Emotions and consumption experiences: an interplay of emotional states and consumer identity Open Access

When encountering an art painting or a performance, individuals may connect with the experience by finding themselves emotionally involved (or not) with it (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982). Given the role of emotions in creating memorable experiences, a long-standing line of research has explored the role of emotional states in consumption experiences. For instance, studies showed that felt sensations facilitate consumer immersion and inform cognition and sense-making of experiences (e.g. Cova et al., 2018; Joy and Sherry, 2003; Scott et al., 2017; Scott and Uncles, 2018; Stevens et al., 2019). Emotional states also provide opportunities for discovering new perspectives within consumer identity (e.g. Godefroit-Winkel et al., 2019; Murphy et al., 2023; Valor et al., 2018). As such, these elements reveal the potential of consumption experiences to underpin personal transformation, enabling consumers to participate in self-actualising activities by co-creating their emotional experiences.

Despite the significance of emotional states in both ordinary and extraordinary consumption experiences, a focus on the positive consequences of such states continues to dominate relevant research (cf. Jantzen et al., 2012). These studies generally view emotional states as responses/outcomes of an experience. For instance, they show that cognitive processing stages enabled within an art exhibition contribute to visitor satisfaction (Leder et al., 2004) or that cognitive and emotional desires lead to positive evaluation of the aesthetic experience (Chen, 2009), as well as to the creation of memorable experiences (Blumenthal and Jensen, 2019). However, consumption of artworks, just like other experiences (e.g. painful and spiritual experiences), may evoke a range of emotional states. These evoked states include not only positive responses but also unsettling and/or unpleasant reactions. Most importantly, they encompass moments of reflexivity which are embedded in the experience and, as such, may shape the meanings of the experience by interplaying with the visitors’ identity (Preece et al., 2022). Yet, how the interplay between emotional states and identity unfolds remains underexplored.

Previous research focused on this process within consumption experiences (e.g. Carù and Cova, 2007; Chen, 2009; Ladwein, 2007). However, these studies either only acknowledged the existence of the process or explored it as an outcome of the experience (e.g. Reed and Forehand, 2016), failing to account for the dynamic and fluctuating role of emotions occurring during the experience. To address this gap and being inspired by research calls to study emotional states through a phenomenological perspective (Illouz, 2009) and from a consumer subject approach (Lonergan et al., 2022; Preece et al., 2022), we focus on the interplay of emotional states and consumers’ identities during an aesthetic experience. Specifically, by drawing upon the dialogical self-theory (DST; Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010), we explore not only why but how this interplay unfolds.

In line with the adopted phenomenological approach, we view aesthetic experiences as dialogical encounters between the visitor and the artwork (Sullivan and McCarthy, 2009). Within these encounters, visitors undergo various emotional states in an attempt to position themselves in the experience (Joy and Sherry, 2003). According to DST, the self consists of multiple identities, labelled as identity positions, that engage in dialogue with one another. Each identity position has its own emotional states, which are expressions of the (dialogical) self and allow identity positions to fluctuate between each other. For instance, museum visitors can surface different identity positions during their art experience. They can feel excited by the colours of the exhibits and reminded of how much they love art (“I as an art lover” identity position). Yet, the abstract forms of such artworks can create some distress and awaken the perfectionist in them (another identity position). As such, the visitors might find themselves engaging in a silent talk such as “should I continue to visit contemporary art exhibitions” (cf. Bahl and Milne, 2010). Moreover, a feeling of curiosity due to the curatorial approach of the exhibition can arise and invite for a different way of seeing the abstract form of such exhibits (here the “I as a curious person” position emerges). Thus, emotional states can either be part of an enacted identity position or can act as temporary identity positions. In both cases, emotional states position a consumer in an experience and capture the diverse expressions and movements of a consumer identity, ultimately affecting the consumption experience.

In this study, we discern how emotional states arising from consumers’ encounters with an aesthetic experience are subjectively expressed and managed, and we explore the co-existence of diverse emotional states consumers undergo during an experience. Our focus on aesthetic experiences as the context of this study emerges from the fact that such a context facilitates the exploration of the interplay between emotional states and identity compared to other consumption contexts. For instance, the intensity of the moment in other extraordinary experiences or the complexity of reflecting on such an interplay in mundane experiences might challenge the exploration of this interplay. This, in turn, might not result in thick data, which could challenge the transferability of findings to other contexts.

Our evidence reveals that the interplay between emotional states and identity initiates when visitors (dis)identify with primary and secondary emotional states arising during a contemporary art experience. Such an interplay enables visitors to enact different identity positions, allowing them to access, immerse themselves in or escape the experience. Furthermore, when a dialogical interaction between experienced (primary and secondary) emotional states occurs, this leaves space for a potential transformation of the identity within the experience.

We expand previous research on the role of emotional states in consumption experiences (e.g. Preece et al., 2022; Scott et al., 2017). We do so by taking into consideration a wider range of emotional states encompassing both positive and unsettling reactions and show how the interactions between such various emotional states can shape a consumption experience. The contribution of our study is twofold.

Firstly, by zooming into the underexplored interplay between emotional states and identity, we advance previous literature on emotional states and identity during consumption experiences by unbundling the process through which such an interplay shapes how consumers access, immerse or escape an (aesthetic) consumption experience (Carù and Cova, 2007; Chen, 2009). Thus, we provide insights into how emotional states are subjectively expressed and managed (i.e. enacting and moving between enacted identity positions), allowing for a more complete theorisation of the connection of emotional states and identity to consumption experiences (Preece et al., 2022; Reed and Forehand, 2016).

Secondly, we shed light on the underdeveloped relation between immersion and identity transformation by introducing the role of dialogue in the interaction between primary and secondary emotional states (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010; Lindberg and Østergaard, 2015; cf. Preece and Skandalis, 2023). The dialogical approach both to identity and emotional states that we adopt, not only explicates how transformation occurs but also accounts well for past findings in consumption experiences, such as explaining why some consumers escape the appropriation practices and immersion in (aesthetic) consumption experiences (e.g. Lonergan et al., 2022; Stavraki et al., 2018).

