Alice in… buying: The consumption of experiences in the worldly experience and aspects of socialization

Abstract

Supported by non-representational theories (NRTs), we focus on the atmosphere of consumption and use a creative method to carry out this research. We consider the details of everyday life not represented, highlighting the roles of the elements in this fluid network. In order to understand how the atmosphere emerges, intensifies, and affects the behavior and modes of consumption, we ask ourselves: How does narrative/participant observation help us to develop interpretations about the way in which the affective bodies of consumers navigate and move around this experience? We seek, in the resource of biographical tradition, to collect a life story linked to the experiences of consumption enjoyed and meant in a commercial point over the years. Our corpus was based on narrative interviews, observation, and documents. From the nine critical incidents retrieved in the temporal experience of the narrative, the analysis revealed eight syntagms that, when encoded, pointed to six constituent meanings of this mode of experience-based consumption, which is driven by everyday situational factors but operate as signifying elements of the sales environment. The consumption experience was found to be a social and affective form of experience emerging in the respondent’s everyday life, whereas the actual consumption was solely a means for the social reaffirmation of the actor in question and the strengthening of her relationships.