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Content analyses of US and Japanese magazine advertisements featuring products and services in a home setting reveal several significant differences over time and support hypotheses based on comparative cultural values and economic conditions. As expected, recent Japanese advertising has increasingly emphasised status to a much greater degree than recent US advertising, and recent US advertising has continued to emphasise personal efficacy to a much greater degree than does Japanese advertising. Both cultures are found to use materialistic themes in their advertisements.

The market for luxury is growing rapidly. While there is a significant body of literature on luxury goods, academic research has largely ignored luxury services. The purpose of this article is to open luxury services as a new field of investigation by developing the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings to build the luxury services literature and show how luxury services differ from both luxury goods and from ordinary (i.e. non-luxury) services.

This paper uses a conceptual approach drawing upon and synthesizing the luxury goods and services marketing literature.

This article makes three contributions. First, it shows that services are largely missing from the luxury literature, just as the field of luxury is mostly missing from the service literature. Second, it contrasts the key characteristics of services and related consumer behaviors with luxury goods. The service characteristics examined are non-ownership, IHIP (i.e. intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability), the three additional Ps of services marketing (i.e. people, processes, and physical facilities) and the three-stage service consumption model. This article derives implications these characteristics have on luxury. For example, non-ownership increases the importance of psychological ownership, reduces the importance of conspicuous consumption and the risk of counterfeiting. Third, this article defines luxury services as extraordinary hedonic experiences that are exclusive whereby exclusivity can be monetary, social and hedonic in nature, and luxuriousness is jointly determined by objective service features and subjective customer perceptions. Together, these characteristics place a service on a continuum ranging from everyday luxury to elite luxury.

This article provides suggestions on how firms can enhance psychological ownership of luxury services, manage conspicuous consumption, and use more effectively luxury services' additional types of exclusivity (i.e. social and hedonic exclusivity).

This is the first paper to define luxury services and their characteristics, to apply and link frameworks from the service literature to luxury, and to derive consumer insights from these for research and practice.

The physical filmmaking landscape has been transformed by the emergence of digital platforms that foster interaction and dialogue. The accessibility and affordability of mobile production tools have empowered anyone with a mobile phone to become a media content creator. Accordingly, this paper aims to present a multi-method approach for creating phygital projects that involve people as active participants rather than mere subjects who collaborate with the researchers to tell their stories.

Research participants can embrace diverse roles, serving as co-researchers, content creators, curators and collaborators. The authors use various engagement strategies with the research participants, who are often marginalized or underrepresented, to encourage their participation and give them agency and creative control. Thus, we also use a participatory action research approach to help advocate for the participants’ facial equality concerns.

Collaborative videography embraces the mosaic of voices expressing intricate social issues. In this project, research participants with “facial differences” explain their experiences in facing society.

By experimenting with participatory frameworks and combining physical interactions (such as in-person meetings) with digital platforms like Zoom and social media, the authors suggest a multi-method approach that honors the authentic stories of the research participants, effectively engages the audience and explains how phygital research methodologies can be used in interpretive consumer research, particularly in co-creating films that capture strong visuals.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit Russell Belk’s (1988) landmark paper “Possessions and the extended self”. The authors provide a prehistory of related ideas and then examine the controversy it triggered regarding the different paradigms of research in marketing (Cohen, 1989) some 26 years ago.

This paper takes Belk seriously when he argues that his work is a synthesis and extension of prior studies leading to the novel production of the “extended self” concept. Via a close reading of the history of self-constitution, the authors highlight a number of thinkers who were grappling with similar issues now associated in our disciplinary consciousness to the idea of the “extended self”. To assess the contribution of Belk’s work, the authors engage in citation and interpretive analyses. The first analysis compared scholarly citations of Belk (1988) with the top ten most-cited Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) papers published in the same year. The second citation analysis compared Belk (1988) to the top ten most-cited JCR papers in the history of the journal. The authors follow this with an interpretive analysis of Belk’s contribution to consumer research via his 1988 paper.

