Sportainment has become a dominant approach in sport event design, yet it is often viewed with suspicion and criticised for promoting hyper-commercialisation, passive consumption and pre-packaged atmospheres. This study investigates the experiential value of sportainment at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, examining how intended design aligns with spectators' lived experiences across different levels of expertise. In doing so, it puts into perspective the criticism made of the development of entertainment in consumer experiences, demonstrating how event design not only mitigates resistance but also enhances consumers' experiential value. Drawing on phenomenological interviews, the findings show that sportainment enables memorable experiences for audiences with varying expertise on the basis of three guiding principles which are detailed in the article.
Greenwashing is a form of corporate social irresponsibility, yet consumer responses remain inconsistent. This study examines how consumers form intuitive moral judgements when confronting discrepancies between firms' sustainability claims and actual practices. Using survey data from 405 consumers and structural equation modelling, findings show perceived greenwashing triggers cognitive dissonance, increasing boycott intentions and activating moral reasoning pathways. Among these, moral coupling most strongly drives punitive responses, whereas moral rationalisation mitigates them and moral decoupling is largely ineffective. Importantly, consumer-brand identification acts as a boundary condition rather than a uniform intensifier, attenuating the translation of dissonance and moral judgements into boycott intentions. Multi-group analyses indicate the mechanism is robust across contexts, though rationalisation is less effective in labour-related than environmental violations, reflecting differences in normative severity.
This paper introduces an addressability logic for crafting research contributions to advance scientific and societal impact in marketing and consumer research. For research to be impactful, we must ask for whom it is meaningful. Using rhetorical audience analysis, we examine 80 interpretivist articles in four journals over 20 years to understand how their intended addressees are constructed. We identify four audience categories along an inward-outward spectrum - microtribe-assumed, field-directed, practice-directed, society-directed - and conceptualise four capability pathways: research apparatuses, design principles, policy instruments, and fieldcraft toolboxes. We illustrate that contributions become meaningful when authors explicitly name their audiences and equip them with capabilities to act, rehabilitating description as essential for impact. The study reframes research contribution from novelty to addressability, emphasising the necessity of composing scholarship for societal impact beyond theoretical obsession.
This study examines counterfeit luxury consumption in Pakistani bazaars through a postcolonial lens, asking how do market practices simultaneously reproduce and resist colonial epistemologies of authenticity? Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, we identify three mechanisms. First, epistemic layering refers to the accumulation of dominant Western knowledge systems over local ways of knowing, creating hierarchies that bury rather than erase indigenous authentication practices. Second, stratified consciousness captures how market actors hold multiple, hierarchically organised knowledge systems and exercise epistemological mobility by strategically traversing these strata depending on context. Third, mimetic resistance describes how marginalised actors use imitation to contest economic exclusion yet inadvertently reinforce dominant brand hierarchies rooted in colonial authentication standards. These mechanisms advance authentication scholarship by showing how colonial power relations shape legitimacy, extend postcolonial consumer research by specifying cognitive effects of epistemological multiplicity, and reconceptualise resistance as potentially reinforcing what it opposes.
Employing critical discourse analysis of netnographic data, this study investigates the discursive enactment of neoliberal multiculturalism within online interactions preceding migration to ethnically diverse destination countries. Textual data, including posts and threads, were collected from three online platforms dedicated to discussions of regular, planned migration pathways (e.g. education, skilled employment, family reunion, investment) among Iranians. The analysis illuminates three interrelated discursive practices through which neoliberal multiculturalism is rendered effective prior to migration: (1) emigrating towards the spectacle of an 'ordinary life' (2) qualifying as a 'desirable' immigrant and (3) optimistic fatalism. The commitment to achieving an ordinary life through becoming a desirable immigrant is contingent upon accepting and naturalising the ethnoracial hierarchies in neoliberal multicultural contexts - a phenomenon conceptualised in this study as optimistic fatalism.
This research examines consumer resistance towards toy rental services. Drawing on the motivation - opportunity - ability framework, we adopt a qualitative approach with focus groups, in-depth interviews and thematic coding to map consumer perceptions across four distinct rental services. The findings reveal heterogeneity in acceptance: local toy libraries benefit from strong legitimacy, whereas digital services are hindered by a high logistical mental load and the lack of sensory product evaluation. They also show that emotional barriers, such as guilt related to overstimulation or fear of judgement in the event of damage, often outweigh utilitarian benefits. This research indicates that in a family context, educational values and emotional dynamics redefine the classic barriers to collaborative consumption.
