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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.

To develop and validate the Expanded Mindful Eating Scale (EMES), an expanded mindful eating model created for the promotion of health and sustainability.

A cross-sectional study using self-administered questionnaire surveys on Ochanomizu Health Study (OHS) was conducted. The survey was provided to 1,388 female university students in Tokyo, Japan. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a partial correlation analysis were used to confirm construct and criterion validity. Internal consistency of the EMES was confirmed to calculate Cronbach's alpha.

The response rate was 38.7 % (n = 537). Mean BMI was 20.21 ± 2.12, and 18.8% of them were classified as “lean” (BMI < 18.5). The authors listed 25 items and obtained a final factor structure of five factors and 20 items, as a result of EFA. Through CFA, the authors obtained the following fit indices for a final model: GFI = 0.914, AGFI = 0.890, CFI = 0.870 and RMSEA = 0.061. The total EMES score was significantly correlated with BMI, mindfulness, body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness and life satisfaction (r = −0.138, −0.315, −0.339, −0.281 and 0.149, p < 0.01, respectively). Cronbach's alpha for all items in this scale was 0.687.

The authors suggest the possibility that practitioners and researchers of mindful eating that includes this new concept can use authors’ novel scale as an effective measurement tool.

The EMES, which can multidimensionally measure the concept of the expanded model of mindful eating was first developed in this study.

This paper aims to explore the effect of employees’ state mindfulness, a short period of mindful presence, on the quality of the service they provide in a service encounter.

Three studies are conducted. A pilot study explores the relationship between state mindfulness and service encounter quality. Experiment 1 examines whether a 15-min mindfulness exercise results in an increase in service employees’ state mindfulness. Experiment 2 tests whether induced state mindfulness produces higher service quality and whether a reminding technique can prolong state mindfulness between service encounters.

The results demonstrate the following. First, that more mindful employees provide better service quality. Second, that a short, easily implemented, mindfulness exercise can reliably increase employees’ state mindfulness. Third, induced mindfulness has an impact on subsequent service quality in terms of reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness. These effects persist regardless of the service encounter structure (high vs low structure) or the degree of emotional labor involved (high vs low emotionally charged). Finally, the reminding technique developed as part of this research suggests that state mindfulness can be maintained between service encounters.

As simulated (programmed) customers are used, independent evaluators to assess service quality are used. Service providers in this study are college students; future field studies should consider a wider range of service providers. The research focuses on state mindfulness; exploration of trait mindfulness offers future research opportunities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to empirically examine the link between mindfulness and service quality. It shows that mindfulness can be induced, and through a reminding technique be maintained, and improve service quality across service interactions. This is a powerful finding for marketing managers, for it offers a new method to enhance service provision. Moreover, this research implies that the increase in service quality is likely to be accompanied by reduced job burnout: a double win for employees, employers and customers.

This chapter examines the perspectives of culturally responsive teachers of immigrant and refugee youth in a high performing school in the Baden-Württemberg region of Germany. Academic success in the region has been traditionally designated for ethnic Germans and nonnatives who suppress their culture and assimilate into normative German culture. Assimilating to normative German culture through the lens of global meaning making is a preordained social order that perpetuates exclusion for immigrants in society and school. The consequences of failed intercultural education in Europe have prompted increased demands to consider diversity in teacher training and to provide more equitable opportunities for immigrants. Gymnasium Baden welcomed a few Syrian refugees where immigrant youth represented one 10th of the population during the 2015–2016 academic year. In a broader context of limited access and opportunity to higher education among immigrant and refugee youth, this chapter examines teachers who interrupted existing frames and maintained high expectations and mindfulness for their students. The perspectives and voices of teachers who employ culturally responsive practices were documented through interviews and examined through the lens of Tierney's (2018) dimensions of global meaning making, more specifically the models of interrupting existing frames, critical literacies, and being mindful. Participants' perspectives interrupted existing frames and were documented against the grain of a conservative region that has experienced dilemmas of integrating immigrants and refugees into school and society. An examination of interview transcripts revealed teachers who maintained high expectations through an asset orientation and were overwhelmingly supportive and responsive to longtime immigrant and newcomer refugee youth.

