Boutique Conference on Consumption Experiences

In our 21st century economy, increasing numbers of products and services are consumed for the physiological, psychological, emotional, hedonic, or social experiences they provide. The traditional approach to understanding consumption experiences has been a one-way model: firms create products, services, and experiences, which people consume and, in turn, reward the firm with positive word-of-mouth and loyalty. Yet, a robust literature suggests that people co-create value during the consumption of a product or service. More importantly, each person co-creates value in a unique way. Consequently, consumers and marketers will benefit from a clearer understanding of the factors that inform and shape the meaning of consumption experiences.

This boutique conference will focus on providing insight into the antecedents to, and conceptualization of, consumption experiences. We will adopt a “big tent” approach and encourage papers from a variety of frameworks, including social cognition, consumer culture theory, survey and experimental research, behavioral economics, ethnography, and others. We hope to receive papers on experiential learning, sensation, response intensity, experience framing, experience management, adaptation and sensitization, conflicting realities, sensory information integration, and lived narratives. These issues can be studied across a broad set of domains, including food consumption, media consumption, consumption of ideas, and immersive hedonic experiences.