Delphine Dion

Personal control and coping with retail crowding

To provide high quality services under conditions of crowding, it is important to understand the relationships between crowding and personal control. Indeed, in recent years, there has been growing belief that personal control is significant in coping with crowding. However, most studies have been of limited theoretical and practical value because they did not provide an integrated conceptualization of crowding. The results of a field study demonstrate that the personal control‐crowding relationships depend on the individuals crowding experience and the nature of personal control.

Embodied ethnicity: the ethnic affiliation grounded in the body

Drawing on cultural phenomenology, this paper extends the literature on ethnicity by investigating its embodied dimensions and by studying infra-national referents (e.g., regionalism in France). Findings show the central role of embodiment in ethnicity. Three dimensions of ethnicity are outlined: embodied ethnicity (being-in-the-world), embodied ethnic imaginary (remembering being-in-the-world), and embodied ethnic interactions (being-in-the-world with others). This analysis extends the post-assimilationist model by adding an embodied dimension, highlights the specificities of local ethnicity, and questions the concept of habitus.

The Contribution made by Visual Anthropology to the Study of Consumption Behavior

This paper describes the main methodologies of visual anthropology and discusses their use in marketing research. After a brief history of the emergence of pictures and videos in anthropology, we present the epistemological and methodological shifts in visual anthropology. Based on this, we identify two ways of using pictures and videos in the field of research: as a recording device and as a research tool. In the first approach, video and still cameras are used to obtain more detailed, precise and lively ethnographic descriptions of consumption behavior. The researcher attempts to draw up an exhaustive list of the objects owned by the consumer (inventory technique) or he uses a camera to record specific actions or objects he wants to focus on (videography). In the second approach, pioneered by Jean Rouch, videos are used in a more reflexive and subjective way. The camera is no longer considered as an objective recording device. It is used in a participative and collaborative way to develop a shared understanding of consumption experiences. By the mediation of the camera, the researchers aim is to bring the viewer into peoples experiences. The camera becomes the participant as well as the collaborator.

Managing Status: How Luxury Brands Shape Class Subjectivities in the Service Encounter

Although a large body of research has investigated how consumers use goods to signal their status, little is known about how brands manage status. The very few studies that have examined this topic are grounded in the traditional conception of status and focus on the possession and display of status signals. The authors offer an alternative understanding of status management by investigating the role of interactions in the service encounter. Drawing from extensive ethnographic work in luxury stores, they investigate how brands (re)configure the status games that surface in the service encounter. They show that through the material and social cues of the servicescape, brands shape consumers’ class subjectivities—that is, they make consumers behave as class subjects who have a specific understanding of their position in the social hierarchy. Thus, managing status requires the active creation and management of consumers as class subjects. There is a shift from managing branded goods that signal status to managing customer experiences that make consumers enact status positions. This research helps identify new ways to manage status brands, especially luxury brands.

Persona-fied brands: managing branded persons through persona

ABSTRACT We investigate how the concept of persona can be used in managing brand persona-fication. Based on interviews with informants working across the gastronomy sector, we examine the characteristics of the chef persona, and the role that chef persona plays in restaurant management. We differentiate persona-fied brands from other human brands, we dimensionalise the chef persona, and we identify two possible models of brand management through persona: (1) the distributed or fragmented persona-fication of the brand, which is based on a disjunction of different facets of the brand persona, each embodied in different persons; and (2) the unified persona-fication of the brand, which is based on the conjunction of the different facets of the brand persona. Here, the persona is embodied in a single person who embodies the different facets of the brand persona. Our analysis surfaces theoretical resonance with the performative turn in marketing scholarship.

Legiticimacy and Authenticity of Ethnic Affiliations: The Case of Regionalism

This study analyzes the ways consumers legitimize their regional ethnic affiliation. An analysis of 29 introspections highlights the means individuals use to legitimize their ethnic affiliation and its authenticity. More precisely, it (1) demonstrates how individuals hijack and invent new sources of ethnic legitimacy, (2) emphasizes the role of archetypes in perceived ethnic authenticity and (3) examines dissonances linked to ethnic authenticity (artificiality and ambivalence). These results enrich previous research on reflexive ethnicity by introducing self-legitimizing processes and showing how individuals contribute, by consuming archetypes, to developing the collective constructs on which ethnicity is based. This leads to recommendations regarding the legitimization of regional brands.

Fetish, magic, marketing

Contrary to rationalist assumptions about contemporary economic life, magical thoughts and actions pervade organizations. We examine two different organizational worlds—market research and luxury marketing—and show that in both domains, magical practices are ubiquitous. Our research features marketing executives fetishizing the figure of the consumer and endowing consumer images and talk with magical powers. In addition, we describe creative directors from the luxury world who behave similar to traditional sorcerers: playing with their magical powers to transform ordinary objects into works of art. Across these distinct organizational contexts, we demonstrate that modern organizations are far from being well-oiled rationalist machines, or, if they are, the oil that makes business churn is the power of magic.