International audiencePlace attachment is one’s strong emotional bond with a specific location. While there are numerous studies on the topic, the literature pays little attention to commercial settings. This is because they are seen as too insipid to rouse attachment. Consumer research, however, suggests otherwise. To address this disparity, the authors investigate how people develop, experience, and act on place attachment in commercial settings. Findings from consumer in-depth interviews and self-reports conducted in France reveal that place attachment develops through perceptions of familiarity, authenticity, and security and evolves into experiences of homeyness. Consumers find these encounters of homeyness extraordinary and respond by engaging in volunteering, over-reciprocation, and ambassadorship toward the place. The authors further theorize these findings through a gift economy perspective and identify a tripartite exchange between the consumer, the proprietor of the place, and selected people from the consumer’s social network

No abstract

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

While prior studies have examined the creative and sacred aspects of luxury brands, homelike aspects of retail remain under-investigated and under-theorized. Yet this issue is central because in-store domestic experiences can entail strong forms of customer engagement and loyalty. Drawing from observations in luxury stores in Paris, this study demonstrates that domestic meanings are a pervasive element of the luxury in-store narrative that complements the portfolio of meanings luxury brands already use to support their high-end positioning.More specifically, this research shows to what extent and how luxury stores instill home-like socio-material cues that fit with the luxury context in which they are embedded. In doing so, this study contributes to the literature on luxury retail by examining how homeyness is staged in high-end environments, thus complementing prior research on luxury houses as creative and sacred institutions.