Consumer tactics: micropolitical players transforming service culture

ABSTRACT

Combining the performance theoretical tradition that acknowledges the co-construction of service encounters with the concept of consumer tactics, this study exposes the ways in which the scripted theaters of everyday service interaction turn into micropolitical playing fields in which consumers creatively make use of situational offerings. The dramatistic analysis of service narratives identifies a variety of consumer tactics that illustrate how they employ gameful cultural resources to navigate through the uncertainty of unusual and challenging service situations. The study introduces gamefulness into consumers’ political agency and argues that in gameful service situations creative consumer tactics can either resist cultural inequalities arising in the service context or playfully reinforce service improvisation. Furthermore, as it regards routine service as a site of micropolitics in which consumers as tactical players participate in the co-construction of service performance, the study suggests that consumers may subtly transform service culture, especially beyond the scripted domain.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumer tactics
• gamefulness
• scripted service encounter
• performance theory
• micropolitics
• dramatism

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants of the breakout session, Market Actors, of the Consumers and Consumption at Yale Symposium held in New Haven on 31 March 2017 for their insightful suggestions, comments, and discussion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, in third wave feminism, micropolitics is essential for cultural change as it takes into account intersectionality and various systems of oppression (Genz 2006; Maclaran 2015; Mann 1994).

2 The data were generated within a research project whose main goal was to produce knowledge regarding service experiences to aid the consumer-driven development of services and retail.

3 Social drama, in the context of narratives, refers to the description of an aharmonic or a disharmonic interaction recovery process that begins with a norm-breaking breach and is followed by a crisis, redressive action, and reintegration (Turner 1974, 38–42).

4 Story 7 is a detailed description of a series of events that has been radically shortened.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation Funding Agency; the Foundation for Economic Education under Grant 5-2967; Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Notes on contributors

Eliisa Kylkilahti

Eliisa Kylkilahti is a University Lecturer and consumer researcher in the Department of Economics and Managementat the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include political agency of consumers and cultural change ofeveryday life, especially among young people.

Minna Autio

Minna Autio is a Professor at the Department of Education at the Universityof Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests have focused on youth research and consumption, a greening of society, consumereducation as well as consumer policy issues, such as the use of instant loans and position of vulnerable consumers.