Various forms of consumer gatherings have been increasingly recognized to collectively organize new marketplaces where consumer value arises from shared experiences of social belonging and togetherness. One such rapidly globalizing retail phenomenon is Restaurant Day, where everyday citizens, in a form of tempered civil disobedience, suspend the rules and regulations of commercial retail to create a one-day restaurant carnival that takes the form of copious pop-up restaurants located throughout city-spaces. An ethnographic exploration of this retail spectacle allows us to reconsider many conventional notions of the retailing discourse and problematize the notion of consumer activism in such contexts.

• Joel Hietanen(Aalto University School of Business)
• Pekka Mattila(Aalto University School of Business)
• Antti Sihvonen(Aalto University School of Business)