PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explain how online brand communities work to support the denormalization of controversial (i.e. illegal yet normalized) gaming practices.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study was characterized by long-term immersion in an online brand community for Brazilian Xbox gamers. The dataset includes online and offline interactions with community members, interviews, and online archival data.FindingsThis study shows how online brand community members promoted legal gaming in a market where piracy was prevalent. It demonstrates how community members worked to establish coherence; engaged in cognitive participation; developed collective action that extended beyond the community; and reflected on their own work.Research limitations/implicationsThis study identifies online brand communities as a potential ally in combating controversial practices in online gaming; complements individual and behavioral approaches in explaining why consumers adopt controversial practices in online environments; and adds a normalization framework to the toolkit of Internet researchers.Practical implicationsThis study identifies ways in which the potential of online brand communities can be leveraged to reduce consumer adherence to controversial gaming practices through denormalizing these and normalizing alternative practices that may be more desirable to companies and other stakeholders.Originality/valueThis long-term, qualitative study inspired by normalization process theory offers an innovative perspective on the online practices of consumers who engage with a brand in ways that create value for themselves and for the brand.

Seriously engaged consumers create and manage online communities dedicated to brands or consumption activities, but this type of engagement remains under-examined. This study explores the contextual triggers and individual drivers of serious engagement in online communities and explains how seriously engaged consumers navigate the intersection between work and play that characterizes serious engagement. We draw from qualitative data spanning over a decade on the trajectory of four seriously engaged consumers who created and/or managed an online brand community for players of Microsoft's Xbox. Three contextual triggers (market-specific practices, marketplace shifts, sociotechnical advancements), when aligned with individual drivers (relevant skills and expertise, entrepreneurial vision, personal commitment), motivate consumers who have been engaged with a brand or consumption activity to deepen their engagement, becoming managers of or launching an online brand community. Consumers can navigate the in-between space of serious leisure through knowledge development or searching for personal fulfillment and/or external recognition. These findings support several contributions to the literature on consumer engagement: demonstrating the vital role seriously engaged consumers play in online community development; drawing attention to contextual triggers and individual drivers of consumer engagement that have not been addressed in prior research; and exploring how consumers navigate the in-between space arising from serious engagement in online communities, finding routes that can lead to deeper engagement in the community itself or redirect it to alternative targets.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how the physical and sensory environmental triggers interact with subjective consumer evaluations in the production of shopping experiences, an under-investigated theme, despite its relevance. Design/methodology/approach An interpretative multi-method approach was used by combining video observation with camera eyeglasses and in-depth interviews with 30 customers of a department store. Findings Results offer a holistic framework with four-dimensional axial combination involving physical comfort, psychological comfort, physical product evaluation and sensorial product evaluation. Based on this framework, results highlight the role of comfort and products in producing shopping experience in ordinary store visits. Research limitations/implications The findings contribute both to consumer experience studies and to the retail marketing literature in shading a light on experience production in ordinary store visits. Specifically, we detail these visits not as a static response to a given environment stimulus, but as a simultaneous objective and subjective combination able to produce experience. Practical implications The results encourage managers to understand the experience production not just as an outcome of managerially influenced elements, like décor or odor. It involves considering subjective elements in the design of consumers’ physical and sensorial retail experiences. Originality/value Adopting an innovative method of empirical data collection, results generated a framework that integrates the objective shopping environment and subjective consumer responses. This research considers the role of comfort and product features and quality both physically and sensorially to develop experiences in a holistic manner in ordinary shopping visits.

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