Experiences
Rebecca Scott, Julien Cayla, Bernard Cova, Selling Pain to the Saturated Self, Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 44, Issue 1, June 2017, Pages 22–43
Abstract How can we comprehend people who pay for an experience marketed as painful? On one hand, consumers spend billions of dollars every year to alleviate different kinds of pain. On the other hand, millions of individuals participate in extremely painful leisure pursuits. In trying to understand this conundrum, we ethnographically study a popular adventure challenge where participants subject themselves to electric shocks, fire, and freezing water. Through sensory intensification, pain brings the body into sharp focus, allowing individuals to rediscover their corporeality. In addition, painful extraordinary experiences operate as regenerative escapes from the self. By flooding the consciousness with gnawing unpleasantness, pain provides a temporary relief from the burdens of self-awareness. Finally, when leaving marks and wounds, pain helps consumers create the story of a fulfilled life. In a context of decreased physicality, market operators play a major role in selling pain to the saturated selves of knowledge workers, who use pain as a way to simultaneously escape reflexivity and craft their life narrative.
Cova, Bernard & Carù, Antonella & Cayla, Julien. (2018). Re-conceptualizing escape in consumer research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal. 21. 00-00.
Abstract This paper examines the notion of escape, which is central to the consumer experience literature, yet remains largely undertheorized. By surfacing the multi-dimensionality of escape, we develop a more fine-grained conceptualization of this notion. In addition, our work helps shed new light on past consumer research findings that mobilize the notion of escape. The paper is based on a review and interpretation of literature referring to the notion of escape in consumer research. Our first contribution is to extend the concept of escape based on the Turnerian framework of structure/anti-structure, by establishing a key difference between objects to ‘escape from’ and the major themes of ‘escape into’. A second contribution is to identify other forms of escape that are mundane, restorative and warlike, and that mobilize the self in different ways. Practical implications We provide a more precise conceptualization of escape to motivate further research on this particularly important concept for understanding consumer experience. This paper goes beyond past research on escape by identifying other types of escapes, which have not really been theorized in consumer research. We especially note the importance of ephemeral moments where people temporarily suspend their reflexive self which we conceive as a new type of escape route.