Reimagining Society Through Retail Practice

Marketing scholars with sociological and anthropological leanings have made great strides in uncovering strategic and theoretical implicationsof consumer collectives and consumption-driven market phenomena. It has not been very common that their perspectives have been brought to bearon retailing practice or theory. This ethnographic study examines a highly successful, globalizing, consumer-driven pop-up retail festival for itspotential lessons about social movements. It reveals new insights into logics and potentialities for retailing as a field of affordances for reimaginingsociety and social practices. It points especially to how eruptions of ‘carnivalesque mood’ unite everyday citizens to imagine change in a highlyregulated social context and how they utilize the practice of retailing collectively to actualize societal change.