Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
17
Archetype enactments in
travellers' stories about places
Theory and advances in positivistic and
qualitative methods
Arch G. Woodside, Karlan Muniz and Suresh Sood
Introduction
This chapter provides theory for and shows how to examine the stories consumers tell in natural
contexts involving brands (in this study, place brands) in ways relevant for psychological
archetypes, brand strategies and consumer behaviour. Consumers mention place brands as actors
that play roles in the consumers' lives and that help them (consumers as protagonists) to
experience roles that give them the feelings of achievement, well-being and/or excitement. In
order to identify and interpret the archetypal themes in stories told by the consumer, this study
advances the use of degrees-of-freedom analysis (DFA) and creating visual narrative art (VNA)
as useful steps for confi rming or disconfi rming whether or not the stories consumers tell have
themes, events and outcomes that match with the core storylines told by brands. The chapter
includes a review of work on archetypal theory, DFA and VNA. The study's theory, method and
fi ndings provide useful tools for managers and researchers on issues that relate to tourism
and marketing.
Consumers may tell stories involving buying and experiencing brands, in part, to relive
archetypal experiences and to clarify the meaning for themselves about these experiences.
'Archetypes' are collective, mostly unconscious, primal forces according to Jung (1959);
these forces are strong motivational stimuli that compel action. The ABCs of desire are the
conjoining of archetypes, brands (i.e. alternative objects, services and ideas) and consumers.
This chapter presents theory and tools of analysis that are may be useful for interpreting the
ABCs of desire appearing in the stories consumers tell about their life experiences - stories
consumers tell to each other and to themselves in naturally-occurring reports rather than as
responses to survey questions.
The discussion supports the expansion of the ABC domain with theory and an analysis of the
archetypes appearing in stories that consumers tell in everyday life. The chapter offers an analysis
and an empirical positivistic method for examining archetypes enacted in stories told by
consumers by proposing the use of degree-of-freedom analysis (Wilson and Wilson 1988) as a
means for decoding stories that include the presence of brands. This data analysis method for