Within a consumption experience, emotions, symbolic feelings and meanings serve as the main source of personal value, enriching human sense and life experiences (Chen, 2009; Lindberg and Østergaard, 2015). Similarly, aesthetic experience as a consumption experience is conceived as a subjective experience encompassing multisensory, emotional and symbolic dimensions emerging from an individual’s interaction with artworks. Such a phenomenological approach to aesthetic experience emphasises neither the subject nor the object itself but a dialogical encounter taking place between the subject (consumer/visitor) and the object (artwork). These encounters invoke cognitive and emotional responses (Lagier and Godey, 2007) that immerse consumers into the experience and through which consumers temporarily escape into another world.

Accordingly, immersion is a central element of (aesthetic) consumption experiences (e.g. Carù and Cova, 2006). Immersion occurs with the decrease of the distance between a consumer and an (aesthetic) experience and, by so doing, enables consumers to escape everyday life. Specifically, immersion takes place when there is a sense of (spatio-temporal) belonging in an experiential setting characterised by deep involvement and embodied presence in the present moment. This concept of distance does not distinguish between cognitive, affective and emotional responses (Carù and Cova, 2006) as all help consumers to endow experience with meaning and temporarily escape into another world. In this approach, immersion is facilitated by an orchestrated design of an experiential setting which aims to promote physical (e.g. thematised environmental elements that engage the senses) and mental (e.g. thinking and reflection) connection with the experience (Lunardo and Ponsignon, 2020).

At the same time, theorisations of consumption experiences also acknowledge the temporal and gradual nature of immersion. By so doing, stress practices (e.g. appropriation practices), as well as embodied and emotional states of an experience that condition, instead of causing, consumer responses and engagement within an experiential setting (Lonergan et al., 2022; Preece et al., 2022; Stavraki et al., 2018; Woermann and Rokka, 2015). In line with such theorisations, immersion is no longer connected solely with environmental elements aiming to produce homogenised responses. It is also considered as a result of a combination of situational factors and emotional states, which allows consumers to engage in states of becoming (e.g. acceptance or resistance to identity transformation evoked in an experiential context).

For instance, Carù and Cova (2006) refer to appropriation practices, namely, nesting (e.g. feeling safe), investigating (e.g. further exploration of an experience) and stamping (e.g. feelings of mastery of personal success relating to an experience) to describe interactions taking place between contextual factors and consumer resources, which facilitate consumer immersion. In this light, contextual factors are designed to evoke particular (i.e. orchestrated or homogenised) cognitive and emotional responses. Yet, when these are coupled with emotional states arising from consumers’ encounters with an experience, they may result in heterogeneous (cognitive and emotional) responses. For example, the appropriation practice of nesting emphasises contextual factors that aim to invoke homogenised responses (e.g. feeling safe), whereas the appropriation practice of stamping refers to subjective meanings that consumers experience (see also Stavraki et al., 2018). Thus, such a conception of immersion focuses not only on how consumers’ behaviour is caused by an experiential context (that is, how consumers are affected during an experience) but also on how consumers affect the experience at hand.

The study of emotional states is central in unpacking various and even “unspoken” facets of consumption experiences. Such facets include embodied consumption experiences, unrealised (and bodily felt) emotional states that flow through consumption experiences as well as consumers’ interactions with unsettling consumption experiences within which consumers foreground a myriad of complex emotions instead of looking for moments of positive affects (Gopaldas, 2014; Jantzen et al., 2012; Lonergan et al., 2022; Preece et al., 2022; Stevens et al., 2019). In line with such an approach focusing on foregrounding the emotional complexity that characterises consumption experiences, we adopt the term (felt) emotional states to indicate (and enable access from a methodological angle) a vast range of diverse affective phenomena. Such affective phenomena unfold in consumers’ first encounters with an experience (e.g. feeling energetic, Lonergan et al., 2022), during the experience (e.g. becoming more aware of such arising feelings, Lonergan et al., 2022), as well as after the experience (happiness following consumption, Balaji et al., 2017).

Different terms are used, sometimes interchangeably, to describe emotional states (cf. Gopaldas, 2014). For example, terms like affect and sentiments are both umbrella-like terms that are used to describe any affective state. Emotions are defined as affective states which are directional to an object and have distinct behavioural outcomes (e.g. feeling angry towards another person that can result in shouting at them). Affective dispositions and beliefs denote affective preferences and opinions [e.g. I (don’t) like something and I have a(n) (un)favourable opinion, Bagozzi et al., 1999].

Based on the above, we include in the category of emotional states what existing literature has described as short-lived, directional and distinct episodic emotions like fear or joy, as well as affective dispositions (e.g. like or dislike an artwork) and other affective attitudes (e.g. fearing something such as death or semantic connotations of death). Emotional states also include emotional varieties such as boredom, existential feelings, such as anxiety, and cognitive emotions such as amazement or confusion. Responses and expressions of emotional states are also evoked in experiential settings, like art contexts, when consumers encounter, grasp and evaluate meanings of artworks (Fingerhut and Prinz, 2020).

Zooming into the encounter between consumers and an aesthetic experience, emotional states can be viewed from a phenomenological approach, that is, the fluid and sense-making role that emotional states play during an experience. This approach problematises theorising emotional states on the basis of guiding distinct behavioural consumer responses (e.g. positive emotional states elicited by an artwork lead to positive evaluation of an artwork and then contribute to visitor satisfaction or re-visits, Guerreiro et al., 2015; Pelowski and Akiba, 2011; Watson and Spence, 2007). Notwithstanding the contribution of studying emotional states in such a cause-effect with behavioural responses perspective, it does not allow for unfolding how emotional states affect and are affected by a consumption aesthetic experience in the interplay with consumers’ identities.

