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EXTENDED ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 crisis has forced consumers worldwide to stay at home and avoid social contact, either following nationally imposed lockdowns or because of self-imposed restrictions due to own health concerns. Physical distancing restrictions differ between periods, countries and regions, but the overall disruption of social life has been tremendous. In this paper we focus on the consequences on consumers who cannot engage in the rituals surrounding childbirth, entering adulthood, weddings, and funerals. These events represent rites of passage (Rook 1985) that have important identity and relational value. We explore how consumers deal with the disruption of these collective rituals and how they utilize technology to reinvent ritual elements. We find that consumers extend and reduce rituals to mitigate the negative effects of physical distancing measures on consumer well-being.
Literature Review
Rituals are a "type of expressive, symbolic activity constructed of multiple behaviors that occur in a fixed, episodic sequence, and that tend to be repeated over time" (Rook 1985). Rituals are considered a crucial mechanism for the (re)creation of society (Bell 1997; Durkheim 1912) in which individuals respect norms and traditions (Bell 1997; Weinberger 2015) and share experiences that maintain the emotional bonds within a community (Durkheim 1912; Etzioni 2000). There are four ritual elements: artifacts, the objects that hold specific meanings; scripts, the sequence of actions performed during the ritual; performance role(s) across actors involved in the ritual; and audience (Rook 1985). These ritual elements have been examined in consumer research (Sherry, McGrath, and Levy 1993; Wallendorf and Arnould 1991; Weinberger 2015).
We explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated physical distancing measures on a particular type of rituals, i.e. rites of passage (Schouten 1991; Turner 1969). One of the primary objectives of rites of passage is to delineate the transition of an individual to a different status in the community (Van Gennep 1908/1960), such as to adulthood (Fasick 1988), married life (Otnes and Pieck 2003), parenthood (Fischer and Gainer 1993; Ozanne 1992), or death (Bonsu and Belk 2003). While...