Purpose -The literature holds few contributions regarding the sensory environment of small, privately-owned retail stores. Hence, this paper seeks to explore the sensory experience of patrons of a small boutique. Design/methodology/approach -The study uses photo-elicitation to examine the experience of the sensory retail environment of patrons of a small fashion boutique in the North West of England.Participants were asked to "show me how it feels to shop here" by taking photographs to depict their sensory in-store experiences. Follow up interviews were carried out to explore the participants' sensory experiences and then qualitative content analysis was used to identify the typical "likes" and "dislikes" regarding aspects of the sensory environment. Findings -The findings reveal that it is not just tangible things that can affect a shopper's experience, but store traits such as smell, lighting and presence of owner-manager can also influence a consumer's experience.Research limitations/implications -By providing an illustration case study, this paper provides a visual method for researching shopping experience from a sensory perspective. This research concerned small fashion boutiques. Other research as well as this study indicates that studies of sensory environments in other kinds of boutiques could produce different findings. Practical implications -The paper is intended not only to equip small fashion retailers with an understanding of why some customers dwell and return to browse, but also to help them discern what it is that shoppers want to experience while shopping. Managerial implications are offered with the aim of converting patronage into sales to support survival of small fashion retailers. Originality/value -This paper contributes to the literature on small to medium-sized enterprise fashion retailing and the sensory experience of fashion shopping. The identification of sensory touch points in small fashion boutiques helps owner-managers to understand female shoppers and provides a handrail for thinking up new ways of improving shopping experiences.

In this article, we suggest that management research constitutes a field of practice that is made practically intelligible through embodied enactment. This relies on imagination, constructing modes of belonging within communities of management research practice. Undergraduate students constitute a significant audience towards whom these self-presentational performances are directed. Our analysis is based on findings from four UK business schools where students participated in a free drawing and focus group exercise and were asked to visualize a management researcher. Through identification of three dominant animal metaphors of management research practice, we explore the symbolic relations whereby a prevailing image of the management researcher, as untouchable, solitary, aggressive, competitive and careerist, is socially constructed. We argue that this competitive, self-interested impression of research is detrimental to ethical, critically reflexive, reciprocal and participatory modes of research, and to the development of management research as a broadly inclusive system of social learning.

The purpose of this research reflection is to set the stage for a more detailed research agenda in exploring event sport tourism experiences of support partners (SPs) during events. Using photo elicitation the article presents a preliminary empirical case study. Visual materials were assembled by three female participants to interrogate how SPs experience 'spectator space' and explore the processes that produced those experiences, an area of study that remains relatively unexplored in leisure research. Initial findings show how waiting to see the triathlete can be anxiety-provoking but the release of emotion when smiles are exchanged constitute core activities of being there. However, there are more questions than answers and there is a need for further inquiry. Suggestions for future research on the impact of serious leisure on intimate others are given.

We never considered how hard it was for our fathers to go to work every day, toiling away at a job they didn’t like. And even worse, seemingly having no other choices because their families were depending on them for their very existence. Growing up, our fathers did not have time for family; spending time with us was something remote from their daily life, making them a stranger in each of their perspective homes. Worse still, We were too young to understand why our fathers were not present. This essay reveals how we have attempted to make sense of the experience this distance between us and our fathers has caused in order to detoxify our individual images of our fathers. Detoxifying the image of father means recognizing that our fathers’ have been wounded as well.

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