We argue that by studying such an association, we can capture the interaction occurring between consumers’ (multiple) identities during an experience that, in turn, can explain various and even unexpected consumer responses. Prior studies envisage such dynamics, yet they zoom out from the interplay occurring both between emotional states and identity and between multiple identities enacted during an experience. For instance, Scott et al. (2017) show that painful experiences can lead to positive responses and satisfaction through the constructions of self-representations and self-narratives. Joy and Sherry (2003) acknowledge the connection between emotional states and identity in aesthetic experiences, noting a tension between the self and emotions. They also suggest that individuals may adopt different identities during such experiences (e.g. in their study, a visitor moves away from her professional self while exploring a museum), without yet exploring relevant dynamics. Chen (2009) discusses the role of evoked emotional states not only in motivating consumer participation in an aesthetic experience but also in generating a better understanding of contemporary art consumption experiences. Ladwein (2007) posits that consumption experiences can become a form of decentring, thus allowing consumers to live multiple identities and embrace opposing emotions and cognitions arising during experiences. Similarly, Carù and Cova (2007) assume the existence of multiple identities during consumption experiences. By so doing, Carù and Cova (2007) theorise the relationship between identity and consumption experience as a project that consumers continuously build and label this project as a transformative experience (i.e. living another identity through a kind of identity transformation during an experience). Yet, researchers have only recently begun to recognise how emotions and (multiple) identities are linked (Reed and Forehand, 2016). To this end, we focus on how emotional states allow for enactments of various consumers’ identities to better account for the role of this interplay in unfolding consumption experiences.

Based on the above and to explore how emotional states activate enactments of consumers’ identities, we use a dialogical approach both to emotional states and the concept of identity. This approach draws upon DST, a theory that assumes that the self consists of multiple identities, labelled as identity positions that engage in dialogue with one another and in so doing allow identity to move between different positions. DST by recognising the dialogical and fluid nature of a multiple self, it has been used to explore various (paradoxical) behaviours and experiences, such as managing conflicting consumption preferences, making decisions at different self-levels, cultural discourses and as an alternative conceptualisation of the extended self (Bahl and Milne, 2010; Belk, 2014; cf. Thompson and Haytko, 1997).

We argue that DST’s distinct value to the identity field also emerges from allowing researchers to explore interplays between emotional states and the identities that these states enact within experiential contexts (Cunha and Gonçalves, 2009). Specifically, in DST, each identity position has its own emotions and thoughts, which, in turn, facilitate the self to fluctuate among different positions. Through these elements, identity positions can enter into dialogue with each other and speak their minds and share their realities. As such, by moving across different positions, the (dialogical) self not only creates meaning of an experience (e.g. meaning can be negotiated between enacted identity positions or dominated by a specific identity position) but is also open to a process of transformation (e.g. discovery of new perspectives and feelings emerging from this movement of the self to different positions).

In this perspective, each identity position has its own emotions, which are expressions of the (dialogical) self and facilitate or not movements between different identity positions (e.g. experiencing emotional states that are not consistent with a desired sense of self may lead to a switch to another identity position, Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Thus, DST is phenomenological in nature where emotional states by either being parts of identity positions or acting as temporary identity positions, are approached as “not purely internal processes, but parts of a highly dynamic social process of positioning the self in an environment and/or towards the self itself” (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010, p. 257). This dialogical approach is also in line with Illouz’s (2009) phenomenological call to studying emotional states by bringing emotional states together with identity and “understand the role of emotions in perceiving, apprehending, and understanding the world” (Illouz, 2009, p. 385).

Approaching emotional states in relation to identity positions allows researchers to explore them as interactional phenomena and by so doing to focus on the interplay of emotional states arising during a consumption experience. Considering emotional states in relation to identity positions, we view consumers as sensing agents (Lonergan et al., 2022) who fluctuate between felt emotional states (e.g. I am curious as I walk through the exhibition, yet the sharp edges of the exhibited installation make me angry, cf. Hietala, 2023). Greenberg (2004, 2012) argues that this movement takes the form of reactions occurring at the here and now of an experience. Particularly during experiences that are rich in emotional stimuli, individuals respond with initial reactions that can be different from their secondary emotional responses. The primary emotional reactions relate to peoples’ raw, experience-based reactions. Within art settings, primary emotional states refer to the raw evaluation of art (e.g. I watch a painting and I instantly feel happy or excited with what is depicted). A secondary response relates to individuals’ meaning making (responses to or defences) of primary emotions. These secondary emotions are important in the sense that they can obscure what people experience at a deeper, raw affective level. A dialogical interaction can take place both at the point of primary emotional reaction and/or when dealing with secondary emotional states.

Moreover, it is argued that accessing one’s raw experience allows for becoming aware of how each situation (or moment) makes one feel and what it personally means (Greenberg, 2004). In case consumers do not accept these arising emotional states (e.g. by enacting identity positions that shift them away from those arising emotional states), in relation to the subsequent meaning and secondary emotional states that are evoked, then this can create conflicting feelings between a consumer’s enacted identity positions and the consumption experience. Such an awareness is possible through a self-reflective function of the dialogical self, which is called meta-position. Meta-position is an observer position that steps out of the flow of the experience and reflects upon it (Bahl and Milne, 2010). Meta-position has the ability to disclose the perspectives and dialogical (inter)actions of enacted identity positions and to provide access to the simultaneous locations of identity at different positions (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010). Meta-position is a position that oversees the multiplicity of the self rather than regulating or rationalising the thoughts and emotional states of identity positions. Thus, meta-positions explain the ability of a dialogical self both to be reflective and access and/or become aware of experienced emotional states.

