Extending the dramaturgical framework in marketing: Drama ... · Extending the dramaturgical...
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ACADEMIC PAPERS
Extending the dramaturgicalframework in marketing: Dramastructure, drama interaction anddrama content in shoppingexperiencesReceived in revised form.
Risto Moisiois a doctoral student of marketing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Eric J. Arnouldis E. J. Faulkner College Professor of Agribusiness & Marketing and CBA Agribusiness
Program Interim Director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, USA.
His recent research investigates consumer rituals, household consumption behaviour,
postmodern motivation, magical consumption, service relationships, West African
marketing channels and the uses of qualitative data. He is Associate Editor of the Journal
of Consumer Research.
AbstractThe dramaturgical framework in marketing provides a rich theoretical framework forunderstanding shopping experiences. The purpose of this paper is to extend the currentdramaturgical framework on shopping experiences by distinguishing between drama structure,drama interaction and drama content. The extended dramaturgical framework provides a morecomprehensive understanding of the ways in which cultural resources, active consumeragency and formal components of shopping performances contribute to shopping experiences.Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
INTRODUCTION
Marketing researchers use the term
‘dramaturgical’ to refer to marketers’
impression of management efforts
(Goffman, 1959) and to the idea that
shopping environments can be
construed as theatres (Grove and Fisk,
1992). Grove and Fisk (1992: 455–456)
characterised services as drama: ‘insofar
as it is a discourse involving articulation,
definition and interaction . . . concerned
with the tactics and strategies employed
by people to create and sustain desirable
impressions before an audience’. Grove
and Fisk (1992) also construed shopping
environments to be theatrical stages
involving a setting, actors, an audience
and the performance. Marketing
researchers used the dramaturgical
framework to analyse consumer–
product (Deighton, 1992), consumer–
consumer (Gorn, 2002), as well as
consumer–marketer encounters (John,
1996). Researchers have also found the
dramaturgical framework useful for
analysing how performances should be
organised (John, 1996), and how
shopping performances may facilitate
Risto MoisioDepartment ofMarketing, 310College of BusinessAdministration,University ofNebraska-Lincoln,P. O. Box 880492,Lincoln, NE 68588-0492, USATel: þ(402) 472 2316Fax: þ(402) 472 9777e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords:
Drama, shopping,
servicescapes,
experiences,
qualitative
246 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 246–256 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
consumer satisfaction (Deighton, 1992).
Some have used the dramaturgical
framework to understand how shopping
performances create either positive
(Clark and Salaman, 1998) or negative
customer value (Grayson, 1998).
Despite these contributions, the
dramaturgical framework fails to
provide much insight into the role of
interactive (eg McGrath and Otnes, 1995)
and co-constructive marketer–consumer
practices in service production and
delivery (eg Rodie and Kleine, 2000).
Work on the dramaturgical framework
generally represents consumers as
passive agents who embrace various
behavioural rules and expectations
under the marketer’s authority (Grove
and Fisk, 1992). Furthermore, the
dramaturgical framework provides little
conceptual help in analysing drama
content (Stern, 1990). This should be of
concern to marketers since successful
dramas are always stories about
something (Stern, 1996). Dramas
communicate aspects of everyday life in
a meaningful form by resorting to
convention (Turner, 1986). Hence,
dramas use selective cultural resources
that cast the performance as meaningful.
Drama is a cultural vehicle through
which the actors, the plot and
performances can be organised to
facilitate various experiences (Boller,
1990).
To push the dramaturgical framework
further, this paper introduces conceptual
distinctions between drama structure,
drama interaction and drama content.
These conceptual distinctions enable
marketing researchers to distinguish
between the formal components of
drama (drama structure), the narrative
resources that organise performances in
shopping contexts (drama content) and
the active roles that consumers can take
in drama performances (drama
interaction). The extended
dramaturgical framework incorporates
distinctions between drama structure,
drama interaction and drama content
and offers marketing researchers and
managers a more comprehensive
understanding of the ways in which
cultural resources, active consumer
agency and formal components of
shopping performances contribute to
shopping experiences.
