Understanding the Social Gifts of Drinking Rituals: An Alternative Framework for PSA Developers

Binge drinking behavior has been described as the most significant health hazard on college campuses today. Using definitions of ritual behavior drawn from the literature, the authors conducted focus groups, depth interviews, and participant observations to explore the ritualized nature of alcohol beverage consumption among college students at two large universities. The themes that emerged provide an understanding of the rituals associated with college student drinking. With the drinking-as-ritual interpretation as a theoretical framework, the authors discuss how developers of public service announcements (PSAs) could capture and contextualize drinking rituals and thus make PSAs more relevant to the target audience. They provide examples of PSAs that could be tested

Maintaining the Myth of the Monarchy: How Producers Shape Consumers' Experiences of the British Royal Family

We explore how the myth of the monarchy is reproduced in contemporary consumer societies, by looking at how producers shape consumers' experiences of the British Royal Family (BRF) brand. Drawing on interviews with producers, we identify five key experiential themes that producers create for consumers as they engage in maintaining and modifying, the myth of the monarchy. These are: 1) storying the monarchy: telling tales of people; 2) keeping history alive: creating links between past and present; 3) event management: pomp and pageantry; 4) the role of place: creating a persona for each palace; 5) creation and sustainability of sub-myths

Exploring Patient-Provider Relationships in Preference-Based Health Care Choices

Patient-physician relationship models previously identified in research do not always capture the full range of consumers’ experiences as they engage in difficult, preference-based decisions. Examining the context of individuals seeking infertility treatment, we identify a new Peripheral Model of patient-physician relationship, whereby the physician’s role is perceived as rather inconsequential

The Roles of Extraordinary Beliefs in Consumption Rituals

People often ascribe to extraordinary beliefs (EBs), or those that laws of science cannot explain, or those that may even contradict science. Both the foundational literature in anthropology and recent work in consumer behavior affirm the assumption that rituals—structured, repeated, symbolic, and expressive activities—might be one context where extraordinary beliefs shape consumer experiences. To date, however, little understanding exists regarding the types of EBs that emerge in consumption-ritual contexts, and how they influence ritual participation. We examine over 30 years of articles in top-tier journals to address two questions: (1) Which EBs emerge as salient to consumer rituals? (2) How do EBs shape consumer ritual participation? In doing so, we illuminate the role of 15 EBs organized by four key functions. We reveal important gaps in understanding the interplay between EBs and consumer rituals and offer future research recommendations to address these gaps

Designing Hybrid Gifts

Hybrid gifting combines physical artefacts and experiences with digital interactivity to generate new kinds of gifts. Our review details how gifting is a complex social phenomenon and how digital gifting is less engaging than physical gifting for both givers and receivers. Employing a Research Through Design approach, we developed a portfolio of four hybrid gifting experiences: an augmented advent calendar; edible music tracks; personalised museum tours; and a narrated city walk. Our reflection addresses three concepts: hybrid wrapping where physical gifts become wrapped in digital media and vice versa; the importance of effortful interactions that are visible and pleasurable; and the need to consider social obligation, including opportunities for acknowledgement and reciprocation, dealing with embarrassment, and recognising the distinction between giving and sharing. Our concepts provide guidance to practitioners who wish to design future gifting experiences while helping HCI researchers engage with the concept of gifting in a nuanced way

Something Old, Something New: Exploring the Interaction between Ritual and Advertising

Explores the interrelationship between advertising and consumer rituals using a framework for examining the influence of these cultural institutions. Illustrates the ways in which advertising uses ritual symbolism to create messages about products and services not designed for use during such occasions. Provides specific examples of advertisements using symbols associated with weddings; argues that advertising may also influence the rituals themselves

Cinderella dreams: the allure of the lavish wedding

The fabulous gown, the multitiered cake, abundant flowers, attendants and guests in their finery. The white wedding does more than mark a life passage. It marries two of the most sacred tenets of American culture - romantic love and excessive consumption. For anyone who has ever wondered about the meanings behind a white dress, a diamond ring, rice, and traditions such as cake cutting, bouquet tossing, and honeymooning, this book offers an entertaining and enlightening look at the historical, social, and psychological strains that come together to make the lavish wedding the most important cultural ritual in contemporary consumer culture. With an emphasis on North American society, Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck show how the elaborate wedding means far more than a mere triumph for the bridal industry. Through interviews, media accounts, and wide-ranging research and analysis, they expose the wedding's reflection - or reproduction - of fundamental aspects of popular consumer culture: its link with romantic love, its promise of magical transformation, its engendering of memories, and its legitimization of consumption as an expression of perfection. As meaningful as any prospective bride might wish, the lavish wedding emerges here as a lens that at once reveals, magnifies, and reveres some of the dearest wishes and darkest impulses at the heart of our culture

Tinsel, Trimmings, and Tensions: Consumer Negotiations of a Focal Christmas Artifact

Our specific purpose in this paper is to explore households' negotiation practices as they co-create a key ritual artifact of the holiday-the Christmas tree. We find that four distinct pairs of tensions can shape consumers' co-creation of the Christmas tree: aesthetics vs. tradition, inclusiveness vs. risk, family fantasy vs. family reality, and authenticity vs. convenience. We identify and interpret the negotiation strategies that emerge as consumers seek to resolve these sets of tensions

Pursuing Parenthood: Integrating Cultural and Cognitive Perspectives on Persistent Goal Striving

This article argues that a fuller understanding of consumer persistence, or repeated attempts to achieve goals, is necessary and can be achieved by adopting an interdisciplinary perspective and integrating cultural and cognitive perspectives on consumer phenomena. Developing insights by examining experiences of informants pursuing parenthood using assisted reproductive technologies, we build on Bagozzi and Dholakia's ( 1999 ) model of goal striving to explore how cultural discourses inform consumers' cognitions. We analyze how both life-project framing discourses and culturally pervasive discourses affect consumers and demonstrate that a cultural perspective is a vital complement to cognitive models of persistence. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..