The interaction between primary and secondary emotional states is akin to the process of emotion regulation, through which individuals can influence which emotions they have and how they express them (Gross, 1998). There are two main emotion regulation strategies that help individuals navigate their emotional states: antecedent-focused strategies or cognitive appraisal, which take place before a full emotional reaction and response-focused strategies or expressive suppression, which occur after an emotional reaction has been prompted (Gross, 2013). In the first case, individuals tend to deconstrue and rationalise the anticipated emotional states with the aim to decrease their impact (Lazarus and Alfert, 1964). In the second case, individuals try to inhibit the felt emotion and manage it. Thus, from this perspective, emotion regulation is a linear process operating in the logic of cause and effect. From the anticipated emotion to the cognitive appraisal and the resulting felt emotion in the first case. From a felt emotion to a regulated expression of such emotion in the second case.

Although this approach acknowledges and captures the process through which individuals govern their emotional states, it does not account for the interplay between different emotional states and individuals’ identity and between multiple identities enacted during an experience. This interplay becomes particularly relevant in cases where the experience entails multisensory, emotional and/or symbolic dimensions. Such dimensions characterise various extraordinary experiences (e.g. aesthetic, spiritual and painful) as well as mundane experiences [e.g. social media consumption, sleeping practices or experiences with loved objects (Ahuvia, 2005; Murphy et al., 2023; Valtonen and Närvänen, 2016)], to name but a few. Thus, such a dialogical perspective not only allows for a granular understanding of the relationship between identity and emotional states but also captures the multiple and even contradictory emotional states and the corresponding interplay between enacted identity positions consumers experience. In doing so, it unpacks dynamics that allow multiple identity enactments during consumer immersion into an (aesthetic) consumption experience.

In order to address the research questions of this study, namely how do emotional states shape consumers’ encounters with an aesthetic experience? and how is identity enacted in such encounters?, we conducted a comparative case study (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2016). Given the phenomenological perspective adopted in this study that considers emotional states as context embedded, the comparative case study design was chosen as it allows for an analysis of emotional states within each selected context and across them. Thus, this methodological approach generates in-depth insights for the phenomenon under investigation and facilitates the exploration of the interplay between emotional states and identity within aesthetic experiences.

In this light, we acknowledge that one of the main challenges in investigating emotional states is retrospective bias (Maguire and Geiger, 2015). To overcome this, we use diary research as an introspective method of data collection. Particularly, diary research “enables consumers to describe their feelings, sensations, behaviours, and experiences in a personal, reflective manner” (Stevens et al., 2019, p. 812). In so doing, it places participants in the role of researcher, within which participants are empowered to provide visceral understandings emerging from a blend of self-observation with reflexive investigation (Scott et al., 2017; Stevens et al., 2019). Such an approach (of intervening for evoking reflexive processes, Rosenberg, 1990) invites participants to focus, narrate and reflect on thoughts, feelings and embodied states that emerged during an experience. As such, diary research facilitates the identification of emotional states through occurring reflexive endeavours revealing practices (e.g. meanings and doings), reactive responses and (enactments of) identity positions in the context in which all these unfold (Patterson, 2005).

This role played by the context in diary research is important as it is considered as another source that facilitates the identification of emotional states and identity positions, which can also take place at a pre-reflexive level (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010; Hill et al., 2014). Particularly, once (pre-reflexive) emotional states or identity enactments are realised with the help of the context in which they occur, then the one activated (e.g. emotional states) witnesses the expression of the other (e.g. a particular identity position). Moreover, the self-observation function of diaries allows consumers to reflect on their experiences through distance, that is through their meta-positions. Meta-positions capture movements between enacted identity positions emerging in an experience. Thus, diary research not only focuses on consumers as reflexive entities but also on the context of an experience and what takes place in it (e.g. practices, thoughts and emotional states embodied in enacted identity positions, Hill et al., 2014). In this view, diary research parallels the more-than-representational approach to research that notices such multiple textures of consumer experience (e.g. diverse emotional states and identity enactments in an experiential milieu).

To this end, and to explore the interplay between consumers’ emotional states and identities, the theoretically selected cases of our study consist of aesthetic experiences (i.e. contemporary art exhibitions). Aesthetic experiences, like other extraordinary experiences, enrich consumers’ life experiences by assuming a strong connection between a consumer’s identity and the experience at hand (e.g. through transformation or escapism). Moreover, aesthetic experiences are not only shaped by emotional (and cognitive) reactions and responses but are also rich in emotional states that consumers undergo during the experience. Such contextual conditions, also coupled with a slowing down pace in the arts (e.g. art invites visitors to linger, notice, feel and reflect), facilitate the realisation of felt emotional states and identity enactments compared to other consumption contexts. For instance, felt emotional states and the identities that these states enact may be masked either by the intensity of the moment in extraordinary experiences, or by the complexity of reflecting on how a product/consumption practice is experienced at different self-levels or within the everyday life (e.g. identity conflicts and mundane consumption, e.g. Murphy et al., 2023; Woermann and Rokka, 2015).

Based on the above, the Damien Hirst and the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary art exhibitions served as the contexts of this study because of the diverse feelings and sensations contemporary art evokes (e.g. mysticism, inspiration and fear). Indeed, the metaphorical and shady nature of Hirst’s exhibition invited visitors “to do a lot of work and feel uncomfortable” (Bartram, 2005, p. 12) whereas the aesthetically revolutionary features of the Biennale exhibition aimed to create a milieu that invited visitors to experience a variety of emotional states (e.g. hope and despair, loss and memory) (Colombo et al., 2011). Such contextual conditions allow for an understanding of the various emotional states that visitors experience in an attempt to enter the world of symbolic and ascribe meaning to their experiences. In other words, meaning making is a fundamental aspect of emotional states, given that individuals strive to assign meaning to their experiences and personal life contexts, and as such, it allows for accessing felt emotional states and relevant responses.

