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This research aims to investigate how individuals' perceptions and reallocation of resources due to a life transition uniquely affect their responses to marketing activities.

A multi-method approach is undertaken, with Study 1 being qualitative in nature and Study 2 consisting of a quantitative experimental design. Study 1 consists of in-depth interviews with both newlyweds and empty nesters. Study 2 incorporates a survey design with 412 respondents; data is analyzed via structural equation modeling, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and post hoc multiple comparison tests.

Findings reveal that consumer appraisal of a transition event is a key predictor of response to marketing activities, and that consumers have an inverted-U shape response to advertising across three transition stages (anticipatory, liminal, re-established).

Because appraisal is not generally captured by market research, companies may be able to estimate appraisal by combining resource availability information with existing demographic data. Because resources are found to be a significant predictor of appraisal, by anticipating resource levels, a firm may be able to estimate appraisal and thus be able to forecast advertising responsiveness.

Researchers have not investigated how changes in the availability of time and other resources during life events affect consumers' appraisal of products, adaptation to new roles, or response to marketing efforts. As such, examining the influence of resources and transition stage on attitudes toward marketing activities during life transitions makes a meaningful contribution to the literature.

Drawing from a life course theory, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between material reliance and quality of life for consumers going through a life transition, with attention given to individual differences and transition-specific characteristics.

Study 1 uses qualitative interviews with transitioning consumers, while Study 2 tests a survey-based conditional mediation model.

For liminal consumers, perceived personal control mediates the effect of material reliance on quality of life, but having negative expectations of the transition can override this effect.

Although previous research has given attention to material reliance, personal control and quality of life in various combinations, the impact of their combined effect has not been examined. Furthermore, these constructs have not been examined within the context of life transitions.

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 apply the theoretical lens of liminality to a consideration of non-traditional entrepreneurial locations. The study exemplifies such locations by empirically exploring self-storage based businesses: that is, businesses that operate for a significant number of hours each week from self-storage facilities.

The study draws on interviews with entrepreneurs operating self-storage based businesses and operators of self-storage facilities. The interview data is supported by site visits, businesses’ websites, promotional and marketing materials and press coverage.

Consistent with the liminal lens, entrepreneurs view their time operating from self-storage as a transitional phase. They do not suffer the high levels of uncertainty and unsettledness usually associated with liminality. However, they experience anxiety related to perceptions of operating from a business location outside the mainstream. Whilst the entrepreneurs benefit from additional services provided by the self-storage operators, this may be at the expense of extra “liminal” work and anxiety experienced by the storage operators’ staff.

The study contributes to entrepreneurship by answering Steyaert and Katz’s (2004) call for studies in unfamiliar places and spaces. The authors identify a number of ways in which liminality can arise when considering entrepreneurial locations. Drawing on extant entrepreneurial studies, the authors theorise that idiosyncratic characteristics of such spaces attract entrepreneurs with particular personal characteristics and needs, who will in turn be influenced by those spaces. In the case of self-storage facilities, the liminal space allows trepidatious entrepreneurs to “try on” (Hawkins and Edwards, 2015, p. 39) operating a new venture.

This article, which is conceptual and exploratory in nature, aims to examine the use of sustained liminality in the initiation phase of the mentoring relationship. Liminality is the non‐structured transitional phase in transformative cultural and social change: a place betwixt‐and‐between, where previous and future norms are suspended. The article argues that providing an explicit liminal phase in mentoring relationships allows mentor and mentees to consider the nature of the relationship and the eventual process through which its goals might be accomplished.

The article reflects on experiences gained in using a liminal approach to the mentoring process with distance transnational mentees. It presents the case for the use of what is termed threshold work in addressing the transition from non‐mentored to mentored status. It understands mentoring as a ritual enactment that requires a reassessment of cultural assumptions for participants with differing national identities.

The article is conceptual in nature and presents only anecdotal outcomes derived from informal discussion with mentees. It argues that, based on these initial experiences, more evidence‐based research might be usefully conducted to examine the effect of a liminal approach on the mentoring process, at both relational and outcomes levels, particularly when mentor and mentee are distanced spatially and by national culture.

This article presents a novel perspective for approaching the initiation phase of the mentoring process. Although used in other contexts, liminality is infrequently employed in mentoring. The utilization of liminality may be particularly valuable in approaching novice mentees who have different national cultural backgrounds and prior educational experiences. As such, the article provides useful insights for practitioners, especially in academic environments.

Tourism activities inherently include the liminoid state of mind that impels people to go out of ordinary behavior, some of which is inversionary. The purpose of this paper is to explore travelers’ cruise behavior as related to their needs while entering and experiencing a cruise trip.

A total of 395 vacationers were sampled and surveyed about their selected top three factors for cruising, motivations for cruising and needs while cruising. The sample was grouped into inversioners and rejuvenators to see if there was any evidence of liminoid behavior in cruising needs and what they may be.

The results show that the important reasons to choose cruises for vacation are aligned with past literature showing that people choose cruises for vacation mostly for the good value of the food and beverage bundled with good climate, entertainment appropriate for quality time with family and for rest and relaxation. In addition, the results on motivations to go on a cruise show that lower-level needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs have more importance than the higher-level needs.

