How Consumption Provides a Relational Understanding of Place

Introduction

Most often, studies in marketing take an ‘object’ view of place. This means place is approached mainly from a functional or utilitarian and commercial perspective. Questions of meaningfulness of place and relational understandings of place are not of primary concern in these studies. As Chatzidakis, McEachern & Warnaby (2017) note, place is one of the four P’s that optimizes marketing outcomes. However, the idea of showcasing place in terms of fashion has been one such context that has been probably understudied. Online consumption of fashion plays an important role in showcasing place. The chapter speaks of Durga Puja as a particular context where the online fashion bloggers influence not only fashion choices but also promote a particular physical place in a social setting.

Typically, studies that take an ‘object’ view of place would include literature on the influence of country-of-origin of products and brands on consumers, and depending on how consumers perceive products from a certain country-of-origin can be marketed as such. Studies that view cities as objects consider how the city’s identity or image can be marketed to target segments such as tourists or stakeholders. This has an important implication on influencing consumption of fashion from a particular place. The role of social media comes in at this juncture which allows for the fashion influencers to showcase new fashion especially through specialized social media promotion that is based and directed on a place such as Kolkata during Durga Puja. No doubt, any value of place from a consumer perspective in place-as-object oriented studies necessarily involves some connection, advantage or benefit in a place-related consumption context and therefore affirms, establishes or is reflective of a certain nature/type of relationship with place. This could be in terms of a functional benefit, as in choice of a product from a certain country that offers product superiority as in quality, or in terms of the economical as in cheap imports from a certain country. Place-identity and place-image studies may reiterate the object-value of a place from a personal, cultural or tourism perspective.