The data collection process took place first at the Damien Hirst exhibition and then in the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art exhibition. Following previous studies that have used students in their samples (Chen, 2009; Maguire and Geiger, 2015; Stevens et al., 2019), our participants are 30 postgraduate students from two different MSc programmes; 15 students from one MSc programme visited the Damien Hirst exhibition and 15 students from the other programme visited the Biennale exhibition. A course credit was given to students; nevertheless, the course credit does not refer to participation in the research itself; rather it refers to a graded assignment that students had to complete based on the diary research they conducted.

As part of the module assignment, participants were invited to visit the selected exhibitions and write about their experiences in a diary format. Specifically, they were asked to keep notes during their experiences and subsequently narrate their experiences in a diary after their visit. To ensure that the data in the diaries were detailed, participants were given a week (following the exhibition visit) to return the diary to the researchers. To circumvent power asymmetry, completion of this assignment was optional. Students who opted in for this assignment, besides the opportunity to apply marketing theory based on this introspective diary research, gained marks (max 15% after grading the assignment), which would then be added to the final exam mark and thus to the total module mark.

Moreover, such a student sample, as it is argued in prior studies (e.g. Chen, 2009; Thompson and Haytko, 1997), is both legitimate and insightful, especially when students are a population of interest to the phenomenon under examination (interplay of emotional states and identity in this study). For instance, Belk et al. (2003) argue that youthful samples value consumption experiences as the most potential source of fulfilment with this suggesting, as Thompson and Haytko (1997) argue, an increased emphasis on the self. Also, extraordinary experiences, which generate a whole range of emotions, are more appealing to younger consumers who, by undergoing such experiences, form enduring consumption preferences (e.g. Schindler and Holbrook, 2003; Scott et al., 2017). Furthermore, students with different user status in terms of frequency of visiting museums participated in the study (Table 1) to ensure that the nuances of the phenomenon under examination were considered. In line with prior research (e.g. Joy and Sherry, 2003; Stavraki et al., 2018), visitor user status can unpack nuances of arts consumption experiences.

A semi-structured diary design was followed to invite participants to unpack thoughts, emotions and actions experienced within the particular arts consumption context (Gould, 2010). Specifically, we asked participants to narrate their personal stories involving feelings and thoughts accompanying their interactions with the artworks; whether there were any possible agreements and/or disagreements between themselves and the exhibited artworks; and descriptions of what the exhibition as a whole meant to them. In addition, the fact that participants were asked to keep notes during the experience makes diaries an ideal method for exploring emotional states at the point of occurrence, minimising the time between the event, meaning making and narrating the experience. Participants were asked to indicate the date and time of each entry. Pseudonyms are used to protect the anonymity of our informants.

The analysis of the data was conducted in the following overlapping stages (Figure 1). Firstly, we created narrative summaries for each diary (Riessman, 2002) to capture the richness of each participant’s experience in terms of the identity positions they enacted. Then we actively re-read each diary and coded them by using in vivo coding to describe each participant’s enacted identity positions (Saldaña, 2009). Particularly, narrative summaries reveal the interplay between emotional states and identity positions. They do so by disclosing thoughts and emotional states that emerged from visitors’ encounters with the experience at hand, and which allowed enactments of different identity positions. For instance, one visitor wonders “how can art make this world a better and safer place?”, with this to activate a specific identity position (i.e. the I am very much interested in politics position). Moreover, enactments of identity positions are manifested in the process of immersion, namely, identity positions that go through the appropriation practices that facilitate immersion (e.g. an identity position that makes a consumer feel safe and allows them to further explore the exhibition).

Thus, identification of enacted identity positions was largely based on the created narrative summaries, with identified codes to be further explored by using the positioning microanalysis method. This method focuses on identifying identity positions, short-term movements of a dialogical self and exploration of primary and secondary emotional states. This is done by identifying and defining independent units of meaning within participants’ narratives, where we can explore identity positions and the situations (i.e. thematic object in the process of analysis as shown in Table 2) in which these positions arise (e.g. feelings, reactions happening in the here-and-now of an experience and reflections). Specifically, the identification of identity positions was based on an elaborative synopsis of the elements that, according to positioning microanalysis, define an identity position, namely, who is speaking (agent), to whom (addressees and inner audiences) and about what (Salgado et al., 2013).

Moreover, this method refers to “the primary level of experience taking place at each moment in an irreversible flux of time: there is always a new situation to which the person is adapting” (Salgado et al., 2013, p. 338). Thus, by unravelling participants’ movements to various identity positions during their experiences, this method accesses dialogical interactions occurring between enacted identity positions (addressee and audience columns in Table 2). Through such dialogical interactions, we can access both primary and secondary emotional states. Hermans and Hermans-Konopka (2010, p. 274) argue that “primary emotions can become part of a dialogical self when they are taken up in dialogues in which emotions are able to send their messages to the self and the self is able to respond to them in such a way that the emotional part of the self changes”.

An example of the positioning microanalysis is shown in Table 2. We created such tables for each participant. Next, by drawing on the emergent patterns of the interplay between emotional states and participants’ identity positions, we specified how visitors manage such an interplay and the role of an interaction between primary and secondary emotional states in this interplay. An iterative intertextual reading (Thompson, 1997) conducted across the narrative summaries also facilitated a deeper understanding of such an interplay.

To ensure the quality of our interpretations and elicit participants’ narratives without distortion, all authors were engaged in the analysis and interpretation of the collected accounts (Johnson et al., 2006). Collecting data from two different exhibitions, given the localised nature of emotional states, also acts as a step for enhancing the credibility of our interpretations. Moreover, the employment of different methods of data analysis (Figure 1) and the utilisation of reflective practises (e.g. the authors’ iterative discussions of the interpretations of the findings, the transparency of methods used in the study and the use of different theoretical lenses/theoretical triangulation through the use of DST, emotions and consumption experiences theory) alongside member checking also act as additional steps we took to safeguard the quality of our interpretations.

