As people enjoy movies for various reasons, this paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss the consumption of movies as a holistic personal lived experience. By using subjective personal introspection, the author provides hereby insights into his personal lived consumption experiences with the recently released movie Pride & Prejudice. Although the introspective data suggest that a complex tapestry of interconnected factors contributes to a consumer’s movie enjoyment, this study found a consumer’s personal engagement with the movie narrative and its characters to be of particular importance. This personal engagement not only allows for a momentary escape from reality into the imaginative movie world, but is even further enhanced through intertextuality, by which the consumer connects the movie to one’s personal life experiences

Whelan, Susan

Wohlfeil, Markus

English

As people enjoy movies for various reasons, this paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss the consumption of movies as a holistic personal lived experience. By using subjective personal introspection, the author provides hereby insights into his personal lived consumption experiences with the recently released movie 'Pride &amp; Prejudice'. Although the introspective data suggest that a complex tapestry of interconnected factors contributes to a consumer&rsquo;s movie enjoyment, this study found a consumer's personal engagement with the movie narrative and its characters to be of particular importance. This personal engagement not only allows for a momentary escape from reality into the imaginative movie world, but is even further enhanced through intertextuality, by which the consumer connects the movie to one's personal life experiences

Stirling Online Research Repository

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into a Consumer’s Experiential Consumption of ‘Pride & Prejudice’

Waterford Institute of Technology Repository

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into a Consumer's Experiential Consumption of "Pride & Prejudice"

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University of East Anglia digital repository

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into a Consumer’s Experiential Consumption of ‘Pride & Prejudice'

Confessions of a movie-Fan: Introspection into a consumer’s experiential consumption of 'Pride & Prejudice'

Stirling Online Research Repository (RIOXX)

By using subjective personal introspection, this paper describes the consumption of movies as a holistic experience. After reviewing the current literature, the author is discussing the consumption of movies as a holistic lived experience. He then provides rich evidence by describing his personal lived experience in the consumption of the recently released movie Pride & Prejudice. The introspective data suggest that a number of different factors contribute to the enjoyment of the movie, which include a) the consumed media format, b) the engagement with the movie and its components, c) the individual consumption context, d) the social consumption context, e) the atmosphere during consumption, f) the collection of movie-related memorabilia and g) the intertextuality between the movie experience and the consumer’s personal life experience

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into the Experiential Consumption of "Pride & Prejudice"

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into the Experiential Consumption of 'Pride & Prejudice'

The Publisher's final version can be found by following the URI link.As people enjoy movies for various reasons, this paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss the
consumption of movies as a holistic personal lived experience. By using subjective personal introspection, the author provides hereby insights into his personal lived consumption experiences with the recently released movie Pride & Prejudice. Although the
introspective data suggest that a complex tapestry of interconnected factors contributes to a consumer’s movie enjoyment, this study found a consumer’s personal engagement with the movie narrative and its characters to be of particular importance. This personal engagement not only allows for a momentary escape from reality into the imaginative movie world, but is even further enhanced through intertextuality, by which the consumer connects the movie to one’s personal life experiences

De Montfort University Open Research Archive

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into a Consumer’s Experiential Consumption of ‘Pride and Prejudice’

