The branded carnival: the dark magic of consumer excitement

ABSTRACT

This ethnography outlines experiences of the marketer-facilitated World Series of Beer Pong. Consumers, in carnival spirit, augment marketer-facilitated mimetic (moderate, controlled) forms of experience with non-mimetic (dangerous, uncontrolled) consumption rituals, enacted in pursuit of contemporary excitement. Consumers serendipitously hijack the facilitating brand’s ideology resulting in the promotion of marketplace tensions. This study contributes to marketing and consumer culture theory by extending current experiential marketing frameworks via the introduction of the branded carnival, a non-mimetic communal brand-centric phenomenon; showing how non-mimetic excitement emerges in marketplace contexts; highlighting the implications for experiential and brand community marketers; and positioning the branded carnival within a broader cultural gravitation towards non-mimetic behaviour opposing marketplace ideology. Finally, limitations are discussed, and directions for further research are suggested. Readers are encouraged to engage with carnival spirit: profanities go uncensored.     

品牌劫持:旅游目的地形象异化演进过程研究

到访旅游者网络口碑传播对目的地形象有着越来越重要的影响。因此,该研究基于旅游者权力理论,将旅游者视为与DMO一样的能动主体,对应DMO投射形象提出了旅游者投射形象的概念,进而将旅游者对目的地形象的认知过程从原有的单一个体模型拓展到时间阶段和影响主体更为完整的群体网络状模型。研究进一步通过比较到访旅游者和DMO传播对潜在旅游者引致形象形成过程的影响力,提出当旅游者投射形象比DMO投射形象被更多的旅游者所接受时,就会发生品牌劫持现象。文章结合普洛格(Plog)提出的目的地生命周期理论,分析了此种情况之下目的地形象异化的演进过程,并为目的地营销工作的改进提供了具体的建议。