Scripts people live in the marketplace: an application of script analysis to Confessions of a Shopaholic

Molesworth, M. and Grigore, G. (2019) Scripts people live in the marketplace: an application of script analysis to Confessions of a Shopaholic. Marketing Theory, 19 (4). pp. 467-488. ISSN 1741-301X doi: 10.1177/1470593118821725

Abstract/Summary

This paper shows how Script Analysis can produce new marketing theory by applying it to contemporary shopping behaviour via British novelist Madeleine Wickham’s novel, Confessions of a Shopaholic. We show how Becky Bloomwood, the central character, is a Scripted Shopaholic for whom shopping is the activity around which everything else in her live falls in and out of place. In presenting a Scripted Shopaholic Racket System, we theorise: how shopping is used to structure time and relationships with others; the role of injunctions and attributions and related discounting in fulfilling shopping scripts; and, the possibility of freedom from excessive shopping scripts. We therefore bring together psychoanalysis, literary texts, and shopping theories to generate new insights about why people shop (and often shop too much), and how such behaviours might be transformed

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/79093
Identification Number/DOI	10.1177/1470593118821725
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Henley Business School > Marketing and Reputation
Publisher	Sage
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