Eating Out: The Role of Social and Cultural Practices in Shaping Consumption Experiences

Abstract

The idea of an experiential dimension to consumption disrupted different fields of social sciences concerned with generating a more nuanced understanding of consumption experiences. Askegaard and Linnet (2011), Moisander et al. (2009) and Thompson et al. (2013) have argued that CCT has established a mode of analysis that overly emphasizes individual agency, leading to a hyper-individualizing and sociologically limited approach that has hindered comprehensive investigations of the influences of the sociocultural and historical contexts on consumption. By accepting the idea that experiences are central in the study of consumption and that its formation is informed by the sociocultural context, the objective of this thesis is to generate insights that contribute to a richer understanding of the formation of consumption experiences by situating acts of consumption in a theoretical space that reaches beyond the subjectivity of the individual. To achieve this objective, I explore the sociocultural discourses shaping the understanding of consumption experiences in consumer research and theoretically and empirically examine the role of sociocultural practices in the creation of consumption experiences using the conceptual toolbox of Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1984; 1990). I present a critical analysis showing that consumption experiences and the unfolding personalized narratives of consumers are formed in relation to the interaction of the habitus inherent to the context and providers of the consumption object, and the habitus of the customers. As a result, the consumption experience is shaped by the social and cultural practices as a form of cultural production, that produce and reproduce the culture of their carriers by negotiating the social interaction dynamics by means of the habitus which is made up of different understandings, doings and sayings that provide different experiences. To this extent, I account for what could be conceived as ‘culture-specific’ experiences that come into realization when there is a coherent match of the habitus of context and consumers but also differentiated experiences arise from the interaction of two different cultural habitus when these frameworks come in contact during a consumption practice. Therefore, I offer an interpretation that accounts for the influence of the sociocultural embodiments of practices in the formation of consumption experiences for consumers, from a customer perspective.