Published article: Unpacking package free shopping: Alternative retailing and the reinvention of the practice of shopping

Bilderesultat for retailing and consumer services

Christian Fuentes from the Swedish team in Plateforms has published the article entitled:

Unpacking package free shopping: Alternative retailing and the reinvention of the practice of shopping, in the journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698918310476?dgcid=authorĀ 

A story about the article in Swedish is to be found here.

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to understand how the practice of package free shopping takes shape and is established. Taking a shopping-as-practice approach, and drawing on an ethnographic study of a Swedish ecological food store, this paper shows that to be able to successfully remove a key artefact – packaging – from the practice of shopping, the practice itself must be reinvented. Developing package free shopping therefore requires the re-framing of the practice of shopping (making it meaningful in a new way), the re-skilling of the consumer (developing new competencies needed for its performance), and the re-materialization of the store (changing the material arrangement that makes this mode of shopping possible). This suggests that the promotion of alternative modes of sustainable shopping is a complicated matter that requires a profound understanding of the practice of shopping.