EXTENDING THE DRAMATURGICAL
FRAMEWORK
This paper distinguishes between drama
structure, drama interaction and drama
content. The term drama structure refers to
the set of theatrical components: setting,
actors/audience and performance, or the
formal components of drama (Grove and
Fisk, 1992). The concept of drama
structure does not address adequately
the active role of the consumer in drama
performances, however. In order to
capture this role in staging shopping
experiences, this paper builds upon
Firat’s (1977) notion of the human
involvement dimension in consumption
and defines drama interaction as the level
of consumer involvement or activity,
ranging from active to passive, that can
shape, redirect and structure the
unfolding of the drama performance.
The active role of drama interaction
exemplifies drama performances that
incorporate active consumers’ agency
and assimilate their spontaneous actions
into the unfolding of the drama
performance, such as those seen in
studies of brand communities (eg Muniz
and O’Guinn, 2001). The passive role of
the human involvement dimension can
be seen in studies that treat the consumer
as a managed component of service
delivery supporting the prevailing script
(Kellogg et al., 1997; Rodie and Kleine,
2000), or as an ‘audience’ rather than as
‘actors’ who have the ability to shape the
unfolding performance (Grove et al.,
1998). Few treat consumers as
participants in performances, with roles
ranging from a passive, segregated
audience to an audience that is involved
and integrated into the performance
(Deighton, 1992).
To provide a conceptual vehicle for
understanding the cultural resources
Extending the dramaturgical framework in marketing
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 246–256 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817 247
that organise performances into
meaningful wholes, this paper offers the
drama content concept. Drama content
refers to the cultural resources that
‘infuse . . . activity with signs which
dramatically highlight and portray
confirmatory facts that might otherwise
remain unapparent or obscure’
(Goffman, 1959: 30). Drama content
provides an organising resource that
integrates meanings, the plot and the
characters in order to cohere and
facilitate enriched shopping experiences.
This paper distinguishes between two
basic types of related cultural resources:
cultural self and cultural other.
Cultural-self-related resources
originate from connections to the cultural
self and in-group community (Arnould
and Price, 2000). Cultural-self-related
dramas capitalise on narrative resources
related to the cultural self (ie imagery,
ideas, myths, events, places and people
related to the culture of production),
examples of which are the National
Western Stock Show (Penaloza, 2000),
Thanksgiving celebrations (Wallendorf
and Arnould, 1991), or the Florida
Classic (Stamps and Arnould, 1998).
Drama content can also capitalise on
resources from the cultural other (ie
imagery, ideas, myths, events, places and
people related to foreign countries).
While research on tourist experiences
(Costa, 1997), branding (Batra et al., 2000),
advertising (O’Barr, 1994), third-world
souvenirs (Jamison, 1999) and exotic
food consumption (May, 1996) has noted
the role of cultural otherness as a cultural
resource, marketing researchers have not
addressed the role of cultural otherness
in shopping environments. This paper
focuses on elaborating how shopping
experiences can capitalise on cultural-
other-related resources and how they
contribute to drama content.
METHOD
The site of this study was a small-size
European grocery store in a small
midwestern town in the USA. This
grocery store’s market positioning
strategy made it suitable for the study:
the grocery store portrayed itself as
specialising in ‘European’ food products,
suggesting that it could be a site for
cultural-other-focused drama. Its
business model built on the putative
appeal of cultural otherness, specifically
European, Anglo-French cultural
otherness. In addition, the small size of
the grocery store induced spatial
proximity between the participants and
facilitated interaction between them
(Price et al., 1995), which made the
grocery store a suitable site for
investigating drama interaction in situ.
The research used a market-oriented
ethnographic design (Arnould and
Wallendorf, 1994), using approximately
ten hours of participant observation,
more than 100 photographs and two
interviews.
FINDINGS
Drama structure: The components of
the theatrical performance
Setting
The setting component of the drama
structure (Grove and Fisk, 1992) refers to
the physical environment in which the
drama unfolds or its substantive staging.
