The focus of the research was to understand if players use mathematical concepts such as optimization and statistical analyses when assembling their team or if they base their decisions on personal preferences, beliefs, and biases. The analyses in this paper suggest the latter, that players rely on informal, domain‐specific heuristics that often lead to the creation of competitive teams. These heuristics and other forms of player discourse related to knowledge use are described. The paper also suggests ways that analyses of existing practices might provide a foundation for creating gaming environments that assist the acquisition of more formal reasoning skills.

How often have we heard in answer to the question “How did you enjoy your holiday?”, the inevitable reply “It was simply fantastic.” Perhaps, knowing the answer in advance has dulled our intellects from further investigating the fuller meaning of such an expression, namely that holidays are essentially experiences in fantasy. In the course of this article I should like to examine briefly the notion of fantasy from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, the latter being based on certain findings derived from a psycho‐sociological study of tourists' attitudes, conducted recently in Barbados.