Abstract

Although extensive work has been carried out in understanding luxury consumption in retail settings in developed economies, limited research has been done in emerging economies. With growing middle and upper classes with an appetite for the consumption of luxury goods (IPSOS, 2010), Brazil has become a fertile ground for understanding such phenomena. This research aims at understanding the shopping experiences at Shopping Cidade Jardim – a luxury shopping mall in an emerging economy - through an examination of consumer culture. The research follows a phenomenological inductive posture, along the lines of the Consumer Culture Theory (Arnould and Thompson, 2005) and under an ethnographic protocol in three phases as described by Spiggle (1994) and followed by marketing implications.