For twenty years, typical outdoor lifestyle sports like rafting, snowboarding and rock climbing, which used to be exclusively practised in natural environments, are being offered in controlled artificial settings. This process can be described as 'the indoorisation of outdoor sports'. With this development, questions of authenticity arise. Are these new, commercial forms still authentic lifestyle sports? And can we consider the participants in these indoorised lifestyle sports as authentic? There has been a discussion about authenticity in lifestyle sports since its worldwide popularisation and it is worth to reconsider this discussion against the background of new, commercial versions of lifestyle sports. Therefore, in this paper a qualitative analysis is offered about the consumption of a constructed authenticity in a cultural context increasingly characterized by artificialization.
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This study explores the negotiation process underpinning the creation of authentic experiences in luxury lodges. The findings of this study highlight how this is a balancing act performed by the hosts through the provision of an authentic experiential platform connecting guests with unique places and genuine people and is of a luxurious nature. Staged experiences are authenticated by the guests through their bodies and minds, activating, in turn, experiences of existential authenticity. Contributing to service marketing and management literature, the study departs from purely abstract authenticity conceptualisations by applying an experience design and management lens to understanding authentic experiences. Practically, our findings demonstrate how authenticity is operationalised in luxury lodges and how these experiences are understood and valued by tourism and hospitality consumers and providers, providing crucial implications for luxury accommodation marketers and managers.
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Purpose: To explore the recent emergence of “authenticity” in fashion in terms of its linkingvalue in the context of tribal brand cultures in conjunction with value co-creation processes inmediated environments.Methodology: This study adopts a qualitative approach in the form of a case study of a youngNew York-based outdoor fashion firm. The research was divided into a netnographic study toexplore the life- and experience worlds of consumers in an online context, supported bysecondary research such as online documents, photographic footage, and media reports. Findings: Identifies the socially and emotionally charged process leading to the point of valueexchange as a key driver in the relationship between brand and consumers. Social exchangebetween consumers is where meaning is extracted and symbolic properties are converted intomarkers of collective identification. Originality/value: While most analyses on co-creation and tribal consumption focus on off- oronline contexts separately, the present study seeks to develop an understanding of the intersectingdynamics between offline activities and their shared reverberation and meaning across interactiveonline contexts. Paper type: Research paper
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