The setting of this study represents a type
of servicescape termed ‘marketscape’
(Kozinets et al., 2002; Sherry, 1998),
defined through the references it makes
to foreign places and cultures. For
instance, chalkboards located outside the
grocery store referred to foreign
countries such as Britain, Italy, France,
Japan and the Netherlands and used
foreign terms (see Figure 1). The
chalkboards described ‘European’
everyday products, a number of which
had a foreign spelling, used foreign
words, or represented products
otherwise alien to everyday US meals
and cuisine. These verbal and symbolic
references on the chalkboard, the
windows and the door of the grocery
store represent ‘spatial brackets’
(Goffman, 1974): they set the grocery
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store apart from its midwestern cultural
context. In addition, these spatial
brackets help to build ‘dramatic
anticipation’ (Durgee, 1988) by
providing the consumer with the
expectation that they can experience
culturally-other culinary experiences in
the grocery store as well as encounter the
‘exotic’ cultural other.
Inside the grocery store, the
consumers’ exposure to cultural
otherness was intensified. The grocery
store was full of cultural artefacts,
posters and other merchandising that
linked it to foreign places (see Figure 2).
As illustrated in the following excerpt
from the field notes, the management
had tagged and symbolically marked the
foreign origin of the displayed products
using small pieces of blue paper:
‘‘‘Ritter sport bars, from Germany $2.25 eachall varieties’’ with small varieties depicted insmall letters . . .The second shelf contains threebig glass jars with blue papers glued on the side‘‘catllebaut baking choc. BittersweetChocolate’’ with similar descriptions for theremaining two jars. Next to them is located ametallic basket filled with small-sized chocolatebars with a blue paper taped on top of thehandle: ‘‘Sugar-Free Chocolate Bars fromIsrael $1.50’’.’ (Field notes, 10-26-02)
These small pieces of blue paper
represent what MacCannell (1999) called
‘truth markers’, or signs that cement a
bond between the consumer and the
attraction. The truth markers
communicate to the consumers that the
grocery store is a repository of genuine
cultural otherness and help to imbue the
setting with meanings of cultural
otherness. In addition, French music
played in the store made the cultural
other present:
‘anything but country music. Um, becausethat’s not [laughs] the type of thing you wouldplay in a European [grocery] . . .We play a lotof French music. Um, a lot of modern Frenchmusic. Like um, I, this band I’ve heard of, thatmy French teacher in high school used to playfor me called Louisa Attach . . .Or older Frenchmusic like Eddie Piaf . . . some Italian . . . It’sstill a store in the United States, but we want tonot portray . . . like for instance playingcountry music again would not be a good thingto, to do in this store. Just to keep it as far fromlike American type of thing as possible.’(Interview, W-F-20s)
The music played in the grocery store
asserted by negation the non-North
American character of the setting (Wilk,
1997). The managing owner and the
employee deemed this practice of
playing foreign music important. In fact,
according to the younger employee,
playing ‘country music’ in the grocery
store would have been so out of line that
the managing owner would have
reprimanded her for such actions,
actions that can be described according
Figure 1: Photograph of the exterior of the grocery store
Extending the dramaturgical framework in marketing
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 246–256 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817 249
to Goffman (1974) as being ‘out of frame’.
Following McCracken (1986), the music
can be interpreted as a sign-vehicle that
moves meaning from the cultural
category of cultural otherness to the
setting and the props it contains.
Actors/audience
The second component of the drama
structure comprised the grocery store’s
actors and audience (Grove and Fisk,
1992). In this grocery store, the
management and part-time employees
represent ‘actors’, while the ‘regulars’,
gift shoppers and occasional shoppers
represent the ‘audience’. With regard to
the actors, employees have multicultural
competence acquired through foreign
travel, stays abroad and knowledge of
foreign languages. Their role was to be
competent representatives of the cultural
other who provided audience members
with images and experiences of the
cultural other. This significance of the
role-related expectations (Solomon et al.,
1985) could be seen in the fact that the
managing owner took care to provide
employees with training that made them
competent actors in their roles.
