دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی جنبه های قهرمانانه تقابل های خرده فروشی: ایلاد هولستر - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Much has been written about myth and the marketplace. Consumer research has added immeasurably to academics’ appreciation of the myths that inhere in fabulous flagship stores and experiential retailing more generally. Studies of consumer mythopoeia, however, have tended to muffle the martial side of retailing, the heroic struggles that some customers undergo in-store. This article argues that the epic offers valuable insights into martial matters, and more. Although epic and myth overlap, they are far from identical. The former is characterized by conventions that can help illuminate consumers’ quests, not least their disturbing journeys through the underworld. These are considered in relation to Hollister (HCo), a phenomenally successful retail chain that’s renowned for its antithetical atmospherics and inky interior design. A qualitative study of Hollister lovers and haters casts light on the epic in action and adds to scholars’ understanding of immersive retailing experiences. © 2017 New York University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conclusion

Storytelling, according to Salmon (2010), bewitches modern managers’ minds. And myth is a primal form of storytelling that has many contemporary champions, not least on the consultancy circuit (Mark and Pearson 2001; Randazzo 1995). Executives are routinely urged to myth-inform their brands, then turn them into legends (Vincent 2002). Today’s brands, Holt (2004, p. 59) contends, compete in “myth markets” and thereby deliver “symbolic sustenance” to consumers. “The telling of product and brand-based myths,” Caruana and Glozer (2014, p. 199) claim, “serves to ameliorate existential ambiguities surrounding personal identity burdens.”

Myth has cornered the market among culturally inclined retailing and consumer researchers(Arnould 2005; Arnould and Thompson 2005). Epic, by contrast, rarely features on retailers’ radar, except as a superlative, an adjectival intensifier that’s primarily employed for sales promotional purposes (epic offers, epic deals, epic prices, etc.). Yet the epic, as a literary genre, offers an alternative perspective on marketplace matters, a perspective that is related to, yet different from, the myth-shaped stories that dominate academicians’ discourse and the storied solutions sold by management consultants.