This study focuses on the underexplored interplay between emotional states and identity in an aesthetic experience. Our evidence (Figure 2) reveals that a contemporary art consumption experience evokes (primary and secondary) emotional states, which allow consumers to enact different identity positions. We show that through enacted identity positions consumers perform different consumption acts, namely, access, immersion and escape. Furthermore, by introducing the role of dialogue in the interaction between primary and secondary emotional states, we argue that this interaction between emotional states explains how identity transformation occurs ( Appendix 1 contains additional participant extracts).

Our evidence demonstrates that visitors who did not identify with primary emotional states arising during their interactions with exhibited artworks responded to these states. Such responses activated visitors’ movement to identity positions with which they could identify and distance themselves from the experience. In other words, primary emotional states that did not help visitors to connect either with Hirst’s or Biennale exhibition were encountered, but they were disregarded. Specifically, visitors, by reacting to these primary emotional states, not only disregarded feelings and sensations evoked by these states but also foregrounded emotional states with which they could identify and make sense of the experience:

The diary extract above shows a visitor who experiences a multitude of emotional states (e.g. mystery, unhappiness and disapproval), which shaped and were shaped through this visitor’s encounters with Hirst’s artworks. Particularly, the dark atmosphere of Hirst’s exhibition evokes emotional states of sadness and mystery, which temporarily immerse (e.g. this visitor feels safe –didn’t scare me – and explores the exhibition, elements that facilitate immersion) this visitor in Hirst’s universe. Through these states, Christine is emotionally aroused, absorbs and unfolds the lived experience through a Goth identity, namely, an identity position that evokes specific emotional and cognitive reactions and responses to the experience (e.g. appreciating the aesthetics of the exhibits and encountering mystery). Yet, Christine escapes this immersive experience by entering different emotional states arising from identities other than the Goth identity, i.e. sociable, lively and active identities of herself. Interestingly, while Christine’s returning to these latter identity positions and their corresponding emotional states disconnects Christine from the experience and did not participate in encountering the exhibits, they are involved in the overall consumption experience.

Thus, primary emotional states shape an aesthetic consumption experience by unfolding the interplay between consumer identity, emotional states and an experiential setting. To illustrate, primary emotions not only arise within an experiential context as prior research shows (e.g. Carù and Cova, 2007) but also activate enactments of consumer identity positions, which immerse consumers in the experience. Yet, when consumers do not identify with arising emotional states, they respond to the identity positions that primary emotional states enact. Through these responses, consumers escape immersion by moving to an identity position, with which they feel familiarity (cf. Murphy et al., 2023). Enacting familiar identity positions reveals emotional states that enable visitors to balance what they feel, and thus position themselves in the experience and overcome puzzling encounters with artworks. The narrative below shows another visitor’s movement to different identity positions and emotional states:

The bitter and gloomy feelings arising from some Biennale artworks immersed this visitor in the Biennale’s atmosphere (i.e. we see the following fluctuation: the bitter and sad emotional states activate the I as curious position, then the gloomy emotional state activates the I as confused). Yet, Panos could not identify with these feelings, and moved to a reaffirming identity position (see also Figure 2), i.e. optimistic identity position, through which Panos escapes immersion and interprets the experience. Thus, arising emotional states allow consumers to enact and fluctuate between different identity positions, through which they move within the experience to access it, temporarily immerse in it, as well as to escape immersing in it.

The analysis of diaries indicates that visitors’ acceptance of primary emotional states arising through their interactions with the artworks encourages visitors to experience alternative perspectives of themselves and of the world around them, namely, engage them in a process of identity transformation. Particularly, such an acceptance of primary emotional states is accompanied by secondary emotional response, which conflicted either with the primary emotional states or other secondary emotional states evoked during the experience. Visitors, in their attempts to manage such conflicting emotional states, engaged themselves in a dialogical interaction with the artworks and themselves:

This narrative shows the primary (“…sense of peacefulness”) and secondary emotional states (“made me feel anxious that I had to accept that I was feeling again the cold smell of death and the noise of an untreatable by pills pain”) that this visitor experiences in immersing herself into Hirst’s art as well as the identity positions these states activated (I as relaxed, I as bereaved). The primary emotional state of a sense of peacefulness engages this visitor in a “rhythm of surrender and reflection” (Sullivan and McCarthy, 2009, p. 184), i.e. pause, admire and reflect on the artworks. Yet, the process of identifying with primary emotional states surfaces a conflicting secondary emotional state, namely, feeling anxious about the way this visitor interacts with Hirst’s artworks. These (conflicting) emotional states (i.e. peacefulness and anxiety) both immerse Maria into the experience and activate a dialogical process through which she experiences these emotional states. Thus, this process of realising aspects of the self (see also Figure 2) and of the experience at hand, puts visitors in closer contact with themselves and leads to an identity transformation opportunity.

Such a process is manifested in a dialogue developed between the artworks and this visitor’s identity positions, activated by the primary and secondary emotional states. Through such a dialogue, Maria negotiates the meanings of the competing viewpoints and feelings (e.g. the answers to the questions Maria asks surface the innovative position that shows Maria’s attempt to understand and co-create the meanings of the conflicting emotional states she experienced). As such, emotional states, by referring back to the self (Illouz, 2009), are subjected to a dialogical process between enacted identity positions (e.g. I as relaxed and I as bereaved) which change the immersive atmosphere and evoke different ways of reconnecting with the world (e.g. revelation of the I as innovative person identity position):

This diary extract also illustrates conflicting emotional states and enacted identity positions in visitors’ experiences in the Biennale exhibition. The arising emotional state of surprise surfaces the I as novice identity position, which alongside another identity position of himself (i.e. I as experience seeker) make Aggelos curious to explore the exhibition. Through this secondary emotional state and the I as experience seeker identity position, Aggelos encounters the exhibits, an encounter that changes the immersive atmosphere by revealing different emotional states (e.g. staggered). Aggelos identifies with these emotional states through the I as a novice art visitor, which then surfaces another secondary emotional state, namely confusion. The opposing emotional states (e.g. curiosity and confusion) and the enacted identity positions are managed through a dialogical encounter with an artwork (“… I felt that something like that can help me to…”, “this is our reality, isn’t it?”). Such an encounter not only manages the emerging conflict but also allows for artworks (as experiential objects) to enter visitors’ self, probing the rediscovery of the self (see also Figure 2). By so doing, it teases out the transformative potential of identity.