Belk (1988) had the most citations (N = 934) of any paper published in JCR in 1988. When compared to all papers published in the history of JCR, Belk (1988) leads with the most overall citations. Moreover, Belk (1988) is the most prominent interpretive paper that appeared in JCR and one of the top three, regardless of paradigm. The analysis illustrates diversity in topic and methodology, thus indicating that Belk’s contribution impacted a wide variety of scholars. Interpretive analysis indicates the importance of Belk’s work for subsequently impactful consumer researchers.

The authors offer a prehistory of the “extended self” concept by highlighting literature that many consumer researchers will not have explored previously. With citations spanning over three decades, consumer behavior scholars recognize Belk (1988) as an important paper. Our analysis reveals that contrary to received wisdom, it is not only important for interpretive researchers or scholars within the consumer culture theory, but it is significant for the entire discipline, irrespective of paradigmatic orientation. The research presented here demonstrates that Belk’s (1988) paper is arguably one of the most influential papers ever published in JCR.

Once the domain of theologians, sociologists and (religion) anthropologists, we have seen more recently how consumer researchers have enriched the study of spirituality and religion. Researching the sacred can be fraught with challenges, in and out of the field. Russell Belk, Samuelson Appau and Diego Rinallo address key questions, issues and conceptualisations in the scholarship on sacred consumption, contemplating the past and mapping future research avenues. A reading list is also included for those interested in joining the authors in this collective discovery of the sacred.

Contributors answered the following four questions: How has the study of sacred consumption evolved since you started researching the field? What would be the critical methodological issues that researchers need to consider when approaching the “sacred”? What are some of the key authors that have influenced your thinking? What do you think will be the key questions that researchers will need to focus on?

Rinallo, Belk and Appau’s reflections on studying the sacred provide food for thought for both novice and weathered researchers alike. Researching the sacred both shapes and is shaped by our positionality: by our insider/outsider status, our gender and race and our cosmovisions as believers or sceptics. Researchers should be mindful and reflective of their subject positionings as they approach, enter and leave the field. Researching the sacred requires an open mind as we broaden our vision of what constitutes the sacred. Such research calls for scholarly as well as phenomenological curiosity. Reading widely and across disciplines to better familiarise ourselves with our sacred context helps to craft novel and meaningful research.

This paper provides a multivocal genealogy of consumer culture work on religion and spirituality, methodological advice and reading resources for researchers.

Collaboration is the norm in marketing and consumer research, yet the dynamics of academic cooperation are poorly understood. The aim of this paper is to probe the sociology of collaboration within marketing scholarship by means of a detailed case study of the seminal consumer odyssey.

The paper presents a history of the consumer odyssey based on a range of secondary sources.

The consumer odyssey, one of many collaborate circles in marketing thought, was a seminal moment in the development of marketing research.

This paper encourages reflection on the dynamics of collaboration and the collegial character of marketing scholarship. Also, the paper has implications for institutional policy, for example the RAE, which measures research as an individual endeavour.

This paper presents a rare reflection on the social dynamics of marketing scholarship. Although it focuses on the interpretive research tradition within consumer research, its findings are relevant to every marketing academic, regardless of their philosophical bent, empirical concern or methodological preference.

The research analyzes the presence of two global brands – Fiat and International Federation of Association Football – in Brazilian demonstrations in conjunction with the 2014 World Cup. The purpose of this paper is to extend the brand cultural resonance construct and highlights its boundary-straddling nature. The analysis reveals the dynamics of brand meanings established including why some brands have their meanings enriched through collective appropriation, while others become vessels of negative content and targets of anti-consumption movements.

A multimethod approach, which included observation, analysis of cultural texts and in-depth interviews with 21 demonstrators, was adopted for the study.

The study extends the construct of brand cultural resonance proposing an additional facet, named Institutional Resonance. This dimension relates to the meanings that arise from a brand’s institutional role and interactions with other social institutions, like governments, the economy, religious, and educational systems. Institutional Resonance occurs when a certain brand becomes the archetypal representation of a social institution. This study also presents two forms of brand cultural resonance: arrows or targets. As arrows, brands lend their symbolic resources to the construction of protesters’ messages helping them to communicate their ideas. As targets, brands become social enemies and represent negative poles of social contradictions.

This study investigates consumer appropriation of marketers’ actions. The research depicts Institutional Resonance as an interactive and acute phenomenon which promotes a social negotiation on a playing field where different agents forge brand meanings and reputations.