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Given the rise in popularity of festivals globally, the purpose of this paper is to examine two case studies to identify whether festival spaces could be identified as third places. This paper argues that third places are not vanishing but that new and emerging third places can be identified through applying the essence of third place theory.

The primary case study for this paper is The Falls Music and Arts Festival in Marion Bay, Tasmania, Australia that was the focus of a two year study into the interrelationships between informal leisure, social capital and place characteristics. 30 semi-structured interviews, participant observation and 937 surveys were conducted. To support this paper, findings from a smaller third place case study of six semi-structured interviews and participant observation at the “Festival of Lights” held in Pukekura Park in the New Plymouth, New Zealand are reflected upon.

Third place characteristics were elucidated in the Falls study. Essential characteristics of third places such as access to conversation, the evidence of “regulars”, the chance meeting of a “friend of a friend” and a playful mood were identified. The location was an important meeting place for users to create, maintain and strengthen relationships. Repeat visits to this place was found to be integral to social networking and a feeling of “home”. Insights from the Festival of Lights study support these findings.

Identifying festival spaces as third spaces contests traditional third place theory. It offers scope for festival organisers to explore more deeply the intangible aspects of the experiences they afford. More case study research needs to be conducted to explore this potential further as this is only a start at linking festivals to the essence of third place theory.

This paper pushes third place theory forward. It responds to calls for exploration of new and emerging third places in contemporary society. This research adds a new take on this exploration by affording an Australasian perspective.

This article adopts Ray Oldenburg's definition of third places and argues that the eight characteristics of third places are demonstrated in the tea houses of Masulih. In many vernacular communities, participating in informal public gathering places, or third places, is one of the daily routines of local inhabitants. The male inhabitants–including seniors and shopkeepers, as well as the shepherds who migrate seasonally with their herds from plateau of Gilan to Masulih–regularly visit and socialize in Masulih's tea houses. Recently, tourists also have become regular visitors of the tea houses. Qualitative research methods were conducted during extended field work in Masulih during 2008 to 2015. In-depth interviews with local inhabitants placed them as local experts. This allowes for a deeper understanding of the use of the tea houses as third places. In addition, research was conducted through visits to the tea houses at various times of the year in order to record their seasonal usage. While not every vernacular settlement in Iran is a tourist destination, Masulih, with its tea houses integrated in the bazaar, sees regular and steady tourist visitation. Masulih's rich cultural, architectural, and tourist landscape generates a complex research ground. This article suggests that tea houses, as third places, are vital for informal regular gathering of local Masulih residents, seasonal visitors, and tourists.

This paper aims to examine the third-place phenomenon, within a fashion context, through the theoretical lens of servicescape and experiential retailing. It identifies third places’ typologies, evolution and adoption and explores the opportunities third places offer to retailers when attempting to connect better with consumers.

Taking a qualitative approach, research was conducted using secondary data sources, observation of 98 retail stores and the shopping-with-consumers technique with 42 informants. Manual thematic analysis and magnitude coding was conducted.

Third-place fashion practices are prevalent and growing. Their predominant functions include sociability, experiential, restorative and commercial. Variances inherent in third places are expounded and a third-place-dimensions model is proposed.

Due to the chosen research approach, the results are limited in terms of generalizability to other settings. Several research directions are elucidated, including exploration of fashion third places on consumers’ place attachment within specific sectors; the impact of differing age, gender and geographies on third place meaning; virtual and hybrid forms; retailer motivations; and third-place alliances.

The preliminary study serves to support managers to understand how consumers perceive and experience the fashion third place and the potential of the third place to enhance consumer engagement.

The research makes a valuable contribution to the dearth of extant literature on third place within the fashion field. It offers a new theoretical perspective on form, function and benefits of third places as a conduit of social-, experiential-, and commercial-experience consumption.

The purpose of this research study is to extend the concept of third places, as explained by Oldenburg (2000), as being places designed as meeting places and as being dynamic rather than static.

The primary site for this paper is a neighborhood ritual of shared meals that has taken place every Wednesday for the past fourteen years. This was a 6 month study focusing on semi-structured interviews.

Characteristics of third places when compared to other arguments for the classification of third place supports the use of space instead of the purpose of a place as the main consideration for the classification of “third place”.

Defining social events within homes as third spaces pushes the traditional third place theory forward. It offers a way for rituals to be explored more deeply through the experiences they offer.

This study asks the reader to pay attention to the periphery where interaction takes place and consider how we frame concepts of third places.

Third places create an environment that allows individuals expressions of restraint (to keep the distance between yourself and others), relaxation (to be yourself), freedom (from judgment), reflexivity (when you look back at past events) and vulnerability (opening yourself up to the possibilities that come from interacting with others).

The distinction of third place is not so much in the categorization of the building but rather in the use for which the space serves. Extending these conversations into future research endeavors would be to continue and to extend the discussion/description of third places.

Traditional “third places” provide physical places for human contact and social experience outside of the home or workplace/school. Institutions as disparate as fitness centers, libraries, and beauty salons are examples of third places: locations where people gather and often talk about things that are important to them. Libraries have a long tradition of connectedness and community that has put them in the forefront of traditional third places. As library Web sites are created and evolve, the sense of place provided by physical third places will become increasingly important online. Much about connectedness and community online can be learned from the concept of third places and their importance in real life and in cyberspace. The traditions inherent in libraries as physical third places provide predictions, projections, and inspirations for continued good service in the online presence of libraries.