Past research acknowledges the role of emotions in experiential consumption, mainly focusing on emotions as distinct and discrete reactions that guide individuals’ responses to experiences (e.g. Leder et al., 2004; Pelowski and Akiba, 2011). We problematise such an approach and, through a phenomenological perspective, we look at the interplay of emotional states and consumers’ identities during an aesthetic experience. This interplay is initiated by the acceptance or not of arising emotional states that activate different reactions. Particularly, we offer insights into how the different emotional states (primary and secondary) that individuals feel when consuming contemporary art, participate in the sense-making process of the experience itself by interplaying with the multiple identities of individuals enacted during the experience ( Appendix 2 illustrates the emotional states experienced by the participants, grounded in existing literature).

We show that during a contemporary art consumption experience, consumers feel various emotional states that ultimately shape their encounters with the experience (RQ1). Our evidence reveals that the identification with the arising primary emotional states – or the lack of it – represents the pivotal element that may lead visitors to escape the immersion and disconnect from the experience or encourage them to immerse in the experience and further connect with it. When visitors do not identify with the primary emotional states, they escape the immersion to move towards a more comforting state. When visitors accept the primary emotional states, they fully immerse themselves in the experience through a dialogical process occurring between the contrasting primary and secondary emotional states.

Moreover, our findings show that the emotional states that arise from the encounter with the exhibited art activate identity positions through which consumers then access, immerse or escape the experience (RQ2). We observe how consumers who do not identify with the identity enacted by the felt primary emotional states escape from it by moving towards a more familiar identity position. This allows them to overcome the tension between the contrasting emotional states and identities and thus find a more comfortable position into the experience. We also find that consumers who welcome contrasting identity enactments encourage a dialogical interaction between the emotional states that allow them to access multiple identity positions, leaving space for a potential identity transformation within the experience.

Our study contributes to research on consumption experiences by considering a wider range of emotional states encompassing both positive and unsettling responses and showing how interactions and dialogues between such various emotional states can shape a consumption experience. It addresses research calls for better accounting for the fluctuating role of emotional states as well as for a more explicit consideration of consumer identity in (aesthetic) consumption experiences (Godefroit-Winkel et al., 2019; Lonergan et al., 2022; Preece et al., 2022). These calls stress the need to move beyond focusing on positive responses to also account for unsettling responses which are not only a fundamental part of many consumption experiences but also encompass moments of reflexivity, i.e. may shape the meanings of the experience by interplaying with the visitors’ identity (Preece et al., 2022; Scott et al., 2017). We unpack such an interplay through which emotional states and identities shape a consumption experience.

The contribution is twofold. Firstly, we advance current literature investigating emotional states and identity during consumption experiences. While previous studies have acknowledged the interplay occurring between emotional states and identity (e.g. Carù and Cova, 2007; Chen, 2009; Ladwein, 2007), the process through which this interplay unfolds remained underexplored. We extend this stream by exploring the process and dynamics of such interplay and identifying encounters through which consumers affect and are affected by the experience. Particularly, we theorise this interplay as dynamic, which unfolds through interactions occurring between identity positions and arising emotional states. These interactions create conflicting emotional states that consumers either manage through dialogue between enacted identity positions and corresponding emotional states or through fluctuation to familiar identity positions. Previous studies captured and theorised the interplay between emotional states and identities as a more fixed dynamic that results from the experience (e.g. Reed and Forehand, 2016). We expand this perspective and illustrate how such an interplay unfolds within an experience, i.e. through first encounters, during and after the experience (see also Figure 2).

Next, this deepens our understanding of how emotional states and identities participate in shaping the consumption experience. Recent studies (Preece et al., 2022; Preece and Skandalis, 2023) also call for investigating emotional states from a consumer subject approach to better account for the dynamic and fluctuating role of emotions characterising consumption experiences. In exploring this interplay through the lens of DST, we move beyond current emphasis on how emotional states are contextually facilitated (e.g. thematised context, Carù and Cova, 2007) and orchestrated (Goulding, 2000), and we disclose how emotional states are subjectively expressed and managed and, as such, also affect/shape consumption experiences. Thus, DST by discerning the interplay between emotional states and identity allows for a more complete theorisation of their connection to consumption experiences in line with recent calls for approaches that explicate “diverse subject positionings” in experiential contexts (Preece et al., 2022, p. 376).

Secondly, we contribute to the current literature of immersion and identity transformation in consumption experiences (e.g. Lindberg and Østergaard, 2015; cf. Preece and Skandalis, 2023) by advancing understanding of how, not just why, such transformation occurs. Specifically, we find that when consumers accept arising emotional states emerging from the experience, then this creates conflicting emotional states that consumers manage through dialogical interactions between arising emotional states and the identity positions that these states surface. Such dialogical interactions allow for all the conflicting emotional states to be experienced and, as such, leave space for a potential identity transformation within the experience (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka, 2010). By teasing out this interaction, we address research calls (e.g. Bahl and Milne, 2010; Lindberg and Østergaard, 2015) for the use of identity theories that consider the multiplicity in consumers’ selves to account for and enrich theorising of paradoxical behaviours in consumption experiences (e.g. role conflicts, inconsistencies in immersion and transformation processes). Our evidence advances previous studies on the process of immersion (e.g. Lonergan et al., 2022; Stavraki et al., 2018; cf. Woermann and Rokka, 2015) by explaining why some consumers escape the appropriation practices. Specifically, we find that consumers who react to conflicting emotional states may decide to disidentify and thus resist immersion into the experience.

