Joonas ROKKA

Consumer experiences often build on resonant atmospheres that touch, seduce, or thrill consumers. Lack of resonance can diminish an atmosphere, alienate consumers, and render experiences meaningless. However, the way in which consumers contribute to atmospheres’ evolving resonance and plural nature has nonetheless been undertheorized. We address this question by operationalizing the concept of spheres of resonance, which we develop based on a multi-sited ethnography at the iconic holiday resort Club Med. Drawing on theory of resonance, we explain atmospheres are consumed through co-evolving spheres of resonance emerging in bodily encounters that momentarily envelop people and groups. Our findings show how these spheres co-exist but can also overlap, merge, and clash, influencing how atmospheres are felt and mobilized. Overall, we expand prior understandings of consumption atmospheres beyond a “mono-spherical” view and contribute to theory on the dynamics of atmospheres and resonance in consumer research.

"This article examines the dynamics of affective atmospheres in explaining compelling touristic service experiences. Extending affect-theoretical research, we theorize and examine the role of affective bodily encounters through which convivial atmospheres are (re)produced. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research in iconic Club Med resorts, our findings emphasize the spontaneity and fragility of convivial affective atmospheres, meaning they are difficult to control, but also how their ongoing “bubbling” is shaped by materiality, ritual activities, and temporality. We contribute by (1) developing the concept of convivial affective atmosphere, and by (2) offering a theoretical framework that helps advance research into the affective entanglement and dynamics of atmospheres in tourism. Finally, we critically discuss what service providers can do to facilitate and re-produce convivial atmospheres."

This article conceptualizes algorithmic consumer culture, and offers a framework that sheds new light on two previously conflicting theorizations: that (1) digitalization tends to liquefy consumer culture and thus acts primarily as an empowering force, and that (2) digitalized marketing and big data surveillance practices tend to deprive consumers of all autonomy. By drawing on critical social theories of algorithms and AI, we define and historicize the now ubiquitous algorithmic mediation of consumption, and then illustrate how the opacity, authority, non-neutrality, and recursivity of automated systems affect consumer culture at the individual, collective, and market level. We propose conceptualizing ‘algorithmic articulation’ as a dialectical techno-social process that allows us to enhance our understanding of platform-based marketer control and consumer resistance. Key implications and future avenues for exploring algorithmic consumer culture are discussed.

This study extends prior research seeking to understand the reproduction and persistence of excessive busyness in professional settings by addressing the relationship between organizational controls and temporal experiences. Drawing on 146 interviews and more than 300 weekly diaries in two professional service firms, we develop a framework centered on the emerging concept of optimal busyness, an attractive, short-lived temporal experience which people try to reproduce/prolong because it makes them feel energized and productive as well as in control of their time. Our findings show that individuals continuously navigate between different temporal experiences separated by a fine line: quiet time, optimal busyness, and excessive busyness, and that optimal busyness that they strive for is a fragile and fleeting state difficult to achieve and maintain. We show that these temporal experiences are the effect of the temporality of controls—that is, the ability of controls to shape professionals’ temporal experience through structuring, rarefying, and synchronizing temporality. Moreover, we find that professionals who regularly face high temporal pressures seek to cope with these by attempting to construct/prolong optimal busyness through manipulating the pace, focus, and length of their temporal experiences, a process we call control of temporality. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the (re)production of busyness, which can explain why professionals in their attempts to feel in control of their work time routinely result in them overworking.