A multi-sited ethnographic marketing inquiry into the experiences produced and undergone at shopping malls : the case of malls in Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

Overview & Synopsis

This research focuses on shopping centers and on the shopping and consuming experiences produced and undergone within these retail spaces in different cities and in different regions of the world. Although significant work has been done on this topic in developed economies, significantly less has been devoted to emerging economies and even less has been done in comparative terms. This work builds on the existing Consumer Culture Theory related literature and it attempts to address current gaps in this body of work, as well as to provide managerial recommendations based on research findings. It differentiates itself from previous research on shopping centers on four main aspects: (1) By studying the phenomenon of shopping centers in Latin America, a largely unexplored domain; (2) By adding a multicultural perspective to the body of research on consumer and shopping experiences at shopping centers through the study of cases in five different cities; (3) By establishing a process of case selection to provide a priori variability of cases; (4) By comparing on ¨continuum¨ (Carù & Cova, 2007; Roederer, 2008) the full array of shopping experiences: produced, undergone and co-driven (Csaba and Askegaard, 1999; Tsai, 2010) and assessing whether these experiences vary across locations as well as the possible causes of variation.