‘whenever an employee works by themselvesthe next day, or if they come in and I leave, Ialways leave a list of instructions of things thatneed to be done that day. But when I hiresomebody new, they usually work with me for awhile just to see how I talk to people. That’s why‘‘Noelle’’ is so good, because she always works
with me. So she’s always watching me. And sheknows how I talk to people. But I try to educatemy employees on our products. They get,um . . . 20 dollars worth of free food everymonth, so they can take whatever they wantand try it out at home. And then I quiz themand say you know, what did this taste like? Didyou like it? Why did you like it? Oh, you didn’tlike it. Why didn’t you like it? Okay. So youdidn’t like it, but a customer comes in and theyask you about it. How are you going to describeit so that it still sounds like it has some sort ofgood quality to it?’. (Interview, W-F-30s)
When employees did not possess the
necessary knowledge of the cultural
other, they needed to be educated. Both
the managing owner and the audience of
the grocery store expected them to
possess intimate familiarity with the
cultural other. For their part, the
consumer audience had to possess
certain cultural skills to participate in the
performance. The manager depicted the
regulars as consumers who came from
the upper echelons of the Midwestern
community.
‘It’s not one cookie cutter person . . .within theage group of say 30 to 70. So it’s really, youknow like 40 years there, or 50 years I guess.Thirty to 70 years old. Most of them are collegeeducated. I would say a good number of themprobably have a Masters degree. Um, a goodnumber of them . . . are at least upper middleclass. Um . . . a lot of them . . . have traveled inEurope, or have lived in Europe . . . as a whole,our customers are probably quite different fromthe people who shop at Wal-Mart.’ (Interview,W-F-30s)
Figure 2: Photograph of the interior of the grocery store
Risto Moisio and Eric J. Arnould
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The regulars were a negation of the kind
of consumer who shops at Wal-Mart.
They implicitly negated the mythological
themes recognised in an examination of
Wal-Mart’s promotional flyers: homo
economicus, family, America, community
and hometown (Arnold et al., 2001).
Regulars represented consumers of
cultural difference, the upwardly mobile
middle class seeking encounters with the
cultural other through travel or food
consumption (May, 1996). From the
perspective of the performance, the
regulars represented an audience
that became engrossed in cultural-
other-related themes evoked by the
setting and the actors.
Performance
The third component of the drama
structure is the performance (Grove and
Fisk, 1992). Performance refers to the set
of activities that occur before an
audience. In this grocery store, the
managing owner described the
performance in the following way.
‘they come in, and, and I say ‘‘hi, how areyou?’’ And then they’ll say something, andthen I’ll ask them if I can help them withanything. And hopefully they’ll say yes, ‘causethen it makes it nicer for me; ‘cause I canactually help them. Um, so we’ll talk aboutwhat they need. And then I try to, I generallytry to keep the conversation going. Because I docare. I’m curious. So, yeah, I’ll just talk about,why you are buying this. And if they’ll say,‘‘oh, well, I just got back from France. I’mhaving my friends over, I’m gonna do a Frenchmeal. Then, always I’ll say, ‘‘oh, wow, that’sexcellent! So where did you go?’’ And they’lltell me about their vacation.’ (Interview,W-F-30s).
Upon entry into the grocery store, the
salesperson greeted the consumer and
encouraged them to share their stories
about cultural experiences. The
performance also involved the
salesperson’s demonstration of
cultural skills.
‘we get a lot of people who aren’t familiar withanything. And they come and just look around.Or they’ve heard of one thing, and they, um,
want to find something. So, I’m supposed toalways ask, um, if I can explain what somethingis. If I can help. Because a lot of times they don’tknow anything about European products.’(Interview, W-F-20s)
The salesperson took the role of the
cultural interpreter. Consumers
expected the sales personnel to be able to
translate the writings on product labels,
to describe how consumers could use the
products and to know how the products
tasted. For their part, the consumers
expected the sales personnel to possess
intimate familiarity and knowledge of
foreign cultures.
‘Or if somebody comes up to me and asks mewhere I’ve traveled in Europe and then we cantalk about that. And then for other people in thestore who aren’t so talkative, they can at leastlisten to the conversation about Europe.’(Interview, W-F-20s)
At times, the performance involved the
active display of the mastery of foreign
languages.