This chapter examines the phenomena of third places as institutions that provide social interaction outside of home and work. The study explores the different types of third places and the opportunities and challenges offered by each. This is a conceptual paper that examines different conceptualizations of third places using brand examples to highlight the ways in which organizations try to benefit from society's need for a neutral gathering place. The chapter highlights the growth of organizations seeking to benefit from the phenomena of third places and the opportunities for them to profit further. The chapter also highlights the potential for virtual third places to enhance opportunities for increasing brand awareness and sales of products and services at other third places. The chapter identifies ways in which hospitality organizations can capitalize on the public's need for third places. The study moves the discussion beyond the rather limited perspective Oldenburg presented and shows how the needs of a new generation may require more flexibility and excitement than other generations. The study also highlights the ways in which organizations use a combination of third places to their benefit. Third places create opportunities for social interaction and community building and benefit organizations once they position themselves to achieve the status of third places. This chapter compares different conceptualizations of third places and shows the similarities and differences between them. It shows how organizations may position themselves to appeal to different generations seeking a third place.

This research theoretically conceptualises the notion of “third place” within the setting of chain bookshops. The widespread adoption of coffee franchises and comfortable seating has developed the bookshop as a leisurely setting. Underpinning the discussion in current retail marketing theory, the research aims to explore how the understanding of “third place” has changed with the passage of time and to examine whether chain bookshops can be called third places.

The methodological approach is largely qualitative, drawing upon interviews with bookshop managers with regard to their strategic aims, and using focus groups to discuss consumers' bookshop experiences. The research also draws upon quantitative data, i.e. face-to-face questionnaires and online surveys.

The research concludes that while consumer experience of chain bookshops is positive, they cannot be called a “third place” due to the lack of conversation therein. Nevertheless, an important caveat exists – the presence of an integral coffee shop encourages socialising among bookshop customers.

The project's scope is limited to chain bookshops in the UK. Future work might look at third place or restorative provision in other retail settings or over a wider geographic spread.

The research has important implications and recommendations for managers of retail sites regarding the potential restorative qualities of bookshops, coffee shops and other retail environments.

This empirical research enhances scholarly understanding of the bookshop as a restorative space, highlighting an important advantage which traditional retailers have over internet retailers.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

This paper aims to report on a qualitative study that explores senior citizen consumers ' empowerment through social engagement in third places and their subsequent loyalty to third places.

Data were collected via a qualitative research design from four seniors ' clubs in Australia using focus groups (12), and participant observation. The data were analyzed using QSR NVivo software using an interpretive approach.

Ten themes based on 34 codes were identified in the study, which were grouped to develop a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of seniors ' empowerment in third places for further testing. The themes under consumer empowerment were important in assisting to understand the significance of place and social engagement within the place to empower seniors with a positive self-image, better access to information and exercise of choices for smarter purchase decisions. The themes under social capital contributed to a better understanding of the ramification of social capital to marketing knowledge. This was particularly so for marketing constructs embedded in community or aggregate level issues such as value co-creation, relationship marketing, customer involvement and related outcomes. Finally the study reports three types of loyalty: cognitive, ultimate and communal loyalty, that underpinned the behavioral, attitudinal and cognitive dimension of loyalty. The findings suggested that consequent to seniors ' social capital and feeling of empowerment in third places they display loyalty to the third place.

The present study has three theoretical implications; first, it extends knowledge into the notion of third place which underlies the broader domain of servicescape. It also extends understanding of the significance of third places in practicing consumer centric marketing through consumer empowerment. The study also contributes to understanding how third places enhance seniors ' social capital through social engagement.

The managerial implications suggested by the findings provide a number of aspects that managers may consider in relation to service places in three key broad categories of customer-firm interest: improve customer patronage through community engagement, improve local business practices via customer-owner friendship, and redesigning spatial settings to deliver meaningful customer experiences.

This paper uses the concepts of social engagement within customer community in third places for the development of social capital and empowerment. It provides a customer centric focus to servicescape and incorporates recent works on third places, empowerment, social capital and loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce restorative servicescapes. The work demonstrates that younger‐aged consumers may remedy symptoms associated with directed attention fatigue, including adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), by patronizing third places, such as video arcades and coffee shops.

This paper evaluates a servicescape's restorative potential by drawing on established measures. Attention restoration theory (ART) has been explored in natural and environmental psychology, rather than marketing. The first study uses survey methodology to explore whether teenagers who patronize a video arcade sense its restorative potential. The second study uses survey methodology to explore the relationship between patronizing a restorative third place and being at risk for ADHD.

Study 1 reveals that video arcade patrons sense the arcade's restorative potential. Therefore, commercial servicescapes may possess restorative qualities. Study 2 reveals that college‐aged students, who patronize a restorative servicescape, are significantly less likely than other students to be at risk for experiencing ADHD.

Although the data reveal a relationship between restorative servicescapes and ADHD risk, a diagnosis is not obtained. Furthermore, because survey methodology is employed, the causal influence of restorative servicescapes cannot be evaluated on their customers' health. However, commercial servicescapes can mimic the restorative properties found in nature. Thus, the health potential of public places on health may be profound.

Educational institutions, governmental agencies, and parents should consider publicly supporting third places for teenagers because doing so can remedy symptoms associated with mental fatigue.

The paper brings ART into the marketing discipline.