John F. Sherry

Gift Giving in Anthropological Perspective

Gift giving is a universal behavior that still awaits satisfactory interpretation by social scientists. By tempering traditional consumer research with an anthropological perspective, our understanding of gift exchange can be enriched. A model of the gift exchange process intended to stimulate comprehensive research on gift-giving behavior is presented in this paper.

A Naturalistic Inquiry into Buyer and Seller Behavior at a Swap Meet

Naturalistic inquiry as an ethnographic approach is explained and utilized for exploring emergent themes in buyer and seller behavior at a swap meet. Components of the method used include purposive sampling, triangulation across researchers, emergent theme analysis, autodriving, memoing, member checks, and auditing. Four emergent dialectical substantive themes are discussed: freedom versus rules, boundaries versus transitions, competition versus cooperation, and sacred versus profane.

A Sociocultural Analysis of a Midwestern American Flea Market

The ethnographic case study presented in this article illustrates the institutional complexity and sociocultural significance of a midwestern American flea market. A conception of market place structure and function that incorporates informal and festive dimensions of consumer behavior is advanced. The article explores the relationship of primary and secondary economic activity. Buyer and seller behavior, marketplace ambience, the social embeddedness of consumption, and experiential aspects of consumption are considered at length. Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.

Themed flagship brand stores in the new millennium: theory, practice, prospects

Abstract The flagship brand store is an increasingly popular venue used by marketers to build relationships with consumers. As we move further into an experience economy in the new millennium, retailers are refining the flagship brand store into new forms such as the themed retail brand store. This new form not only promotes a more engaging experience of the brand’s essence but also satisfies consumers looking for entertainment alongside their shopping. In this article, we conceptualize and explore themed flagship brand stores in terms of the mythological appeal of the narratives conveyed by their physical and symbolic structure. We utilize a field study of ESPN Zone Chicago to examine these features in a sports-themed retail brand store. Finally, we offer some projections, based on our research, of the possible transformations of the flagship brand store as the new century unfolds. We conclude that mindscape-related themes, which combine entertainment, therapeutics, and spiritual growth, are at the frontier of retail theming.

Ludic Agency and Retail Spectacle

Spectacular, themed environments have been theorized as places where play is limited and consumer agency is overpowered. In a multiperspectival ethnographic engagement with ESPN Zone Chicago, we find consumers resisting the rules, but only to a limited degree. Spectacular consumption possesses a do‐it‐yourself quality unrecognized in prior theory. Technology and screens are important to this form of play, which exhibits a transcendent character built of liminoid elements and consumer fantasy. Yet, even in ostensibly overpowering spectacular consumption environments, consumption still is negotiated dialectically; consumer and producer interests are embedded in one another in a process of “interagency.”

Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands

Abstract The phrase “fast fashion” refers to low-cost clothing collections that mimic current luxury fashion trends. Fast fashion helps sate deeply held desires among young consumers in the industrialized world for luxury fashion, even as it embodies unsustainability. Trends run their course with lightning speed, with todays latest styles swiftly trumping yesterdays, which have already been consigned to the trash bin. This article addresses the inherent dissonance among fast fashion consumers, who often share a concern for environmental issues even as they indulge in consumer patterns antithetical to ecological best practices. Seemingly adept at compartmentalism, and free of conflicted guilt, such consumers see no contradiction in their Janus-faced desires. Can luxury fashion, with ostensibly an emphasis on authenticity, and its concomitant respect for artisans and the environment, foster values of both quality and sustainability? Since individual identity continually evolves, and requires a materially referential re-imagining of self to do so, we hypothesize that actual rather than faux luxury brands can, ironically, unite the ideals of fashion with those of environmental sustainability.

American Girl and the Brand Gestalt: Closing the Loop on Sociocultural Branding Research

This article describes an investigation of the American Girl brand that provides a more complete and holistic understanding of sociocultural branding. Recent research on emotional branding, together with prior work on brands’ symbolic nature and their role as relationship partners, represents a significant shift in the way marketers think about brands and brand management. However, a full understanding of powerful and emotionally resonant brands has been elusive, in part because sociocultural branding knowledge has accumulated in a piecemeal way and lacks coherence and integrity. In addition, powerful brands are extraordinarily complex and multifaceted, but in general they have been studied from a single perspective in a single setting. On the basis of a qualitative exploration of the American Girl brand that is both deep and broad, the authors posit that an emotionally powerful brand is best understood as the product of a complex system, or gestalt, whose component parts are in continuous interplay and together constitute a whole greater than their sum. Studying American Girl from the perspectives of various stakeholder groups in many of the venues in which the brand is manifest, the authors attempt to close the sociocultural branding research loop and identify implications for brand management.

A Role for Poetry in Consumer Research

Consumer researchers are wrestling with the crisis of representation that has challenged contiguous disciplines over the past decade. Traditional or conventional prose articles seem increasingly insufficient as vessels for representing our understandings and experiences. In this article, we demonstrate how poetry contributes to the research enterprise. We use our own experiences as researcher-poets to illustrate how the writing and close reading of poetry can take us directly to the heart of consumption. Our essay is intended to provide a philosophical basis for the inclusion of poetry between the covers of this journal. One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable. (Bronowski 1973)

“May Your Life Be Marvelous:” English Language Labelling and the Semiotics of Japanese Promotion

A recent trend in consumer research is the broadening of the notion of consumer behavior to include activities not merely epiphenomenal to marketing. Another trend with earlier historical origins is the semiotic interpretation of consumption activities. These trends are merged in the present article, which contrasts the vehemence with which Japanese cultural uniqueness is linked with the spirit of the language ( kotodama ) with the Japanese readiness to use English language loanwords in establishing an identity for indigenous product offerings. The article focuses on the investing of indigenous consumer goods with meaning through use of loanwords in a culturally conservative blocked market context. It explores the meaning of such investment from the perspective of consumer and analyst, using product labels and other promotional vehicles as a primary data base. Finally, it treats the diffusion of cultural elements such as language and lifestyle, and their subsequent adaptation to local systems of meaning, as a significant macroconsumption pattern.

Street Art, Sweet Art? Reclaiming the "Public" in Public Place

Consumer research has paid scant attention to public goods, especially at a time when the contestation between categorizing public and private goods and controlling public goods is pronounced. In this multisited ethnography, we explore the ways in which active consumers negotiate meanings about the consumption of a particular public good, public space. Using the context of street art, we document four main ideologies of public space consumption that result from the interaction, both conflict and common intent, of urban dwellers and street artists. We show how public space can be contested as private and commercialized, or offered back as a collective good, where sense of belonging and dialogue restore it to a meaningful place. We demonstrate how the common nature of space both stimulates dialectical and dialogical exchanges across stakeholders and fuels forms of layered agency.