Panel at the IIEMCA 2019

Description

Organisation of the Panel „Doing Choice and Decision in Shopping and Sales Interaction" (ID 131). Shopping as mundane activity of everyday-live provides several selections and decision making processes shoppers accomplish in collaboration with co-shoppers or salesmen's with the aim to get certain objects in their possession. This includes finding and choosing goods in a semiotically rich environment of for example markets, stores or online-shops, the negotiation of the objects status as a "potentially buyable" (De Stefani 2013) and its appropriateness to be bought in regard to its quality, price and future use. Within consumer studies, decision making and consumer choice are of central relevance. A wide variety of works have attempted to model decision making processes, depicting them mainly as psychological, intra-subjective processes. However, shopping is often a socially situated activity that is accomplished in the co-presence of others. As such, these studies lack to understand and explain how choice and decision are made relevant and are accounted for within ongoing interactions. Only few ethnomethodological and conversation analytical (EMCA) studies focus on choice and decision making in shopping interactions highlighting the interactional construction of both the shopping activity, the participants and the potentially buyable (e.g. Clark & Pinch 1994, 2010, De Stefani 2013, 2014, Heath & Luff 2007, Llewellyn & Hindmarsh 2013, Meinhof 2018, Stokoe et al 2017, vom Lehn 2014). Therefore, the panel presents EMCA studies which analyse consumer choice as an interactive, situated activity in a material world. The discussion will be based on preferably video-recordings that highlight the situated and multimodal interplay of these interactions in a semiotically rich environment with a special focus on choice and decision making processes. Topics to discuss will be · The interactional construction of potentially buyables · The interactional negotiations on objects quality, future use or price · Constructions of member's identities, autonomous choice and/or consumer subjectivity · Practices of choice and decision making in assisted shopping (e.g. with people with cognitive, physical or communication disabilities or children) · If and how global and local contexts (e.g. markets) are constructed and/or show procedural consequentiality in situated decision making processes of shopping activities

Period	Jul 2019
Event type	Conference
Location	Mannheim, GermanyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International