The spatial aspects of musical taste: Conceptualizing consumers’ place-dependent identity investments

Consumer research has largely left implicit the interrelationships of space and place with taste. This multi-sited ethnographic study explores how consumers enact, perform, and further develop their musical tastes via their aesthetic experiences in popular (indie) and classical music places. Our findings suggest that consumers create place-dependent identity investments, which unfold via a tripartite experiential process of manifesting habitus, undertaking habitation, and expressing idiolocality. Our study contributes to diverse streams of consumer research such as consumer behaviour, consumer culture theory, and experiential marketing, and opens up avenues for future research focused on the intersections of place with taste.