IRISH ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENTPOSTGRADUATE PAPERTrack: Marketing & the Cultural Enterprise		 Competitive PaperCONFESSIONS OF A MOVIE-FAN:INTROSPECTION INTO THE EXPERIENTIAL CONSUMPTION OF “PRIDE & PREJUDICE”ByMarkus Wohlfeil and Susan WhelanWaterford Institute of TechnologyContact:Markus WohlfeilWaterford Crystal Centre for Marketing StudiesWaterford Institute of TechnologyCork Road, WaterfordIrelandPhone:  +353 87 654 87 02Fax:       +353 51 302 688Email:    mwohlfeil@wit.ieWebsite: www.waterfordcrystalcentreformarketing.com                www.wit.ieCONFESSIONS OF A MOVIE-FAN: INTROSPECTION INTO THE EXPERIENTIAL CONSUMPTION OF “PRIDE & PREJUDICE”A good old-fashioned story of guilt, poverty, love, madness and free video club membership.(The Fisher King, TriStar Pictures 1991)ABSTRACTAlthough the film industry is one of the world’s biggest industries for nearly a century and plays an essential role in the popular culture of many societies, marketing and consumer research literature has only recently started to pay attention to the consumption of movies. This is the more unfortunate, as movie consumption has never been so popular worldwide as in the last decade with a number of industries from merchandising to glossy tabloid magazines satisfying the ongoing interest in the glamour of stars and celebrities (Brown 2005; d’Astous 1999). However, while some consumer researchers inquired how the semiotics of movie narratives reflect a society’s underlying myths and culture (Hirschman 2000a, 1993, 1987) or how the depicted forms of consumption carry the movie’s narrative (Holbrook and Grayson 1986), most marketing research was purely interested in the traditional economic dimensions of movie consumption. Thus, the investigation narrowly focused on a movie’s box office performance or on the sales and rental of DVDs and videos in specific target markets (Hennig-Thurau, Walsh and Bode 2004). In doing so, movie consumption is reduced to the purchase of individual tangible “media formats” (i.e. cinema, VHS, VCD or DVD) rather than the intangible movie brand itself. This scant attention directed at movie consumption might result from the fact that in contrast to conventional manufacturing and service brands, movies are composite artistic brands that reflect a very complex web of various other brands.Indeed, the participating actors and actresses, director, composer, producers, the scriptwriters, editors and director of photography are all individual brands in the public domain (Schroeder 2005; Levin, Levin and Heath 1997) that create the movie together as a composite artistic brand in its own right. If the movie is the screen version of a novel, then the artistic brand is even a sub-brand of another artistic brand (Brown 2005). The style, image and success of the movie in return influences each participant’s personal brand image and value in the public and media (d’Astous 1999). An even more troubling factor for marketing researchers seems to be that the consumption of movies is a holistic experience, in which the acquisition of the particular media format only plays a minor, unimportant role for the consumer. Indeed, it is the individual and social context of the consumption situation and the use of intertextuality, by which consumers interconnect their personal lives with the textuality of the movie and/or actor brands (Hirschman 2000b), during the actual usage that turns movie consumption into such a unique, holistic lived experience for the individual. Due to the subsequent lack of attention towards the consumption of movies as a holistic experience for an ordinary consumer and its contribution to his/her subjectively experienced quality of life, a significant gap in the literature has arisen. To close this knowledge gap, the current research is aimed at providing an understanding of a consumer’s holistic lived experience of movie consumption from an existential-phenomenological perspective. By using Holbrook’s (1995, 1987, 1986) subjective personal introspection method, this study is exploring the researcher’s own lived experience of consuming the recently released movie “Pride & Prejudice”. In doing so, the research uncovers the consumption of “Pride & Prejudice” as a holistic experience, which addresses all facets from the movie and its components (actors/actresses, cinematography, narrative, truthfulness to literary original) to the social consumption context to the individual enjoyment to the acquisition of relevant services and products. Finally, the consumer use of intertextuality and archetypes to connect the consumption of “Pride & Prejudice” to the researcher’s personal life experience is discussed.REFERENCESBrown, Stephen (2005), Wizard! Harry Potter’s Brand Magic, London: Cyan.D’Astous, Alain (1999), “A Study of Individual Factors Explaining Movie-Goers’ Consultation of Film Critics”, European Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 4, pp. 201-207.Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, Gianfranco Walsh and Matthias Bode (2004), “Exporting Media Products: Understanding the Success and Failure of Hollywood Movies in Germany”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 31, pp. 633-638.Hirschman, Elisabeth C. (1987), “Movies as Myths: An Interpretation of Motion Picture Mythology”, in Marketing & Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale, pp. 335-374.Hirschman, Elisabeth C. (1993), “Consumer Behaviour Meets the Nouvelle Femme: Feminist Consumption at the Movies”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 20, pp. 41-47.Hirschman, Elisabeth C. (2000a), Heroes, Monsters & Messiahs: Movies and Television Shows as the Mythology of American Culture, Kansas City: Andrews McMeel.Hirschman, Elisabeth C. (2000b), “Consumers’ Use of Intertextuality and Archetypes”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 27, pp. 57-63.Holbrook, Morris B. (1986), “I’m Hip: An Autobiographical Account of Some Musical Consumption Experiences”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 13, pp. 614-618.Holbrook, Morris B. (1987), “An Audiovisual Inventory of Some Fanatic Consumer Behaviour: The 25-Cent Tour of a Jazz Collector’s Home”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 14, pp. 144-149.Holbrook, Morris B. (1995), Consumer Research: Introspective Essays on the Study of Consumption, London: Sage.Holbrook, Morris B. and Mark W. Grayson (1986), “The Semiology of Cinematic Consumption: Symbolic Consumer Behaviour in Out of Africa”, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 374-381.Levin, Aron M., Irwin P. Levin and C. Edward Heath (1997), “Movie Stars and Authors as Brand Names: Measuring Brand Equity in Experiential Products”, Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 24, pp. 175-181.Schroeder, Jonathan E. (2005), “The Artist and the Brand”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 39, No. 11/12, pp. 1291-1305.

Confessions of a Movie-Fan: Introspection into the Experiential Consumption of ‘Pride & Prejudice’

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