How Servicescape Figurations Mediate Socio-Cultural Differences Between Consumers and Rural Migrant Aesthetic Labourers

Consumer researchers have paid scant attention to the structuring influences that socio-cultural differences between customers and service workers exert upon servicescape interactions. This oversight is particularly glaring because, in the global service economy, these occupations are increasingly being filled by workers matriculating from impoverished rural areas (Sassen 2006). To adroitly perform the required practices of aesthetic labour (Witz, Warhurst, and Nickson 2003), these rural migrant workers must acquire new forms of cultural capital and develop new interpersonal habits which significantly diverge from their socialized predispositions. Our analysis highlights the commercially-mediated power relations that create a new class of aesthetic laborers and also bind customers’ and workers’ identities in a network of asymmetrical interdependencies. Through this analysis, we cast a new theoretical light on the institutional shaping of servicescape relationships and the role of the marketplace in producing new identity positions in the global service economy.

Citation:

Tuba Üstüner and Craig J. Thompson (2011) ,"How Servicescape Figurations Mediate Socio-Cultural Differences Between Consumers and Rural Migrant Aesthetic Labourers", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 30-31.