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Identity, Ethnicity and Gender: Using Narratives to Understand their Meaning in Retail Shopping Encounters

This paper examines the ways in which two women (Sweetie and Desiree) experience a dissatisfying retail encounter. Citing data derived from memory-work methodology, we illustrate how stories can be used to gain a detailed insight into the complexity of consumption experiences and give voice to women consumers. By allowing women to write about, and critically reflect on their experiences, we show how consumers attach meaning to retail encounters and how we, as researchers can offer alternative interpretations of consumer behavior to those commonly reported in the literature. In this paper we use memories of "nasty" retail encounters to illustrate how social constructs related to identity, such as ethnicity and gender, have meaning in shopping experiences. Because of the new understandings possible via this method, we argue for using reflexivity in our research and analyses informed by feminism.