‘mostly American people want me to speak.They just wanna hear, you know, a foreignlanguage. They find that interesting. Uh, uh,the little kids, the parent will be like she’ll speakFrench to you, and all this, all thisstuff . . .They just ask me to say something inFrench.’ (Interview, W-F-20s)
The consumers expected the sales
personnel to demonstrate detailed
knowledge about the foreign products
offered in the grocery store. These
expectations were internalised in the
form of ‘dramaturgical loyalty’
(Goffman, 1959) that makes actors hold
themselves responsible for meeting the
expectations that they have attached to
their roles.
Overall, the performance was enacted
using imagined scripts for small-town,
French retailer–consumer relationships.
These scripts involved the use of first
names, invitations for self-disclosure and
encouragement of consumers to share
their cultural-other-related stories. The
performance simulated the imagined
experience a consumer might undergo in
France as a French consumer.
Extending the dramaturgical framework in marketing
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 246–256 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817 251
Drama interaction: The role of active
consumer agent in performances
Drama interaction is a new dimension of
shopping dramaturgy defined as
consumer involvement in, or an activity
that can shape, redirect and structure the
unfolding performance. In the grocery
store, the consumer was involved in the
shaping of the performance in three
different ways: enacting oral
performances, sharing stories and
speaking in foreign languages.
Once the consumers had entered the
grocery store, the most involved regulars
engaged in ‘oral performances’ (Harris
et al., 1995). During these acts, consumers
took the dominant role in the interaction.
‘The salesperson cuts the meat and the femalebegins to describe her recent experience witholive oil: she had bought last year some olive oilduring her visit to Italy. She tells that this oilwas cold pressed by the family of the person sheknew in Italy, ‘‘stoccio oil’’ which was ‘‘ . . . todie for!!’’, she says. The SP nods and the femaleasks for crackers ‘‘do you have crackers yourecommend?’’ to which the SP responds‘‘Australian crackers’’ and directs her to thestand on the left-hand side saying a momentlater after finishing the meat cutting ‘‘well thatolive oil sounds really good!’’. The femaleresponds by saying that she will save some oilfor the SP so that she [the salesperson] can getto taste it.’ (Field notes, 10-26-02)
While both consumers and the sales
personnel shared thoughts and
experiences related to travel, food
consumption experiences and foreign
products, consumers took an active role
in selecting the topics and directing the
progression and terms of the interaction.
In fact, some consumers took advantage
of this rare situation where they could
demonstrate their cultural knowledge by
telling the salesperson stories.
‘they like to talk with me about what they’rebuying . . . I like it when people like give mestories. Like they’ll buy something and they’llgive me a long story about how their motherused to fix them for ‘em when they were little.And, you know, we can talk about that.’(Interview, W-F-20s)
The stories were part of the active display
and communication of specialised
knowledge, experiences and skills
related to foreign cultures. The context of
telling stories was also opportune for
practising cultural skills rarely used in
everyday life, such as speaking in
German or French. Indeed, during the
participant observation, the researcher
captured one consumer-driven
interaction carried out in French. These
acts of speaking in French can be
conceived in terms of Goffman’s (1959)
distinction between the expression one
‘gives’ and the expression one ‘gives off’.
The display of specialised, rare and
valorised language skills corresponds to
the expression that the consumer gives,
and the cultural significance of this self-
display relates to the expression that is
‘given off’— the idea that consumers
shared with grocery store management
an affiliation with the cultural other. The
significance of consumers’ active
engagement in the setting and the French
utterances resides in the fact that they
represent agentic acts, realised without
marketers’ direction or
predetermination.
Drama content: Organising the
cultural meanings of performances
Drama content is a second new
dimension of shopping dramaturgy. As
previously stated, drama content refers
to a cultural resource that provides the
framework within which the drama’s
meaning, plot and characters can come
together. Drama content also fosters
differentiated consumption experiences.
