'Looking good, feeling better': Consumption, Control and the Aesthetics of Exclusivity in the Service Encounter

The majority of ‘service’ literature has focused on the production side of service work (i.e. employees and management), while treating the role of the customer and/or consumer as secondary (Korczynski and Ott, 2004). Those authors who have addressed the role consumption plays in shaping and maintaining individuals' self- identity have tended to overemphasize the dominance of consumer culture in shaping ‘our consciousness’ (Ritzer, 1999), with little in the way of empirical evidence to support these assertions. This paper develops the conceptualization of service work and consumer culture literature, by placing more emphasis on the customer in the service encounter. Using an ethnographic study of a ‘high class’ department store, this paper addresses employee and customer identity and the nature of managerial, employee and customer control within this ‘exclusive’ context. Of particular interest is how employees and customer’s ‘embody’ this control. Using Bourdieu’s (1986) conception of class and habitus, the concept of exclusivity goes beyond the management /service worker dyad by providing a means of investigating identity control by the organization over both customers and service workers. However, an organization’s exclusivity is not a closed normative pursuit of control, and shows this enterprise is part of a contested terrain, while revealing the ambiguity and ‘openness’ of control practices and pursuits. In order to uphold the ideal of exclusivity, management, service workers and customers must all engage in a precarious quest for establishing and maintaining a sense of control and/or identity. This paper demonstrates the continuing contradiction between bureaucratic practices of control and consumer culture, and highlights the need for research that investigates the context -dependent nature of control in service-related and consumer studies.

Changes in social identity when joining a new group: The role of individual-level and group-level adaptation processes

While classic intergroup theories have specified the processes explaining situational shifts in social identification, the processes whereby social identities change more profoundly and become integrated within the self have to be proposed. To this aim, the present studies investigate the processes by which group members integrate a new social identity as they are joining a new group. Combining a social identity approach and stress and coping models, this research tests if social factors (i.e., needs satisfied by fellow group members, social support), have an impact on the adaptation strategies group members use to deal with the novelty of the situation and to fit into their new group (seeking information & adopting group norms vs. disengaging). These strategies, in turn, should predict changes in level of identification with the new social group over time, as well as enhanced psychological adjustment. These associations are tested among university students over the course of their first academic year (Study 1), and among online gamers joining a newly established online community (Study 2). Path analyses provide support for the hypothesised associations. The results are discussed in light of recent theoretical developments pertaining to intraindividual changes in social identities and their integration in the self.