Journal of Marketing Management

Harnessing the Power of Imagination for Good: Marketing Spells, Consumers’ Fantasies and Dreams of a Better World

‘Fantasy is not just whimsical ego-nonsense but comes really from the depths; it constellates symbolic situations which give life a deeper meaning and a deeper realization.’ (von Franz, 1996, p. 103)

Fantasies, daydreams, or the stories of our imagination are not simply ‘airy nothings’ (Singer, 1975, p. 3) intruding into our daily affairs. Instead, as the psychologist and folklorist von Franz considers, they are profound reflections of our inner selves and can infuse our lives with purpose and meaning. 

The entanglement of fantasies with consumption is central to the marketing industry and the culture of consumption more generally. Fantasy has been recognised as a foundational element of consumer behaviour since the seminal works of Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) and Hirschman and Holbrook (1982), and has been linked to desire (Belk et al., 1996; 2002) and the joys or pleasures of consumption (Campbell, 1987/2018; Seregina, 2014). Contemporary marketing, especially advertising, commonly operates in the realm of fantasy by crafting stories and narratives of enchantment, illusion and heroism, a process which imbues products with an ‘aura of magic’ (Alvesson, 2013, p. 43), while offering consumers promises of ‘magical” transformation’ (Heath & Heath, 2016; St James et al., 2011; Otnes & Scott, 1996) and opportunities for identity development (Belk & Costa, 1988; Seregina, 2014). This instrumentalisation of fantasy for commercial purposes is critiqued by Zipes (1997; 2002), who draws on Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) to explain how marketing and the broader 'culture industry' turn cultural expressions into commodities, thereby reinforcing capitalism's dominance and limiting people's autonomy and their capacity to envision alternative social realities. 

Nevertheless, while marketers may shape consumers’ fantasies, they can only do so with the material generated by these consumers’ universal propensity to imagine. Many consumers are happy ‘to chase unicorns and use the enchantment of consumption as a tool to build dreams of a better existence’ (Heath & Heath, 2016, p. 823). However, we still lack an adequate account of how fantasy interacts with marketing and material consumption to influence consumer experiences and afford meaning or value. For example, it has been observed that imaginative anticipation has a value in itself that consumers may wish to preserve (Heath & Nixon, 2021) and that this can dampen as well as drive Campbell’s (1987/2018, p. 145) ‘desire-acquisition-use-disillusionment-renewed desire’ cycle, but the details of when the desire to acquire will be heightened and when it will be reduced remain hazy. Furthermore, human imagination holds the potential to conceive of radically different ways of interacting with consumption that can help solve social and environmental crises, a topic that current scholarship has neglected.

One form of imagination that has particular relevance to marketing is daydreaming. In his seminal research programme, Jerome Singer defined daydreaming as a ‘shift of attention away´ from some task ‘toward an unfolding sequence of private responses made to some internal stimulus’ (Singer, 1975, p. 3) that can occur without conscious intention. These private responses are usually understood to be ‘pictures in the mind’s eyes… memories or creatively constructed images of future events of varying degrees of everyday occurrence” (Singer, 1975, p. 4). Indeed, subsequent sociological work has shown just how small these varying degrees can be; our daydreams are often highly scripted by the culture and social environments in which we are immersed. Many of our daydreams are thus remarkably similar. Derived from our individual histories and goals and shaped by cultural context, they come to be seen as the self-implicating manifestations of deeply personal self-ideals or wishes (Campbell, 1987/2018; Cohen and Taylor, 1993; McCracken, 1988) and may be all the more jealously guarded for that (Person, 1996). 

Daydreams are of particular interest in studying consumption due to their ubiquity and their considerable influence on how meaning is attached to commodities (Campbell, 1987/2018; McCracken, 1988). For psychologists, daydreaming is pivotal in emotional regulation, motivation, daily planning, and retrospection. It can serve as a coping mechanism for boredom, provide an escape from difficult circumstances and offer dreamers pleasure, excitement, and a sense of freedom or control over their lives (e.g. Ehn & Löfgren, 2010; Singer, 1966; 1975). Future-orientated daydreams can give individuals something ‘to look forward to’ (Heath & Nixon, 2021) and, in doing so, inspire dreamers to reach their goals and afford them hope. For psychoanalysts, daydreams may not be the simple manifestation of conscious wishes but the distorted manifestation of unconscious ones (Freud, 1899/1991). In psychoanalysis, the content of a daydream is thus always the result of a compromise between wishes and defensive mechanisms; in other words, a daydream is a product of desire that is distorted by forces opposing their realisation. From this perspective, desire for a particular object or activity may be rooted in an unconscious phantasy for a different object or activity (Gabriel, 1999).

