If it Smells Like Sweat, is that Still a Sensory Experience? Sensory Marketing and the CrossFit Phenomenon: An Abstract

Abstract

This project explores how consumers make meanings of the objects they interact with when engaging in a particularly sensorial servicescape, the CrossFit (hereafter, CF) box. Our research question is: do the objects used specifically in CF help consumers to create meaning around their own experiences and contribute to CF’s fanatical brand following? Boundary objects are defined as objects that take on different meanings in different social worlds simultaneously (Griesemer and Star 1989). Boundary objects live within multiple, overlapping social worlds. In order for an object to be a boundary object, it must simultaneously fulfill its required role in each of these social worlds and have three aspects: an interpretive flexibility, a material or organizational structure, and the ability to have ill- and well-structured uses (Star 2010). Four types of boundary objects are discussed: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries, and standardized forms. The author team conducted an ethnography of CF boxes in which they are members. These boxes are located across the continental United States. In addition to an exploration of their home boxes, the authors have “dropped in” with other boxes while traveling. This was foregrounded with researcher introspection. The first theme lies in the relationship between the participants and the blank canvas of the space and spatial object array therein. Without mirrors in which to focus on one’s vanity and without a clear guide to using the space on one’s own, the space forces participants into a social context with invisible structure. Similarly, the objects in the space exhibit agency in a key way. These objects act on the participant, molding them. This focus on active transformation allows the objects to work. Moreover, consistent with an object-oriented ontology (OOO), the capacity of these objects to act on the body is not fully realized by the participant. Beyond the lack of instructions and diagrams on how they might transform one’s body, the objects hold an invisible, oblique side (Harman 2011). One works with them and allows them to work on one as instructed and demonstrated by others, not in a formulaic “leg day” or “arm day” or “endurance day” sense as in many other exercise forms. Thus, the objects take on the role of participants, in some sense. Just as one cannot know the potential of a human relation, one cannot fully know the potential of a barbell in the box. Data collection and analysis is ongoing.