Shining the spotlight on marketplace rituals: a review and research agenda

Although rituals are commonplace in marketer-consumer interactions, extant research devotes limited attention to how ‘marketplace actors’ or MAs (marketers and stakeholders enacting the roles of marketers) leverage these events in the marketplace. We scrutinise this gap by examining literature in the top 50 major marketing journals. We ask: What functions do marketplace rituals fulfil for MAs, as they leverage these rituals when shaping customer experiences? Our analysis finds MAs leverage rituals to support seven broad functional categories that pertain to customer experience: cognitive, cultural, emotive, logistical, relational, social, and transformative. We illuminate how MAs leverage these functions to meet specific goals. We propose an agenda for future research on marketplace rituals.