While often perceived as a purely cognitive phenomenon, daydreams hold the potential to transcend the internal realm of daydreamers. They may manifest as embodied experiences, carrying tangible sensations and affects that are subjectively perceived as authentic (Heath & Nixon, 2021). People who have been encouraged, rather than admonished, to nurture the playful realm of their imaginations may have thus developed the skills for extended immersion in the inner world. Such experiences can be so powerful – in soothing anxiety, in stimulating arousal, in producing pleasure – that they are treasured. Alternatively, daydream scenarios may be borrowed from a favourite film or novel (Person, 1995) and may be no less meaningful to the dreamer. Such effects underscore the substantial influence that daydreams can exert on individuals' emotions and behaviour, as well as the power that shaping consumers' daydreams has as a tool for marketers. Daydreams may also be divulged to a trusted partner or friend and then co-constructed or shared. However, daydreams’ often private, subjective, and ephemeral nature means that investigating them may be challenging, requiring methods capable of capturing participants' inner thoughts and which are sensitive to the ethical issues arising. The methodological challenges of gathering empirical data on daydreaming forms is also complicated by the fact that people may differ markedly in the extent to which they daydream, how elaborate it may become, and their capability to recall the details or even to recognise their own imaginative activities. 

Thus, it is not surprising that published empirical research into daydreaming phenomena and consumption is relatively scant. What does exist includes d’ Astous and Deschênes (2005), Denegri‐Knott and Molesworth (2010), Jenkins et al. (2011), Heath and Nixon (2021), and Preece and Skandalis (2024). Fournier and Guiry (1993) first identified pre-purchase dreaming as a prevalent phenomenon within consumer culture, in which consumers engage to anticipate consumption and plan purchases because of the intrinsic enjoyment afforded by the experience.  Indeed, daydreams are pleasurable per se, to the extent that they can replace actual consumption when the latter is difficult or impossible to realise (d’Astous & Deschênes, 2005), or when daydreamers simply prefer to prolong anticipation, build up excitement, or keep possibilities open (Heath & Nixon, 2021). However, the degree to which consumer goods form the focus or merely the setting of a daydream has been debated (Jenkins et al., 2011); a focus on daydreams about commodities may indicate the kind of ‘consumption-related centrism’ (Fitchett & Cronin 2022, p. 3) that forecloses a broader and richer understanding of consumer fantasising. In particular, the extent to which daydreams may stimulate, maintain, enhance, or diminish a customer's journey, and the broader implications of this, have not been fully theorised. For example, how far can Heath and Nixon’s (2021) claim that daydreaming can replace material consumption help envision more fun-filled sustainable societies (Soper 2020; Wilk 2022)?

Current consumer research scholarship has the most to say about pleasurable, future-orientated or desire-filled imaginative forms. Psychological literature also supports the hypothesis that fantasy plays a central role in mastering traumas and problems, regulating emotions and better adapting to reality (Rodomonti et al., 2021). Not all daydreams are positive or constructive (McMillan et al., 2013), however. Daydreams can be unpleasant, past-orientated and involve disappointment, guilt, shame or regret. Many can have maladaptive consequences (Sommer, 2002); immersive imagining can create unmeetable expectations, leading to disappointment, impairing relationships and causing symptoms resembling addictive disorders (Soffer-Dudek & Somer, 2018). To de-romanticise the market (Fitchett & Cronin, 2022), can we confront the darkness of some everyday daydreams to understand how they relate to consumption? How might we better understand the ‘on-off flickerings of intense affect-laden imagery’ (Person 1996, p. 20); the fear, power, guilt, aggression or sadism underpinning our imaginative scenarios and consumer desires? Is daydreaming’s adaptive function as seemingly helpful to individuals as psychology would argue, or is it the kind of reality-denying soma holiday of the commodity fetishist (Cluley & Dunne, 2012) that excuses inaction? Though scholars have argued that daydreaming is a universal human ability, marketing and consumption scholarship has focused on those living in capitalist market economies, offering little that might illuminate the phenomenon in different contexts e.g. those living in subsistence marketplaces (Viswanathan et al., 2012).

Finally, digital, virtual consumption and interactive media further afford marketers new opportunities to influence consumers’ fantasies (Denegri‐Knott & Molesworth, 2010; Preece & Skandalis, 2024). This creates opportunities to improve well-being, for example, in managing emotional issues, as well as risks of harm, both of which are observed in the online trend of deeply immersive ‘reality shifting’ (Somer et al., 2023, p. 11415).

This special issue seeks to expand knowledge of the interactions of consumption with fantasy and daydreaming by combining diverse theoretical and empirical approaches.  We seek new insights into any aspect of imaginative engagement with consumption, from subtly rewriting memories to immersive world-building. We are also interested in submissions that discuss the role that fantasising and daydreaming can play in transforming marketing and consumption towards a better world (Chandy et al., 2021). 

We welcome studies of the consumer imagination from any social science domain, including but not limited to sociology, psychology, CCT, psychoanalysis or anthropology. We especially welcome articles from diverse cultural contexts. Submissions addressing, but not restricted to, the following topics are encouraged:

• What methods can illuminate the interaction of daydreaming and consumption?
• What actions by marketers tend to produce what kinds of daydreams in consumers? What role can technology play in producing these effects?
• How do marketers exert power through shaping consumers’ fantasies, and how do consumers assert agency through consumption in fantasy’?
• What roles do daydreaming and fantasy play in addictive or other harmful consumption?
• Can daydreaming drive more responsible forms of consumption? If ‘the virtual displaces the material’ (Wilk, 2022: 265), how far can daydreaming be a source of sustainable fun?   
• What role can marketers play in stimulating people’s fantasies that facilitate a more sustainable society? 

The full Call for Papers including suggested topics and references can be found at the JMM blog site: https://www.jmmnews.com/harnessing-imagination/