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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.

The purpose of this paper is to go beyond the market–consumer intersection and investigate consumer collecting as a network constellation, which includes a range of material and human actants.

This research adopts a qualitative research process that includes non-participatory netnography and semi-structured online interviews to collect both textual and visual data. Researchers drew from the field of visual anthropology to analyse the visual data. In addition, thematic analysis was used to identify, analyse and report the patterns within textual data.

Findings of this research reveals key agentic properties of collection constellations and explains how they contribute to the development of seriality and the experience of novelty by shaping curatorial practices within collection pursuits. From the time a collection has been assembled to its countless re-configurations, the network that is composed of a focal collector and a host of other actants interacting within a particular collecting ecology plays an essential role in challenging the agency of the market and the individual collectors.

Although this research investigated consumer collecting from a network perspective, it did not explore changes within those constellations and how such changes implicate collecting behaviour. Therefore, future research may benefit from investigating network transformations on consumer collecting, particularly on curatorial practices and how they shape the trajectory of consumer collections.

Understanding collecting as a relational and iterative “network constellation” enables marketers to engage with their consumers in a more meaningful way. By actively seeking to use the network agentic properties, brands can aid avid handbag consumers and passionate collectors to keep their collections relevant and meaningful. It allows brands to play a role beyond the purchasing stage that characterises the market–consumer intersection and build comprehensive relationships with their consumers. Particularly, by adopting a networked approach, brands can provide collectors with privileged and scientific brand knowledge to help them caretake and experience their cherished possessions.

This study goes beyond the market–consumer intersection and atomistic explanations of collecting phenomena in its investigation and theorises collecting as a relational and iterative “network constellation”. It challenges the subject-oriented ontology of collections literature through explaining how such network interactions inspire collecting behaviours, help collectors maintain and celebrate their cherished collections and change the trajectory of collections pursuits.

The purpose of this study is to examine the interplay between the curatorial practices of consumers as collectors and the materiality of the collected objects. In particular, this study explores how the material substances of collected objects shapes curatorial practices and how the ongoing use of the collected objects challenges curatorial practices.

Taking advantage of the publicization of once-private collections on social media, we collect 111 YouTube videos created by plastic shoe aficionados. Drawing from visual anthropology and theorizations of materiality, we analyze consumer interactions with the objects they collect.

This study’s findings elucidate consumers’ interactions with the material substances of the objects they collect and demonstrate how these interactions shape the ways in which consumers curate their collections, including how they wear, care for, catalog, and display the collected objects.

Our findings have implications for theorization on consumer collections, consumer identity, and consumer participation in brand communities and are relevant for consumer researchers who study the interactions and relationships between consumers and consumption objects.

This study is the first to re-examine consumers as collectors to extend and update consumer research on the curatorial practices of physical, wearable collectibles. This study sets the foundations for further research to advance our understanding of consumers as collectors as well as to illuminate other theories and aspects of consumer research that consider consumer–object interactions.

This study, a conceptual paper, analyses the growth of curation in tourism and hospitality and the curator role in selecting and framing products and experiences. It considers the growth of expert, algorithmic, social and co-creative curation modes and their effects.

Narrative and integrative reviews of literature on curation and tourism and hospitality are used to develop a typology of curation and identify different curation modes.

Curational techniques are increasingly used to organise experience supply and distribution in mainstream fields, including media, retailing and fashion. In tourism and hospitality, curated tourism, curated hospitality brands and food offerings and place curation by destination marketing organisations are growing. Curation is undertaken by experts, algorithms and social groups and involves many of destination-related actors, producing a trend towards “hybrid curation” of places.

Research is needed on different forms of curation, their differential effects and the power roles of different curational modes.

Curation is a widespread intermediary function in tourism and hospitality, supporting better consumer choice. New curators influence experience supply and the distribution of consumer attention, shaping markets and co-creative activities. Increased curatorial activity should stimulate aesthetic and stylistic innovation and provide the basis for storytelling and narrative in tourism and hospitality.

This is the first study of curational strategies in tourism and hospitality, providing a definition and typology of curation, and linking micro and macro levels of analysis. It suggests the growth of choice-based logic alongside service-dominant logic in tourism and hospitality.

This purpose of this study is to develop actionable marketing insights regarding why consumers might elect to purchase vintage products. A concept called consumer pastness is introduced, developed and defined to achieve this end. Consumer pastness demonstrably affected consumers’ perceptions of vintage products’ scarcity and consumers’ propensity to purchase vintage items. When applied inside marketing contexts, consumer pastness may also explain how and why consumers distinguish vintage products that are “of the past” from new and second-hand products. The data suggest that when consumers perceive products are characterized by higher consumer pastness the products will be perceived as scarcer, more desirable and more valuable than new or second-hand versions of the same item.

A scale was developed to capture three dimensions that comprise consumer pastness and then a pilot study and two experiments were conducted to test the research propositions.

Study propositions were confirmed. Consumers perceive vintage products as scarcer and more desirable than other types of products.

A novel and useful concept is introduced to the marketing literature inside this study. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate and develop theoretical insights regarding how and why consumers perceive vintage products differently from new and second-hand products. The investigations reported below are also the first to develop practical insights regarding how management might respond to these insights about the role consumer pastness plays.

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.

Recognizing the value and limitations of current knowledge of the appropriation process in the consumption of aesthetic experiences, this research aims to generate a localized account for novice and expert consumers of the varying role of cultural capital in the appropriation cycles and interpretative responses of an aesthetic experience.

This research uses a single case study design of Miró’s blockbuster exhibition, and draws on multiple sources of evidence, notably 50 in-depth visitor interviews, observations and archival records.

An evidence-based framework of the appropriation process for novice and expert consumers of aesthetic experiences is offered. This framework highlights the significance of appropriation pace and personal versus communal interpretations – amongst other features – in distinguishing distinct versions of the appropriation process in accordance with the varied accumulation of consumer cultural capital.

The transferability of the findings to other aesthetic or experience-based consumption contexts such as performing arts or sports is discussed, alongside the relevance of the proposed framework for researchers of aesthetic experiences.

The empirical investigation of the understudied connection between visitors’ cultural capital and their museum experiences provides insights into curatorial and marketing practices in terms of broadening, diversifying and engaging museum audiences.

This research provides new theoretical insights into the literature of appropriation process and consumption of art experiences by bringing together consumers’ cultural capital with the appropriation process and interpretive responses to an aesthetic experience.

The past is important for various known and unknown reasons. This paper aims to reveal and justify unacknowledged reasons why, when and how managers should consider leveraging the pasts of previously successful but currently declining brands to restore their more desirable historical market positions.

This conceptual paper combines marketing and branding theory with historical branding examples, anecdotes and inductive inferences to develop and justify brand-pastness as a theoretically-grounded and managerially-actionable repositioning concept that could be applied to resurrect declining brands.

The emergent historically-grounded brand-pastness framework generates innovative insights that could be applied in the future. These insights explain when, why and how brand managers could apply brand-pastness to resurrect declining brands. The framework also facilitates the development of a brand-pastness-based research agenda. The agenda is driven by questions structured to address the nature, scope and potential applications of brand-pastness as a new concept and useful repositioning tool.

This paper’s recommendations are limited by their conceptual and inductive origins. However, a research agenda is developed to guide and structure future empirical investigations of the branding antecedents to and consequences of a prospective brand-pastness construct.

This paper introduces, conceptualizes and justifies the potential value of a historically-grounded concept called brand-pastness. The concept may prove beneficial when marketing managers use brand-pastness to reposition and resurrect declining brands by re-instilling targeted consumers’ historical perceptions of brands’ past superiority.