The study’s findings provide managerial implications for art exhibition curators, practitioners of experiential consumption and coachers.

Firstly, our findings offer suggestions for curators of art exhibitions. By focusing on how emotional states shape an aesthetic experience, we show that emotional states affect and are affected by such an experience. This has implications for the spatial design and display of an experience. Spatial design relates to an expressive use of space that allows participants to live and experience a space and its atmosphere. Our findings suggest that shifting the focus from the provision of orchestrated experiences through an enclaved and thematised experiential context (Carù and Cova, 2007) to a more unpredictable and open design may favour responses that are also emotional and embodied and not merely intellectual (Tzortzi, 2017). Such a design can refer to using diverse exhibition spaces (e.g. neglected buildings and public venues) or creating atmospheric conditions (e.g. open exhibition areas combined with more closed spaces), inviting visitors to “shift from ‘looking at’ to ‘being in’” various atmospheres (Tzortzi, 2017, p. 496). Such a perspective elevates the role of emotional states in aesthetic consumption experiences. By so doing, it promotes practices that encourage visitors to feel open to affect and being affected and thus, to accept provided opportunities for a wide range of becomings, which facilitate both immersion and transformation within an art context.

Similarly, the display of an aesthetic experience relates to practices such as, for instance, decisions about the selected sequence of events or the display of paintings (if for an exhibition) that might be part of the experience. Thus, display of experiences may be organised in ways that can stimulate emotional reflections and reactions in the audience, activating the interplays and identities enacted observed in our research, ultimately facilitating immersion. Moreover, the language code used in the display and design can be adapted. Specifically, the use of language in any written material, can inspire emotional reflection, thus facilitating an interplay between consumers’ identities and felt emotional states. For instance, inviting participants into a dialogical encounter (e.g. “How does this experience make you feel”, “Which part of yourself can you relate with this experience?”) can activate interactions between primary and secondary emotional states, which, in turn, act as the basis for discovering and transforming one’s identity as evidenced in the processes unravelled in this study.

Enlarging the scope of the above implications, our evidence can also be used for developing experiences (e.g. design and display of an experience) and advertising messages (e.g. language as discussed above) that link the multiplicity of identities with the consumption of products or services. By so doing, such a development facilitates immersion in the experience and results in stronger engagement with it. Particularly, experiences and messages are formed to guide consumers’ connections with specific brands and immersion; several previous studies have emphasised the role of positive emotions like fun and enjoyment in these processes. Nevertheless, the interplay identified by this study suggests that it is not the emotion valence (positive or negative) but the process of identity enactment that facilitates or hinders these connections.

Secondly, our research provides implications also for managers of brand experiential consumption. The transformative value of experiences is ubiquitous in the literature, for example, experiential engagement initiatives (Harmeling et al., 2017) suggest the use of experiential events to intrinsically motivate consumer engagement with a brand. Research suggests that when such events entail challenging, spontaneous and communal features of a brand experience, then these increase opportunities for identity transformation and engagement with the brand. Our study adds an additional dimension that complements such features, namely, engaging consumers in self-dialogue. This self-dialogue activated through verbal and non-verbal cues (e.g. used in retail spaces), sparks emotional reflection and, as our evidence shows, facilitates a dialogical interplay between consumers’ emotional states and enacted identities in relation to the provided experiences. By so doing, this dimension not only acts as the basis of engaging consumers into a process of transformation but also builds emotional connection with a brand experience, which is considered as an ultimate source for developing deep relationships with customers.

Finally, our evidence informs coaching practices. Coaching practices entail transformative power and aim to support growth by moving individuals out of their comfort zones. Recent studies (Yip et al., 2020) emphasise the importance of drawing on coachees’ multiple identities for enriching coaching practices (e.g. facilitating identity role transitions). Our evidence shows how the relationship between multiple identity positions and comfort zone works; when visitors identify (or not) with primary emotional states arising during their encounters with such an experience, then they leave (or not) their comfort zones (i.e. are open to identity transformation or return to familiar identity positions). This evidence, coupled with the power of arts-based methods in business and management education (Stavraki and Anninou, 2023), suggests that coaching practices can also make use of arts-based practices as coaching techniques. Such techniques allow for extracting emotions and identity positions that facilitate or not transitions out of coachees’ comfort zones, which ultimately support role transitions.

The research has limitations that indicate avenues for future research. Firstly, we focus on the interplay of identity positions as they occur in an aesthetic experience.

Future research might consider the role of identity positions in influencing the motives for aesthetic experiences. Prior research suggests a typology for identity motives regarding museum visitation (Falk, 2008). We call for further research on how identity positions and/or dialogical relations established between identity positions challenge this existing typology, given their effect on consumption. In line with this and with existing discourses that there might be differences in cultural motivations based on gender (Manolika and Baltzis, 2020), further research could explore gender, identity and art consumption. Secondly, we introduce the concept of dialogical interactions to account for interactions occurring between primary and secondary emotions (Bahl and Milne, 2010). This perspective reveals that emotional states activated in a given context are rather malleable and contingent on the situation and the dialogue with the self. This offers potential new avenues of research in identifying novel forms of emotional evaluation. We explore the role of emotional states as an internal dialogical interaction process in the context of art consumption. Contrasting emotional states are also likely to arise in a variety of consumption experiences (e.g. music festivals, sports events, gaming and augmented reality experiences), and even during service encounters (Balaji et al., 2017). Future research could provide rich opportunities for onward application and relevance of the interplay between emotional states and identity, and our evidence in such contexts.

The authors wish to thank all the informants who participated in this research. Authors also wish to thank the reviewer team, the editor, associate and regional editors for their constructive comments, which challenged us in further refining the ideas presented in this article.

Participant consent was sought and provided by the participants.

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