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This paper aims to examine the notion of escape, which is central to the consumer experience literature, yet remains largely undertheorized. By surfacing the multi-dimensionality of escape, the authors develop a more fine-grained conceptualization of this notion. In addition, this work helps shed new light on past consumer research findings that mobilize the notion of escape.

The paper is based on a review and interpretation of literature referring to the notion of escape in consumer research.

This paper’s first contribution is to extend the concept of escape based on the Turnerian framework of structure/anti-structure, by establishing a key difference between objects to “escape from” and the major themes of “escape into”. A second contribution is to identify other forms of escape that are mundane, restorative and warlike, and that mobilize the self in different ways.

The paper provides a more precise conceptualization of escape to motivate further research on this particularly important concept for understanding consumer experience.

Escape from one’s own self has become an important feature of contemporary life. Consumer experiences may be ways of crafting identities, but they also form the means of escaping the pressures that come with the burdens of identity.

This paper goes beyond past research on escape by identifying other types of escapes, which have not really been theorized in consumer research. The authors especially note the importance of ephemeral moments where people temporarily suspend their reflexive self, which the authors conceive as a new type of escape route.

This paper aims to detail how consumers can harness the power of brands to reconstruct their lives.

The authors followed five brand devotees over several years, using various data collection methods (long interviews, observations, videos, photographs and secondary data) to study how they reconstructed their lives with a brand.

Consumers transform their existence through a distinctive form of brand appropriation that the authors call brand magnification, which unfolds: materially, narratively and socially. First, brand devotees scatter brand incarnations around themselves to remain in touch with the brand because the brand has become an especially positive dimension of their lives. Second, brand devotees mobilize the brand to craft a completely new life story. Finally, they build a branded clan of family and friends that socially validates their reconstructed identity.

The research extends more muted depictions of brands as soothing balms calming consumer anxieties; the authors document the mechanism through which consumers remake their lives with a brand.

The research helps rehabilitate the role of brands in contemporary consumer culture. Organizations can use the findings to help stimulate and engage employees by unveiling the brand’s life-transforming potential for consumers.

The authors characterize a distinctive, extreme and unique form of brand appropriation that positively transforms consumer lives.

This study aims to analyze Asian branding strategies at the regional level, and provide a map of opportunities and challenges for Asian regional branding.

The study takes, a multi‐sited interpretive approach and interview 22 brand managers throughout the Asian region. The length of interviews was approximately 1.5 hours/respondent. In‐depth case studies of two prominent pan‐Asian brands, Tiger Beer and Zuji, were also conducted. An interpretive analysis to this data set was applied and five themes were developed.

The two major challenges for regional Asian branding are negative country of origin perceptions and regional positioning being inherently fragile. Despite these key challenges, our respondents saw clear opportunities for regional branding initiatives. Brands can achieve a regional positioning by focusing on Asian modernity rather than on common cultural heritage. They can also capitalize on newfound Asian pride and confidence, and finally they can use a Western stamp of approval to signal to Asians the viability of the brand.

The paper extends previous work on the globalization of marketing activities by advancing the region as an important unit of analysis. It helps understand the development of brands in a part of the world that is becoming more important at the economic and political level. The study shows how marketers are shaping culture in the Asian context. Finally, the paper contributes a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with a regional positioning and the development of regional branding strategies.

Multisensory stimulation is integral to experiential consumption. However, a gap persists between recognition of the importance of multisensory stimulation and the research techniques used to study the effects of such stimulation on consumption experiences. This article draws on sensory anthropology to narrow the gap.

Sensory anthropology has the potential to help consumer researchers understand multisensory stimulation and its effect on consumption experiences. To highlight this potential, ethnographic fieldwork is reported for two related experiential settings: yacht racing and adventure racing.

It is shown how consumer researchers can apply concepts and data collection techniques from sensory anthropology to derive powerful insights into consumption experiences. A set of guidelines and examples is derived from the embodied concepts associated with sensory anthropology, namely, kinaesthetic schema, bodily mimesis, the mindful body and local biology. These concepts are used to comprehend how consumers experience sensations phenomenologically, understand them culturally and re-enact them socially.

By acknowledging and engaging the senses, researchers can acquire embodied information that would not be evident from the conventional interview, survey or experimental data. Sensory anthropology adds to what is known from psychological, social and cultural sources to enable organisations to differentiate their offerings by means of the senses and sensory expressions, not only in yacht and adventure racing but potentially in many other experiential settings, such as travel, shopping, entertainment and immersive gaming.

This article offers distinct and original methodological insights for consumer researchers by focusing on concepts and data collection techniques that assist the study of experiential consumption from an embodied and corporeal perspective.

This paper aims to expand current theories of globalisation to a consideration of its impact on the individual. Much work has been done on the impact of globalisation on social, political and economic structures. In this paper, globalisation, for the individual, reflects a re-conceptualisation of the Self/Other encounter. In order to explore this Self/Other dimension, the paper analyses the literary work of nineteenth-century writer Pierre Loti since his work begins to problematise this important motif. His work also provides insight into the effect on the individual when encountering the Other in a globalised context.

Drawing from literary criticism, the paper adopts an interpretive approach. Using the fiction and non-fiction work of Pierre Loti, an integrated psychoanalytical, postcolonial analysis is conducted to draw out possible insights into how Loti conceptualises the Other and is thus transformed himself.

The paper finds that the Self/Other encounter shifts in the era of globalisation. The blurring of the Self/Other is part of the impact of globalisation on the individual. Further, the paper argues that Loti was the first to problematise Self/Other at a point in history where the distinction seemed clear. Loti's work is instructive for tracing the dissolution of the Self/Other encounter since the themes and issues raised in his early work foreshadow our contemporary experience of globalisation.

This paper takes a specific view of globalisation through an interpretive lens. It also uses one specific body of work to answer the research question of what impact globalisation has on the individual. A broader sampling and application of theoretical strains out of the literary criticism canon would expand the parameters of this study.

This paper makes an original contribution to current theorisations of globalisation in that it re-conceptualises classical understandings of the Self/Other divide. The finding that the Self/Other divide is altered in the current era of globalisation has impact for cultural and marketing theory since it re-focuses attention on the shifting nature of identity and how we encounter the Other in our daily existence.