This chapter explores the interaction between different kinds of knowledge and representations in the making of the ‘fleshed’ female reproductive body in an Indian city. In particular, it analyzes how women perceive contraception and how the reproductive governance helped to produce the female sterilization as the most widely used contraceptive method in India. The study is based on the case of the city of Bhuj, in the state of Gujarat (India), where three anthropological fieldworks (15 months) were conducted. Modern contraceptive methods are based on a biomedical representation of the body, drawn from Western categories of knowledge and experience, whereas women live the ‘fleshed’ reproductive body through local categories of substance and fluids. How is this knowledge mobilized and affected in relation to reproductive technologies and the government of reproduction? This question is addressed through the analysis of women's embodied experiences of contraception. The narratives collected show a resistance to biomedicine, considered to be a model that alters the female body and its reproductive capacity. Nevertheless, even when sterilization was considered to be a deliberate act of tampering with the functioning of their bodies, women displayed a pragmatic agency in choosing this method. The experiences of respondents reflected complex negotiations between bodily suffering, socio-economic structures and the microphysics of power surrounding them, rather than a unilateral submission to medical authority and reproductive governance.

Contemporary workplaces undergo frequent reorganizations in order to stay competitive in a working life characterized by globalization, digitalization, economic uncertainty, and ever-increased complexity. Managers are in the frontline of these challenges, leading themselves, organizations and their employees in high stress environments. This raises questions on how to support managers’ work-life sustainability, which is crucial for organizational sustainability. Mindfulness has been related to enhanced capacities to cope with challenges that are associated with organizational change. The authors evaluated short- and long-term effects of an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention in a company setting, which was going through reorganization.

Forty managers (42.5% males), mean age 54.53 (SD 5.13), were randomized to the mindfulness intervention or a non-active wait-list control. Self-report data were provided on individual sustainability factors in a work context: job demands and resources, psychological detachment, i.e. possibilities for letting go of work-related thoughts during leisure, control over work-nonwork boundaries, work-life balance, and mindfulness at baseline, postintervention, and at 6-month follow-up.

Linear mixed models (LMMs) analysis (all ps < 0.005 to 0.05) showed that the intervention group had a larger decrease in job demands and a smaller decrease in job resources, a larger increase in psychological detachment, work-nonwork boundary control, work-life balance, and mindfulness from baseline to postintervention when compared with the reference group. These initial effects were sustained at 6-month follow-up.

The study provides evidence that mindfulness practice can enhance managers’ long-term capacity to cope with challenging working conditions, and increase their work-life sustainability in times of organizational change and disruption.

Based on a need to utilize strategies and develop social-emotional competency skills of school administrators, the purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE), a mindfulness-based professional development program, on the leadership and well-being of 13 school administrators.

The empirical data consist of in-depth interviews with 13 administrators before and after the implementation of CARE program, observation notes from shadowing their activities during school time and attending the CARE program as a participant observer. Employing the pro-social classroom model (Jennings and Greenberg, 2009) as a theoretical foundation, the paper is based on an ongoing, iterative data analysis process, following the coding and interpretive techniques of grounded theory.

The positive outcomes that emerged from the data relate to improved leadership skills, such as increased self-reflection, better relationships and attendance to self-care. These skills are tied to increased self-awareness, self-management and self-compassion. Participants also reported an improved ability to recognize their emotional reactions, which enabled them to better understand their leadership roles in shaping their school climates.

The findings reveal significant insights about the implementation of social-emotional, mindfulness-based professional development with school administrators and potential outcomes. Implications for professional development that fosters school administrators’ social-emotional competencies are discussed.

As a study of one of the first implementations of mindfulness-based professional development programs among school principals, this research illuminates the specific benefits of such programs for school leaders and how mindfulness could be integral in their lives and education. Specifically, this study is one of the first to reveal how the CARE professional development program influences principals’ well-being and leadership.

Over the last few decades, the formal school curriculum in many countries has become increasingly prescribed and attainment orientated with an insistent pressure to measure progress in the name of ‘raising standards’. This form of constraint on educational practice has provoked counter trends in a desire to enrich the curriculum. Situating learning activities in the open air have become increasingly popular as a counter to formalised schooling. The UK, for example, has seen legislated outside spaces for early years and a growing interest in Forest Schools. The long tradition of activity centres, outside school visits and field trips—offering a valuable way to augment formal learning—has survived in many school settings. The claims for the benefit of taking learning outside are extensive. They range across claiming value for both individual and societal well-being, improving mental and physical health, as well as a way of sustaining inclusion, social cohesion and democratic practice (Nichol, Higgins, Ross, & Mannion, 2007). This article explores how aesthetics and the body may be seen to feature in outside educational experience. By drawing on the work of Richard Shusterman and his extensive work on somaesthetics, the purpose of the article is to augment or ground claims for the worth of ‘outside’ learning in embodied aesthetic experience and therefore help illuminate what is distinctively educational about moving learning beyond the walls of the school.