ارزش مشتری و خودمردمنگاری : درون نگری شخصی ذهنی و معانی مجموعه عکس

This paper applies the method of subjective personal introspection (SPI or autoethnography) to the analysis of a photograph collection from the viewpoint of implications concerning the nature and types of customer value. Borrowing from the branch of philosophy known as axiology, this focus emphasizes the centrality of customer or consumer value to the basic foundation for marketing and the essence of consumer value as an interactive relativistic preference experience. This conceptualization leads to a typology of customer value that serves as a lens or perspective to guide the interpretive analysis of photographs from a family archive. In sum, overall, the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that consumer value (axiology) serves as a useful framework that furthers the application of SPI (autoethnography) to an interpretation of the meanings found in a photograph collection (archival artifacts).

Several years ago, I introduced an approach to consumer research that I refer to as subjective personal introspection (SPI). As originally conceived Holbrook, 1986 and Holbrook, 1995, as adopted by some Gould, 1991 and Gould, 1995, and as critiqued by others (Wallendorf and Brucks, 1993), SPI focuses on impressionistic narrative accounts of the writer's own private consumption experiences. The goal of SPI—descending from Michel de Montaigne in the 16th century—is to produce an essay that sheds light on some aspect of humanity as reflected in the everyday life of the consumer in general and the author in particular. To paraphrase Montaigne, I believe that—because I am human—when I write about myself, I inevitably describe some aspect of the human condition. When pressed for a “scientific justification” of such practices, I reply that SPI amounts to a form of participant observation or observant participation in one's own life. In effect, SPI constructs a sort of autoethnography via which the author enjoys privileged access to the relevant phenomena of interest (for a review of such debates, see Holbrook, 1995).

I state the morals to my story, quite briefly, as follows: • Customer or consumer value is the foundation for what we do in marketing. • Customer value occurs to the extent that products perform services that provide interactive relativistic preference experiences. • Thus, all products (goods, services, people, places, events, ideas…) are services. • Each product or service tends to offer all types of customer value to varying degrees, though one type may predominate. • Therefore, the typology of customer value offers insights to help us understand the meanings of consumption uncovered by SPI. • As an illustration of such an autoethnographic analysis, this essay has explored the types of consumer value found thematically among the archival artifacts embodied in the photographs taken by my grandfather ATH. • In this, I hope to have captured some sense of what various aspects of consumption meant to him as well as what he has meant to me.