Search results

Fans are proactive consumers of pop culture products, who can be seen as prosumers. Fanvideo production is one of their most widespread practices in the participatory culture scenario. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze how ludic prosumption is featured on plays performed in Brazilian fanvideos based on successful pop culture franchises.

Research based on the interpretive content analysis of fanvideos of plays produced by Brazilian fans based on five emblematic pop culture franchises and published on YouTube.

Results have shown six play types in the analyzed fanvideos – i.e. child's play, performing powers, cosplay, play in social rites, teaching to play and “zuêra” –, which revealed a way of having fun in different situations through different practices based on ludic consumption experiences in different spheres of social life.

CCT-based studies focused on investigating plays as ludic consumption phenomenon, as well as fan culture, remain at early research stage. Thus, the main contribution of the present study lies on associating such concepts based on the concept of prosumption.

The purpose of this paper is to re-evaluate the sustainable attitude-behavior gap by reconsidering the cognitive-rational aspects of consumer purchase behavior. We aim to show how companies can benefit from focusing on hedonic aspects of consumption in their marketing of sustainable products. We claim that consumer culture research needs to examine the link between hedonic, aesthetic, and cognitive-rational aspects of sustainable consumption.

We use the electric vehicle marketing strategy in the United States as an example of an approach to bridge the attitude-behavior gap. More specifically, we focus on the car manufacturer Tesla as an example of marketing a sustainable product.

We find that Tesla’s marketing strategy focuses on aesthetics and hedonics-ludic performance. Similarly to other luxury cars, Tesla markets itself with a full compliment of consumer benefits. Compared to economical electric vehicles, sustainability is not the primary focus of Tesla’s marketing communication strategy.

Sustainable consumption theory benefits from examining the interlinking of hedonic, aesthetic and cognitive-rational aspects product purchasing and use. Future research in the development of sustainable consumption theory in additional complex product categories is needed.

Greater regard for consumer experience in sustainable consumption offers the potential for additional strategies to bridge the attitude-behavior gap and marketing of sustainable goods.

We move beyond the attitude-behavior gap by not only focusing on expressed attitudes of sustainability, but also focusing on the hedonic aspects at play in sustainable consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how individual creativity of internet users is expressed in the production of online music videos and how the creative dynamic among amateur internet video producers can be characterized.

The researchers became readers and authors in the aim of providing the academic community with a scholarly narrative of creative YouTube video production. To develop their narrative, they explored the narrative woods that have grown up on the other side of the monitor screen in the form of videos inspired by one song.

The collective creative force is shown not to be expressed merely through the semantic and non‐semantic montages that make internet users into postmodern tinkerers, but also through such mechanisms as imitation, diversification and ornamentation. This force and these mechanisms give rise to chains that link and connect individual minds, imaginations, interests, enthusiasms, talents, abilities and skills.

As part of a relationship, or even a “conversation” to be initiated, sustained, and maintained on behalf of an industry organization, or brand with its consumers, the authors believe that the way to deal with digital participatory culture and the creative force manifested in innovation communities is to capitalize on these creative chains as judiciously as possible.

The authors suggest that this process should be part of a high‐impact interactive marketing strategy likely to promote (self‐) enchantment and foster loyalty among community members through (self‐) enchantment, particularly via the coproduction of a story, with community members creating the scripts.

In port cities with declining industries, waterfront redevelopment is one major part of the competitive agenda. The increasing economic importance of service, leisure, and tourism industries created an opportunity to reuse urban waterfront areas no longer considered profitable. Parque das Nações in Lisbon is a product of such a process: It’s a newly built mixed-use waterfront neighborhood, planned, and developed, first and foremost, to be the site of Expo ’98. This former industrial and port area has been emerging in the last 15 years as a “showcase” for Lisbon: a piece of the competitive strategy of the Portuguese capital. Its public spaces are an important part of that strategy and have been managed in order to remain particularly safe and clean.

On one hand, Parque das Nações is a socially homogenous elite residential neighborhood, on the other hand, it is emerging as a new metropolitan centrality characterized by an intense mobility and by an increasing concentration of urbanites carrying on work and leisure related activities. It is the coexistence of these two complementary and contradictory dynamics that shapes the interactive logic of public life in the area.

This chapter explores the use, appropriation, and interaction patterns afforded by the public spaces of Parque das Nações. I discard both the idealized conception of public spaces that characterizes them as havens of diversity and accessibility and the more contemporary idea of public spaces as empty spaces that no longer promote encounters with others, serving exclusively as marketing tools for real-estate developers. Instead, I argue that the production of urban areas such as Parque das Nações is a socially unequal process resulting in excessively planned and controlled public spaces. However, when they attract different populations for different reasons, these spaces might foster unexpected, emergent, or even transgressive uses and interactions that promote public space vitality.

This paper aims to investigate the dynamics of ephemerality within consumer tribes by conceptualizing how tribes constitute, disperse and reconstitute. Building upon assemblage thinking, a philosophical approach that redistributes agency from the subject to a web of interconnected human–material actants, this paper shows that tribes manifest via hybrid assemblages of people, things and ideas.

Insights are drawn from a three-year assemblage-oriented ethnographic study of a salsa-dancing tribe, specifically their ephemeral gatherings across multiple sites without hierarchical organization. Methods include observations as a consumer–participant, producer–participant and in-depth interviewing.

Introduces a framework documenting how tribes disperse temporarily and reconstitute via a dual process of ascription and distribution. Tribes reconstitute when consumers reproduce an assemblage that effectively overcomes a meshwork of practical challenges. Consumers ascribe to the standards of the tribe while, alternatively, tribes distribute the assemblage beyond the immediate group.