The current study was conducted on an online platform. Future research with panels of cruise travelers across all the stages of liminoid behavior, before, during and after a cruise trip, may provide valuable findings in terms of changes in needs and motivations.

The inversionary tendency of cruise travelers implies for the cruise industry the need to create an alternative (or inversionary) routine restoring the basic needs, while still providing enough opportunities for self-actualization that may foster balanced travel experiences for human growth and development. Providing a more balanced product and service offering may be strategic for the cruise companies because the activities geared for higher-level needs may provide memorable experiences and hence induce consumer loyalty after the trip is completed.

The focus on eating and drinking during cruises may be providing cruise travelers with instant gratification during the span of the cruise. However, the consequences for the individual travelers, the industry, destinations and the environment may not be as gratifying. For a more responsible tourism, cruise travel may need an image makeover highlighting different packages within a cruise to better align with the desired needs of different segments of cruisers.

The study contributes to the understanding of the second or “transition” stage in liminal theory in tourism and is one of the first to examine the liminoid state of mind using a basic-needs approach for studying cruise traveler needs. Further, it contributes by exploring liminoid behavior of a group of people in the context of the same type of travel, cruise, rather than investigating liminoid behavior across different types of travel, thus allowing segmentation possibilities for the cruise industry.

Recent works by organisational anthropologists have identified bureaucracy as a major challenge for unskilled workers in the global economy. Daily encounters with bureaucratic processes only enhance general feelings of inadequacy, frustration and insecurity experienced by social groups who have to rely on precarious work. However, a focus on people’s homespun strategies and on the role of the non-profit sector in helping them to navigate bureaucracy is still incipient. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The research, ethnographic in its approach, unveils some of these challenges by drawing on 29 interviews with migrant workers in a third sector organisation in Manchester, UK. It explores migrants’ work experiences and aspirations, and the strategies used to navigate the bureaucracy embedded in the organisation of their lives. Informed by the different roles the researcher performed at the centre and by the inter-disciplinary nature of the projects, the methodology includes interviews, participative observation, analysis of life story narratives and drawings, and participation in community workshops.

While acknowledging that bureaucracy can keep people in liminal spaces and enhance their sense of insecurity, this paper reveals how personal aspirations and the ability to make connections across different social networks provide the much needed drive that enables migrants to acquire language skills, a tool that helps them to learn the ropes of bureaucratic processes, become culturally savvy, and leave the stage of quasi-citizenship.

Responses highlight the significance of recent welfare reforms and reveal adaptive mechanisms to deal with resulting uncertainties, which include the use of a variety of social networks, learning hew digital and language skills, and seeking specialized knowledge found in organisations in the third sector. The study also questions the taken-for-granted rationality of bureaucracy, unveiling its messy and ambiguous logic.

Focussing on the dynamic nature of entrepreneurship, the purpose of this paper is to advance an understanding of entrepreneurial practice in phases of radical change, which the authors conceptualize as periods of liminality. A particular focus on the management of tension is taken to investigate destabilization of practices, sources of resistance and enablers of change during shifts from a familiar past into an unfamiliar and uncertain future.

An exploratory longitudinal study of a single case firm was conducted to study the entrepreneurial change process during radical transition phases. To understand and theorize liminality and practice renewal in the entrepreneurial firm, the authors leveraged data collection tools from ethnography and engaged in data analysis inspired by grounded theory.

The authors build a process model of becoming that maps the following processes: destabilizing incumbent practices, sources of resistance and enablers of change, acceptance of upheaval and trying on a new state of being. A research agenda for future research in this area is also formulated.

The research contributes to contemporary entrepreneurship-as-practice research and to research considering the concept of liminality in entrepreneurship. Through processual theory building based on empirical research, the authors highlight that simultaneously handling the practices of the past whilst breeding new trajectories in an unknown future create tensions that can make or break the entrepreneurial firm.

Parents’ collective involvement in their children’s education takes the form of holding leadership positions in schools. Employing the concept of liminality, which is used in anthropological and sociological approaches, the purpose of this paper is to explore the features of parent leadership in schools (PLS).

Interviews were conducted with 18 individuals: 11 chairpersons and 7 members of the parent leadership of 11 primary schools in Israel attended by students of high socioeconomic backgrounds.

Data analyses disclose PLS as a liminal framework, which constitutes both formal and informal dimensions, whether these be its in-school limited activities or out-of-school actions in introducing change and supporting the institutions. PLS’s functions are restricted by school principals, but simultaneously enhance school principals’ position.

The study’s findings carry implications for school collaboration with external entities. School principals need to support PLS and keep encouraging entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. There is a need for acknowledging the value of PLS’s contributions whereas policy makers must provide more guidelines and support to parent leaders.

The study focuses on exploring the position of collective parental involvement in schools. This issue is of significance in a time where parents gain more responsibility over their children’s education and schools support more collaborative relationships with external agencies. The study highlights the benefits of parents in leadership positions for school benefits and for school principals’ legitimacy, from the approach of liminality.