Therapeutic Servicescapes and Market-Mediated Performances of Emotional Suffering
Event Date: 12 March 2019
Speakers: Dr Leighanne Higgins and Dr Kathy Hamilton
Time: 2pm. Tea, coffee and cakes will be provided from 1.45pm.
Location: Strathclyde Business School, Cathedral Wing, CW406a.
Please confirm your attendance with Christina MacLean (christina.maclean@strath.ac.uk).
Abstract:
In this presentation, we will discuss our recent Journal of Consumer Research paper, including experiences and lessons learned from the review process. Prior work recognizes that servicescapes can orchestrate ritualized performances of consumer emotion, but existing accounts do not fully explain how consumer emotions are socially and geographically orchestrated. We introduce the concept of a therapeutic servicescape, defined as consumption settings where emplaced, market-mediated performances compensate for socio-cultural dilemmas. The concepts of therapeutic landscapes (Gesler 2003) and emotion scripts (Turner and Stets 2006) enable us to uncover the socio-spatial nature of emotions. We focus on therapeutic servicescapes that orchestrate performances of emotional suffering. This ethnographic study of religious pilgrimage consumption reveals that the therapeutic servicescape comprises three features: evocative spaces, ideological homogeneity and restorative emotion scripts. These servicescape features catalyze the consumer rituals of therapeutic relations, therapeutic release and therapeutic renewal. Our theorization of therapeutic servicescapes offers three contributions. First, we reveal how emotions are socially and geographically orchestrated and transformed in marketplace settings. Second, we demonstrate how therapeutic ritual performances reproduce emplaced, market-mediated emotion and compensate for embodied emotional restrictions. Third, our contextual focus on religious pilgrimage demonstrates how the negotiation of emotional ordering guides the therapeutic dialogue between religion and the marketplace.
Biography:
Leighanne Higgins is a Lecturer in Marketing at Lancaster University. Interested in consumer research, her research investigates intersectionality between religion and marketplaces structures, specifically within the context of religious pilgrimage. To date, Leighanne has publications in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research and Journal of Marketing Management.
Kathy Hamilton is a Reader in Marketing at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Her research focuses on how market-mediated culture impacts consumers, institutions and society. She explores how interpretive methodologies can be used to generate theoretical advances in knowledge and is co-chair of the biennial EIASM Interpretive Consumer Research workshops. Kathy is interested in interdisciplinary research and her work has been published in various outlets including Journal of Consumer Research, Sociology, Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing and European Journal of Marketing. Kathy was co-chair of the ESRC seminar series on Consumer Vulnerability and continues to be interested in Consumer Research with Social impact. She has been track chair at Transformative Consumer Research and Macromarketing conferences and is an associate editor for the Journal of Marketing Management.
Published: 13 February 2019
