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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.

Experiences are not limited to the apparent. Something absent can invade one's perception of the world and become heavier and more forceful than what is present. Absent material can feel imposing, even commanding and restricting the consumer's interaction with the world. In this study, we investigated the cosplayersconsumers at geek conventions who voluntarily dress as a fictional character, to have a theatrical experience and their experience consuming the same themed marketplace stage without its core material. To these consumers, the experience is mainly one of absence, with the absent cosplay making itself present to remind them that they cannot use the convention as a stage, a conflicting experience of free and disengaged anonymity.

Resumo O crescimento da população com mais de 60 anos e o aumento da expectativa de vida têm ampliado a participação de idosos no mercado consumidor. Este fenômeno tem sido ainda mais evidente no mercado de serviços bancários, uma vez que o recebimento da aposentadoria obriga os consumidores da terceira idade a possuírem uma conta bancária. No entanto, a forma como estes consumidores exercem agência nas suas práticas de consumo de serviços financeiros é variável, envolvendo, além de uma posição como consumidor, sua construção como sujeitos. Assim, o artigo tem como objetivo analisar a construção do sujeito-consumidor de serviços bancários na terceira idade. Um estudo empírico foi conduzido através de entrevistas com dez consumidores do município de Progresso - RS - Brasil. Os resultados demonstram que a percepção de capacidade de agência no consumo de serviços bancários na terceira idade é um fenômeno influenciado pela trajetória de vida dos indivíduos e sua capacidade de lidar com o processo de subjetivação. A necessidade de lidar com o outro (pessoas e tecnologias) emerge como limitadora do desejo de se construir como sujeito-consumidor de serviços bancários. Por fim, teoriza-se que a agência do consumidor é construída em consonância com as trajetórias de vida dos indivíduos enquanto consumidores e sujeitos sociais.