Producers Consuming: Marketer Identity and the Creation of the Themed Retail Environment

This paper reports an ethnographic study in Irish pubs in Toronto, Canada, that investigates identity creation processes in this socio-commercial space. Rather than look solely at consumers’ identity projects therein we cast the producer in the role of consumer. Drawing from research on identity and co-creation we investigate how owner/mangers undertake the marketing process, how the displays and practices that constitute the pub are informed by the marketer’s identity, how customer’s actions and reactions shape the pub, and how the particular, situated Irish pub cultures are produced. The Irish pub serves as a useful context to study up close how marketers’ identity projects meet consumers’ co-creation processes to create unique outcomes.

Citation:

Aron Darmody and Eileen Fischer (2011) ,"Producers Consuming: Marketer Identity and the Creation of the Themed Retail Environment", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 620-621.