The grocery-store context illustrates the
organisation of drama and here drama
content references cultural otherness. As
cultural otherness was the overarching
theme of the grocery-store servicescape,
the grocery store became a site for the
consumption of cultural difference
(Firat, 1995). The grocery store was a
place where both the comfort-seeking,
post-tourist (Ritzer and Liska, 1997) and
the post-Fordist, authenticity-seeking
tourist explorer met (Urry, 1990). As
pointed out by the manager, elements of
the scene evoked an idea of the grocery
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store as a genuine ‘European’ grocery
store. The part-time employee conveyed
this during an interview:
‘Um, I think that a lot of places try toAmericanize. Umm, any store that’s, um, notnative to the United States . . .Uh, like I’ve hadpeople who take Spanish tell me that when theygo to, um, any, any like type of Mexicanrestaurant, that it’s toned, the food’s toneddown a little for American tastes. Not quite as, Idon’t know, spicy, things like that. Umm . . . soI think that if, um, we did something, anythingto, umm, make the place seem Americanized, Ithink we’d just be kind of undermining whatwe were trying to do here, which is ignore[laughs] completely the fact that we’re a store inthe United States.’ (Interview, W-F-20s)
The quote resonates with a sense of
reflexivity about the compression of
space in a globalised economy (Waters,
1995). More importantly, the quote
resonates with the idea that the grocery
store purposefully utilised culturally-
other content to facilitate consumption
experiences (MacCannell, 1973) and this
content was inherently ‘Americanised’,
intertwined with the US cultural context
of its appropriation (eg Lu and Fine,
1995). Probably what makes cultural
otherness a valued organising resource
of shopping experiences is that it is a
fluid category with permeable
boundaries, making the grocery store a
site for crafting a ‘cultural mosaic’ of
differentiated experiences that blend
elements from multiple cultures (Firat,
1995).
The malleable, polysemic content of
cultural otherness enables the marketer
to service the consumers’ discrepant
expectations and experiences, as
suggested in the following interview
excerpt.
‘Oh . . .well, you know, like I say, it depends onthe customer. If it’s an American person,they’re gonna look at it and they’re gonnathink, ‘‘I’ve never seen this before. This istotally different.’’ Or, ‘‘Oh wow! I haven’t seenthis since I was in France ten years ago.’’ All ofa sudden I’m remembering my wonderfulvacation. Or, if it’s an, if it’s a German student,who’s been studying abroad for eight months,and they really miss Mom and Dad, and theycome in and they see this Ritter sport bar, and it
has German on it, it’s gonna make ‘em feelhomesick. So it depends on the customer really.’(Interview, W-F-30s)
For foreigners the cultural otherness of
the grocery store provided a set of signs
that were ‘temporally’ or ‘corporally’
indexical (Grayson and Shulman, 2000).
These signs evoked associations with
persons and times in distant places and
the past. These signs may also have
evoked nostalgia (Schindler and
Holbrook, 2003). On the other hand, for
Americans, the servicescape provided a
context in which cultural otherness
might be incorporated into an internally
differentiated social self (Cook and
Crang, 1996) who experienced foreign
cultural identities (James, 1996), or gazed
voyeuristically at cultural diversity for its
aesthetic value (Urry, 1990).
In this capacity as a repository of
cultural otherness, the grocery store
became the vehicle for moving the
consumer ‘out of the ordinary’ (Urry,
1990) state of being.
‘I think that it’s trying to . . . help you forgetjust for a second. To just kind of remove youfrom ordinary life into something . . . It dependson who you are. For Americans it’s trying toremove you from ordinary life and to move youinto something different for once. Just, just tomake you forget for a second, that, of the hustleand bustle of what’s outside.’ (Interview, W-F-20s)
The grocery store facilitated a temporary
disconnection from the midwestern
cultural context, enabling consumers to
escape the North American consumer
way of life (eg Arnould and Price, 1993).
In a sense, the cultural content mobilised
in the grocery-store shopping experience
enabled consumers, like post-tourists, to
realise a ‘liminoid’ state (Turner, 1986), a
temporary transcendence of everyday
roles and statuses.
