Taking the “multimodal turn” in interpreting consumption experiences

This paper highlights the contributions of sociosemiotically informed multimodal research in framing and systematically interpreting experiential consumption phenomena. By dint of tried and tested sociosemiotic mappings of cultural practices, consumer researchers may benefit considerably by following available avenues for the modal segmentation of cultural practices, inasmuch as by methodically yielding stratified accounts of experiences in terms of configurations that comprise metafunctions, modes and semiotic resources. As argued throughout this paper, the pursuit of a sociosemiotic avenue in cultural consumer research allows for comparisons across studies, of seamlessness and of maximal integration across different analytical/interpretive levels, thus constituting a potentially indispensable device for modeling consumption experiences.