Conceptualizes the socio-technical dynamics that tribes mobilize to disassemble and reassemble through ephemeral gatherings. Proposes a framework on hybrid interdependencies, including not only participants but also techniques, devices and sites.

While previous research shows that tribes can collapse, the authors propose that marketers can intervene to foster long-term resilience. As tribes disperse, consumer and marketing efforts operate at different temporal sequences to enable tribal reconstitutions.

Contributes to the literature on consumer tribes by theorizing ephemerality per ascription and distribution mechanisms.

This paper examines what the use of an augmented reality (AR) makeup mirror means to consumers, focusing on experiential consumption and the extended self.

The authors employed a multimethod approach involving netnography and semi-structured interviews with participants in India and the UK (n = 30).

Two main themes emerged from the data: (1) the importance of imagination and fantasy and (2) the (in)authenticity of the self and the surrounding “reality.”

This research focuses on AR magic makeup mirror. The authors call for further research on different AR contexts.

The authors provide service managers with insights on addressing gaps between the perceived service (i.e. AR contexts and the makeup consumption journey) and the conceived service (i.e. fantasies and the extended self).

The authors examine the lived fantasy experiences of AR experiential consumption. In addition, the authors reveal a novel understanding of the extended self as temporarily re-envisioned through the AR mirror.

Purpose: In this paper, we focus on the mythic nature of the anonymous Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Drawing on ideas from Foucault and Barthes on authorship, we analyze the notion of the absence of the author and how that sustains the brand. Design/methodology/approach: Based on interview data, participant observation, archival data, and a netnography, we examine the discourses that emerge in the wake of multiple Satoshi Nakamoto exposés that serve as both stabilizing and destabilizing forces in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Findings: We analyze the different interpretations of Satoshi Nakamoto through his own text and how his readers interpret him. We identify how consumers employ motifs of myth and religiosity in trying to find meaning in Satoshi’s disappearance. His absence allows for multiple interpretations of how the Bitcoin brand is viewed and adopted by a diverse community of enthusiasts.

Implications: Our findings provide a richer understanding of how, in a period of celebrity brands, Satoshi Nakamoto’s anti-celebrity stance helps sustain the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Originality/value: Our analysis examines the nature of anonymity in our hyper-celebrity culture and the mystique of the anonymous creator that fuels modern-day myths for brands without owners.

Sports leagues, such as Major League Soccer (MLS), aim at expanding their audience at global level through alternative media other than television (TV). Brazil stands out among football media consumer audiences as one of the main markets worldwide. Brazilian MLS consumers play the role of fans to converge between TV media and digital platforms, in a phenomenon that has been called Social TV.

The aim of the current research is to investigate how Brazilian MLS fans' consumption process is established through Social TV; it was done based on netnography performed between 2018 and 2020.

Results have indicated that Social TV is a catalyst of practices associated with fan culture: cultural convergence, technologies appropriations, poaching experiences and production of a collective intelligence.

Current research reinforces how ethnography methodology has been gaining room as likely consumer market research, working as alternative method based on the prevalence of focus group and survey techniques.

Social TV phenomenon presents itself as a possibility to expand and direct marketing strategies focused on sports management, just as the media often consumed by fans.

From the results, it is possible assuming that connections between fans are punctually guided by their relationship with the cultural object consumed by them in a network relationship whose actors deindividualize sociocultural practices such as consumption. Thus, the main contribution of the study lies on identifying how fan culture can be autonomously established in the market arena in comparison to other cultures.

This research is positioned at the intersection of youth subculture consumption and religious affiliation, through the study of observant Muslim women involved in the highly engaging and codified activity of cosplay. Given authenticity is central to the cosplay visual impact and performance, this study aims to understand the way hijab cosplayers negotiate tensions between authentic body performativity and the observance of religious dressing codes.

A qualitative interpretive approach was used to address the research questions. In-depth semi-structured online interviews were conducted with 25 members of a hijab cosplayers from South East Asia.

The concept of authenticity emerged as multifaceted for hijab cosplayers, where they manage three different aspect of the authentic cosplay performance as follows: authenticity as a cosplayer (social dimension of authenticity), authenticity to the character (personal dimension of authenticity) and authenticity to their religious identity (religious dimension of authenticity). The subsequent malleable authenticity is used to legitimate cosplay as an acceptable performative practice from a religious and from subcultural view.

The research highlights how tensions between identity and performativity of the body are negotiated. More specifically, the study contributes to the understanding of the way hijab cosplayers reconcile tensions between religious identity and the performativity of the body. Given the role of the body as a site for negotiating identity, this study provides important insights in the tensions and strategies at the intersection of authenticity, embodiment and religious identity in youth cultures.

This study aims to address research calls to investigate how (visual) consumption experiences carry and convey meanings to individuals. Applying McCracken’s meaning transfer model to a photographic exhibition, the authors expand this model into the realm of aesthetic experiences to explore how the meaning of such an (visual) experience emerges and flows to (novice and expert) consumers.

This research uses an interpretive case study of the photographic exhibition “Facing Mirrors” hosted as part of the Biennale of Contemporary Art, and draws on multiple sources of evidence, notably 50 in-depth visitor interviews, observation and archival records.

The evidence highlights the moveable nature of meaning within an aesthetic context and illustrates the critical role of semiotics and of the different ritualistic behaviors enacted by novice and expert visitors as a means of unfolding and creating the meaning of such an experience.

The findings provide implications in terms of (co-)creating authentic, immersive and meaningful (brand) experiences in the fields of visual consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided in terms of curatorial practices that emphasize the material, emotional and dialogic nature of photographs as a visual art form.

The study provides new insights into (visual) consumption experiences by bringing the meaning transfer model together with a semiotic approach, thus illustrating different performances and sense-making activities through which (expert and novice) visitors (co-)create and appropriate the value of their aesthetic experiences.