The opportunity to combine dream working and poetry in a single exercise is a welcome provocation. This narrative lyrical poem is an autoethnographic reflection on one way that imagination is entrained in old age. Dreams and poems are types of enchantment that expand consciousness and synergise with one another to induce discovery. They are also allusive, connotative vehicles susceptible of many meanings; their polysemy is a driver of repeated engagement. The poem recounts the persona's experience of and frustration with an ancient cultural practice of meaning discernment disrupted by the rise of industrial and consumer cultures. Ironically, this second culture has become a source of primary material for the dream-work. He discovers that rituals formerly associated with segmented sleep are ripe for revival in later life. I offer the poem as a projective vehicle to stimulate readers' imaginations and as an implicit call to heed the auguries of the subconscious.
Not all life transitions, with their accompanying liminal states, are anticipated or desirable. Some are traumatic. This study explores people's use of consumption to anchor themselves to desired realities while doing the challenging emotional work of existing in a traumatic liminal space. Our context is the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), an interruption with life-or-death consequences along the path to parenthood. Using depth interviews with NICU parents in the USA and Finland and inductive, qualitative analysis, we uncover a phenomenon we call consumption lifelines, that is, mobilised material and symbolic practices that allowed parents to sustain connection, assert parental identity, and remain morally present despite restricted caregiving access. We show how consumption lifelines provided these consumers with critical support in times of traumatic liminality.
This study theorises how consumers interpret and respond to material disorder in domestic spaces, reconceptualising why some forms of mess are tolerated, while others become symbolic pollution that prompts tidying action. Drawing on symbolic pollution theory, the study demonstrates that pollution is constituted through spatiotemporal and relational processes rather than fixed spatial violations. It identifies three interrelated mechanisms shaping this transformation: perceived control, the symbolic elasticity of space across time and use, and family dynamics through which disorder is collectively negotiated. The study extends symbolic pollution theory by shifting its ontology from spatial to spatiotemporal and conceptualising disorder as moving between liquid and solid states. It reframes ordering as the ongoing management of time, relationships and material arrangements through which disorder is rendered acceptable or polluting.
Knowledge is limited regarding how minorities experience inclusiveness when brands target them with specific offers. This study examines how Muslim individuals experience inclusiveness when brands target them with religious products via 28 interviews with Muslim individuals. The results reveal that Muslim consumers experience inclusiveness in different ways, 'Endo' and 'Exo' inclusiveness, based on the recognition of the differences or similarities between the majority and minority groups. Further, brands play two roles in the inclusiveness experience: community ally and social agent of diversity. These findings offer a better understanding of the inclusiveness experiences supported by brands and provide valuable insights into marketing strategies that can foster inclusivity in the marketplace.
Effectuation is comprehended as a strategy that is used in an uncertain context being explored in co-created opportunities or the co-creation of markets. In discussions of effectuation as a theoretical model, branding is only briefly touched upon. This article aims to deepen the discussion of effectual branding by showing how the personas of an entrepreneur can be important for sense-making and creating trust in an uncertain setting. Focusing on how the meanings of brands emerge from a network of stakeholders, this article suggests conceptual propositions regarding how the personas of entrepreneurs become important resources in the intertwined processes of co-authoring brand meanings and co-creating new ventures. A case from the fashion industry clarifies how these concepts provide insight into entrepreneurial venture processes.
Transformative customer experiences (CX) are emerging as the newest wave of experiential value. Novel and unexpected stimuli tend to foster transformations - thereby placing pressure on experience designers to generate new concepts within a business' experiential portfolio. This study explores how the design process can be creatively framed to support collaborators in overcoming status-quo bias and enable concept generation for this CX type. We use a traditionally risk-averse service environment (higher education) and draw upon design reasoning to develop and test three distinctive creative frames (ways of looking at a problem) to support transformative CX design in this context. Post-workshop participant interviews (n = 29) found that abstract creative approaches enable paradigm stretching and paradigm breaking concept generation. Concrete approaches support paradigm preserving CX innovation.
To encourage a more critical, evidence-based use of neuromarketing, this study conducts a systematic conceptual and empirical examination of neuromarketing myths. We propose an operational definition of neuromarketing myths and use a mixed-methods approach to identify 21 myths through a literature review and interviews with 13 experts. These myths are organised into four conceptual categories and examined in a large-scale quantitative survey (N = 639). The results reveal a high overall prevalence of neuromarketing myths in all stakeholder groups, with academics showing comparatively lower myth endorsement levels. Distinct patterns emerge across myth categories indicating that even experienced professionals remain susceptible to certain methodological and ethical misconceptions. The implications highlight the need for targeted myth-debunking and neuro-literacy interventions in marketing education and professional practice.
