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These contributions constitute a partial, but quite well-rounded view of the factors involved in consumption: psychological and sociological, online and physical environments, culture and cohorts, institutions and media, luxury and coolness, advertising and brands. Moreover, the focus of the chapters varies from the micro level of meaning cues and the self to the macro level of material discourse and myth. There is a good geographic range found in the volume as well, with data from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. In bringing in culture, the chapters invoke cultural comparison, cultural mobility, and cultural inferences. The result is a stimulating cornucopia of ideas and perspectives. The open-minded reader should find that the diverse perspectives presented here mutually inform, challenge, and interrogate one another.

This volume contains the best papers from the sixth Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) Conference. The Conference cochairs have acted as coeditors for this thirteenth volume of Research in Consumer Behavior and provide the following introduction.

Purpose: Curatorial consumption studies have hitherto focused on the consumption of family heirlooms. By exploring curatorial consumption within the context of vintage outlets, the authors extend its usage to other consumption sites, allowing them to further develop the construct.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Participant observation was employed at vintage outlets alongside in-depth interviews with 15 vintage traders incorporating object elicitation.

Findings: The authors identify the potential for curatorial consumption to help further develop understanding of individuals’ relationships with their possessions. The authors present a re-contextualization of curatorial consumption, which expands the term beyond caring for family heirlooms, allowing them to incorporate additional contexts. The authors identify vintage traders’ roles as guardians for their merchandise and their sense of responsibility to ensure objects’ circulation to future generations. The authors develop the findings around themes related to curation: acquisition, preservation, and transference. Running through these themes is an overarching concern for historical objects.

Originality/Value: While few studies loosely refer to curatorial consumption, the construct remains underdeveloped. The re-contextualization allows to unpack its potential to enhance understanding of individuals’ relationships with their possessions. In contrast to existing curatorial consumption work that emphasizes the sense of continuity with ancestors, the authors extend this to consider how connections with the past can be maintained beyond local family settings.

Purpose: Cool, a subjective, socially constructed concept has interested several researchers investigating its nature and successful marketing applications. However, the authors note a lack of studies investigating its perceptions in non-Western cultural contexts. The aims of this study are to investigate the meanings of cool in Tunisia, a North-African, Arab-Muslim emerging country.

Methodology: The authors conducted qualitative research through focus groups with Tunisian consumers. The authors used lexical, thematic, and semiotic analyses to investigate cool meanings.

Findings: Findings show that the term “Cool” in Tunisia is mostly related to lexical synonyms and meanings of lightness and flexibility, fun and amusement, humor, and trendiness rather than originality, divergence, creativity, and uniqueness long argued to be the significations of cool in Western literature, despite their minor presence in our results.

Originality/Value: Results show further evidence that the concept is culturally laden and that the socio-cultural characteristics of Tunisia altered its meanings established in the West, mostly associated to its origins and emergence.

Purpose: This paper uses performance theory to explore how wine-tourism experiences are orchestrated by wine tour guides to encourage engagement of consumers. It describes how such orchestration is built on material elements such as landscapes, architecture, vineyards, production facilities, and wine tastings.

Design/methodology/approach: A multi-layer ethnographic research on wine-tourism was employed. The interviews, observations, and field notes were analyzed through the lens of performance theory. A constant comparative method was used to identify emergent patterns, and a hermeneutic method was used to interpret the data.

Findings: The paper builds on performance theory and delineates the ways in which guides co-create intense experiences with participants. It portrays how tour guides often adjust their theatrical scripts to consumers’ unique needs through creative variations: surprise treats, activities, and personal stories. When guides take pleasure in tours, participants do as well, resulting in memorable co-created experiences. The tours feature processes such as pitching and relation-building techniques that call upon identity, morality, and materiality scripts, which ultimately build a sense of social obligation among participants toward tour guides and winery staff.

Originality/value: From a theoretical perspective, the paper adds value to the discussion of performance in tourism by suggesting that the service blueprint, architecture, and employee training are only part of the story. This paper shows how consumer engagement and interactions between participants, guides, architecture, and landscapes are essential elements of memorable experiences.

Research limitations: Like other studies, there are limitations to our study as well. Our study only included one-day wine tours. A broader investigation of strategic alliances between tour companies and wineries, and how wine tourists experience and sustain a sense of social obligations to the wineries they visit, will provide further insights into how wine-tourism functions as a co-creative emergent form of consumption involving individuals, products, and processes.

This paper explores the symbolic meanings that children of elementary school age attach to souvenirs from different types of vacation destinations. Data from interviews and pictorial projectives illustrate the meaning of souvenirs for children, including how children skillfully use souvenirs in their everyday lives and how they interpret souvenirs as symbols of people, places, and experiences. More specifically, the interview data reveal the meanings attached to souvenirs which are possessed, including how souvenirs are clearly distinguished from other objects which are possessed and how they are used for their contemplation and action value, for their communicative properties, and to provide continuity across time and place. In addition, the data from pictorial projectives reveal the latent motives of souvenir acquisition as well as how different types of places lead to different types of souvenir choices. Thus, the paper demonstrates the many layers of meaning associated with souvenirs in both acquisition and consumption processes and provides evidence that the meanings between children, places, and objects are inextricably linked.