DISCUSSION
The purpose of this paper was to extend
the dramaturgical framework of the
shopping experience by distinguishing
between drama structure, drama interaction
Extending the dramaturgical framework in marketing
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 246–256 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817 253
and drama content. To bridge research
focused on the substantive and
communicative staging of shopping
experiences, the paper built on prior
studies in marketing and consumer
research. It used data from a particular
shopping context to illustrate the analytic
value of the newly differentiated drama
structure, drama interaction and drama
content components of the extended
dramaturgical framework. The paper
makes four contributions.
First, the paper demarcated drama
structure from drama content. This
distinction provides a better
understanding of the relationship
between the structural and cultural
resources that operate in the organisation
of shopping performances. The paper
proposed that drama structure provides
the theatrical components instrumental
for the organisation of performances;
however, drama structure alone is
insufficient for a comprehensive
understanding of shopping as drama. In
order to understand how drama creates
value-adding shopping performances
one must go beyond the formal
components of drama. Researchers also
need to pay attention to the cultural
resources through which the
components of the drama structure gain
coherence and intelligibility.
Secondly, the paper introduced drama
interaction as a dimension of drama
performance. Previous studies have
focused on examining consumers in the
role of the audience rather than as active
participants or actors. Extending the
dramaturgical framework to include
interaction between consumers and
marketers enabled a set of behaviours to
be recognised related to active
participation and shaping of drama
performances over the course of
interactions. For example, agentic
consumers enact behaviours that both
give and give off certain impressions that
affect performance outcomes, including
those for less-active consumer audiences.
Observations affirmed the role of active
consumer agency in providing resources
for the variation of the performance
script rather than merely supporting the
service providers’ delivery roles.
Consumers’ spontaneous participation
in the drama illustrated the importance
of focusing on consumers’ active roles in
shaping, redirecting and structuring the
unfolding of performances.
Thirdly, the paper introduced drama
content as an integral component of the
dramaturgical framework. As pointed
out by Holt (2003), commercial products
such as brands become more valuable
when they tap into rich cultural
narratives. These cultural resources
provide coherence, coordination and
direction for the performances. This
paper introduced the concept of drama
content and distinguished between
cultural-self and cultural-other-focused
drama performances, which helped to
isolate two types of cultural resources
operative in performances. The context
drew on Anglo-French cultural resources
in organising the shopping experience
and revealed a new avenue of research
into the use of specific narrative
resources in the creation of shopping
performances. Future research should
try to extend the repertoire of drama
content by examining specific types of
cultural-self and cultural-other-focused
dramas by borrowing theoretical
concepts and frameworks from the
humanities and anthropology.
Fourthly, this research highlighted the
role of cultural otherness in the
organisation of shopping environments
and experiences, which previous
research has not investigated. In line with
Holt (2003), who suggested that
managers should look closely into
culture for specific narrative resources,
this study pointed out that businesses
could pay more attention to foreign
cultural scripts as resources for the
organisation of value-adding shopping
experiences.
CONCLUSION
For researchers, this study indicates the
value of bringing the consumer into the
Risto Moisio and Eric J. Arnould
254 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 246–256 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
drama as an active rather than as a
passive character. Active consumer
participation in the performance creates
positive shopping experiences by
enabling consumers to play along with
the drama and to appropriate the cultural
resources necessary for these
experiences. From a managerial
standpoint, the study points out that
managers could facilitate consumers’
interactive and co-communicative roles
in appropriate shopping environments.
Furthermore, managers could provide
consumers with the possibility of taking
more dominant roles in shopping
performances, roles that can shape the
unfolding of the drama. In conclusion,
the extended dramaturgical framework
could help to elaborate and deepen
research related to the orchestration of
shopping experiences.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first author wishes to acknowledge
the financial support of Kauhajoen
kulttuurisaatio and the William Levitt
Foundation. In addition, the first author
wishes to acknowledge the valuable help
of Fleura Bardhi, Mariam Beruchashvili,
Dr James W. Gentry, Michelle Jacobs and
Susie Pryor, all from the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
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