Rituals and routines: reflecting change, redefining meaning, recasting scope

Rituals and routines are universal. Increasingly, as our personal, emotional, professional, and financial existence is recognised as momentarily changeable (e.g. Campbell et al., 2019), rituals and routines can help assuage this pervasive unpredictability by providing meaning, structure and connection for individuals as well as social groups. Scholarly research on (consumer) rituals offers a way in which to better understand spiritual, cultural and communal beliefs (e.g. Moufahim & Lichrou, 2019; Rodner & Preece, 2019; Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991) with opportunities for service providers to recognise, facilitate and even create consumer practices (Cayla et al., 2013; Otnes et al., 2018; Provis, 2020). Rituals tend towards the collective and are characterised by prescribed tradition, formality, customs, regularity and procedure; routines reflect personal habits, are often less meaningful, and do not typically prompt behavioural responses from others. Fascination with rituals and routines can be attributed to what they reveal about the socio-cultural context in which they are embedded, as well as how related symbolism and habits indicate the inter-relationships between the individual self and social collectives (Branco-Illodo & Heath, 2020; Canning & Szmigin, 2010; Close & Zinkhan, 2006; Marshall, 2005; Shepherd & Kay, 2019).

Despite what is already known about rituals and routines and their contexts (e.g. special holidays, life-changing events, personal experiences such as grooming, as well as shared experiences including food consumption and sport), the introduction of new technologies, extended periods of transition, the renewed emphasis on customer experience, and the adaptation of existing rituals suggest a plethora of important avenues for further research. The purpose of this special issue is to offer a contemporary perspective on rituals and routines which expands our understanding through identifying (r)evolution of practices, re-evaluating rituals and routines and their contemporary meaning, as well as exploring the range and extent to which roles, responsibilities, behaviours, beliefs and norms of marketplace actors are recast. Importantly, this special issue identifies and explores the complexities associated with rituals and routines, analysing how these are shaped and leveraged, self-policed and managed, as well as reinvented. Using a variety of methods (i.e. literature review, ethnography, netnography, autoethnography and in-depth interviews) the articles included here offer new perspectives on market actors as well as individuals and groups.

The first paper in this special issue underscores the importance of rituals to marketing managers and those enacting the roles of marketers in the marketplace. In ‘Shining the spotlight on marketplace rituals: a review and research agenda’ Sreekumar et al. (2023) highlight the limited research attention given to marketers and stakeholders who leverage rituals to shape customer experiences. By examining literature in the top 50 major marketing journals, the authors propose 7 functional categories that pertain to customer experience, illustrating how these functions are utilised to meet specific goals. This paper explains how a typology of functions can facilitate practitioners’ understanding as they seek to incorporate rituals as a strategic marketing tool.

Porter et al. (2023) also offer insight for marketers but from a consumer perspective in ‘Hen Dos and Don’t: lifting the veil on tensions in consumer rituals’. Through identification of the tensions that emerge in both the planning and experiences of this pre-marital event, their paper explores the evolution of the ‘hen party’ – a rite of passage. The resulting consumer strategies to manage such tensions provide an understanding of self-policing as a form of boundary work. Further, the increased marketisation of hen parties and the ensuing multiplier effect illustrates not only increased consumption experiences but also the associated financial impact of taking part, raising potentially negative outcomes of ritual engagement.

A new ritual is introduced in ‘Use it or lose it?: exploring the grey area of dormant possessions and the role of rituals in value dynamics of household objects’. Rather than a focus on spend, Assima et al. (2023) examine how consumers value, over time, their extant possessions in domestic space. Using wardrobe ethnography to identify dormant possessions pending revalorisation, the findings introduce ‘reinvestment rituals’ a new form of rituals that allow for the extension of the life of a possession. Importantly, the implications of the research include pathways to value creation that relate to the circular economy. Promoting sustainability through reinvestment rituals could have a potentially positive societal impact.

A ritual and its temporality is re-evaluated to offer new insight into a brand community in ‘The influence of ritual efficacy on ritual vitality: temporal plaiting in the vestaval’. Bradford and Sherry (2023) examine the importance of rituals as a lens through which to examine time as it shapes ritual performance and participant experience. Long-term ethnography of collegiate tailgating extends an understanding of ritual performance from a liminal perspective, arguing for a more fluid (vs linear) conceptualisation of how critical ritual moments (Kairos) emerge and subsequently structure the ritual experience.

Routines are ways in which time can be organised and managed. While consumption routines are seemingly banal and mundane, ‘Everyday consumption during COVID-19’ reveals how important such routines are to day-to-day well-being and as a source of continuity. Employing an autoethnographic approach, Canavan (2023) illustrates how routines help define, preserve and give meaning to daily life. While the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted rituals and routines, this paper illustrates consumer resilience, rooted in the practical, imaginative, and cynical responses of family to pandemic restrictions.

The articles selected for this special issue highlight the scope and complexity of rituals and routines adopted and adapted by consumer and marketplace actors across a range of spectacular and everyday contexts. Each paper offers ideas for further research that include exploring how rituals and routines can be better incorporated into the development of marketing strategy; further (re)conceptualisation of ritual (re)valorisation from individual to social to environmental impact; extending an understanding of the importance of rituals in revealing distinct dimensions of consumer experience as well as how these are managed; and examining how rituals and routines can be variously employed as a resource for coping and consumer wellbeing. While this special issue has broadened the scope of rituals and routines inquiry, it should be used as a basis to generate further discussion of this socially meaningful and rich interdisciplinary subject matter.

Finally, we would like to extend our enormous gratitude to all the reviewers who supported us and facilitated the development of the manuscripts. We are truly grateful.