Constructing audiovisual representations of consumer archetypes

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain how audiovisual archetypal representations likely to engender emotional identification and consumerinquisitiveness by marketing professionals can be constructed. Designmethodologyapproach The paper employs videoethnography involving the following steps development of a typology of consumer archetypes based on a priori theory, screening for and identifying informants to exemplify each archetype, filming interviews in and around their homes, developing realistic audiovisual representations of each archetype and assessing marketing practitioners reactions to the audiovisual representations. Findings In response to the audiovisual archetypal representations, marketing practitioners displayed a high degree of interest and emotional relatedness. The interest generated in the screenings motivated animated discussion and often a desire to better understand the consumers represented by each archetype. These heightened reactions contrast strongly with the relatively emotionally flat responses to traditional marketing research reports. Originalityvalue The paper demonstrates that carefully crafted audiovisual representations of consumer archetypes are likely to engender a consumer orientation in marketing professionals and hence associate with improved marketing decisionmaking. It explains that this situation is likely explained by audiovisual media's superior capacity to foster experiential, emotional knowledge of others, and, the origins of consumer archetypes in the collective unconsciousness andor widespread strongly embedded cultural beliefs, norms, and values.