The wellness travel industry faces a curious challenge: it experiences high consumer demand for indigenous experiences while also facing growing accusations of cultural appropriation of authentic practices. According to the Global Wellness Summit (2023), “hyper-indigenous” wellness travel is a global trend for 2023, as travelers seek the source of ancient healing knowledge. However, many of these cultural practices have already spread across national borders like the turmeric latte served in Western retreats or yoga that is practiced globally, leading to an established yoga tourism market (Market Research, 2022). How can these conflicting realities, rooted in the concept of authenticity, be reconciled? This study aims to explore this research question by analyzing two wellness narratives: one that commodifies ingenious practices outside their original borders and another that safeguards them within national and cultural boundaries.

While the aesthetic alteration of the body has long been practiced in global cultures, from feet binding in China to scarring and piercing in Africa to face tattooing in New Zealand (Vlahos 1979), only lately has the idea of selective aesthetic alteration through cosmetic surgery materialized, supported by sturdy mainstream demand. Operating in a growing and competitive market, plastic surgery has redefined itself, and its original narrow mission of “fixing” deformed bodies and enhancing the features of celebrities has widened to include supporting the physical beauty of “normal” bodies. Surgeons, in turn, have redefined their individual identities to include the category “artist” as well as “scientist.” Some of them tend to treat the body as “a canvas” to be manipulated into a form artistically conceived by a surgeon; others approach the body as a form already created by nature, yet in need of being scientifically rebuilt, reshaped or returned to an improved and youthful condition. Patients, arguably, favor the “surgeon as an artist” premise and even expect medical offices to resemble fine art galleries: “Our patients want us to be artists” (Swanson 2013, p.182). It is this statement that has guided the author’s research in the direction of examining the artistic aspect of cosmetic surgeons’ identity. If cosmetic surgeons are artists who use human bodies as their medium, then they create living art that “can be seen walking among us in the form of revamped faces and figures.” (Cotter 2009). As such, these transformed bodies should be manifesting fashion trends in their newly reshaped body parts. Following this assumption, this work aims to conceptualize plastic surgeons’ role as agents of fashion, whose creative results “are judged, admired or criticized by observers.” (Bryan 2005, p. 6). How surgeons understand their function as “agents of fashion” is the guiding research question. In the search for answers, the author turns to the channels of marketing communication employed by cosmetic surgeons and examines their online presence on social media platforms. This work focuses on social media with the purpose of analyzing the digital identities of the plastic surgeons and the extent of their artistic side.

We develop a concept of the face in the consumer behavior discipline and contribute to the theory of lookism defined as bias toward people because of their perceived physical appearance (Tietje & Cresap,, 2005). “What is the face?” –is our fundamental research question. What makes the face become the site of voluntary alteration? How do marketing forces drive the mainstream embrace of surgical correction of facial features as a commercial commodity, similar to shoes? While the latest medical advances have handed some control over appearance to consumers and provided them with a product (plastic surgery) designed to correct one’s genetic make-up, the designer face as a new consumer commodity hasn’t been addressed academically yet. Presumably, the face is the most distinctive human body element that sets a person apart from others, but academic studies that incorporate the phenomenon of treating people in a way biased by their perceived physical attractiveness have largely focused on the entire physique. To fill the academic gap, we specifically study the normative function of advertising as it presents itself in the format of street billboards. Examining this advertising language in the context of an emerging pattern of consumer behavior—designing one’s face through surgery—we theorize how the marketing channel normalizes this novel pattern, fitting it into historical, philosophical, social, and cultural contexts; how it legitimizes plastic surgery as a mainstream consumer commodity; and how it makes the face an object of alteration. Moreover, we perform the study in the specific cultural domain of Asia that places a strong metaphorical value on the face and has historically developed the honor-centered concept of “saving face” as a guiding principle of life (Lee, 1999). Driven by the fundamental question “What is the face?” and its examination in the context of the face-saving culture of South Korea, we developed a working research question to guide our inquiry: what makes a culture rooted in conservative beliefs and respect for the elderly so openly question and surgically correct the “quality” of the body received from one’s parents?

While borrowing from the theory of lookism, defined as “prejudice toward people because of their appearance” (Tietje and Cresap 2005, p, 31), this paper ventures into an emerging pattern of consumer behavior—designing one’s own body with the help of a surgical blade. The “designer body” idea has gradually moved from futuristic fiction to the exclusive domain of celebrity personalities and has lately arrived in the more mainstream marketplace (Kim, 2015). Available statistics indicate a growing number of plastic surgeries and clinic locations, the booming popularity of the aesthetics surgery specialty in medical schools, and burgeoning medical tourism with the goal of aesthetically reinventing one’s body (Akam 2014). Consumer vocabulary has embraced “rhinoplasty” and “liposuction” and lovingly transformed the dry medical jargon into the softer slang terms “rhino” and ‘lipo.” While breast augmentation is the most popular surgical procedure, in this work we purposely focus on the face. Unless veiled, the face is the body part that is always on display. In addition, we intentionally perform this study in the specific cultural domain that places strong metaphorical value on the face and has historically developed the dignity-centered concept of “saving face” as a major guiding principle of life. The choice of South Korea within this vast cultural realm seems the most logical given the fact that twenty percent of women in the country have something surgically done on their faces, which is arguably the highest known proportion in the world (Willett 2013). Finally, South Korea’s emphasis on Confucian values is part of our approach. Our research objective is to understand the interplay of major cultural forces that define the embrace of a novel mass marketed product (plastic surgery) designed to correct one’s genetic make-up. Considering marketing to be one such cultural force (Fedorenko 2014), we specifically aim to conceptualize its role in an ongoing interaction with Confucian values. What makes a culture rooted in conservative beliefs and respect for the elderly so openly question and surgically correct the “quality” of the body received from one’s parents? Does it happen because of or in opposition to Confucianism? Does fashion simply extend its province by converting desirable pointy noses and v-shaped chins into “in” items similar to pointy shoes? These research questions have shaped our qualitative methodological approach (Strauss and Corbin 1998) that relies on the juxtaposition of norms and values dictated by Confucian beliefs and those manifested through marketing channels. To uncover the normative messages and consumer directions coming from marketers, we turn to the so-called language of the street and perform close analysis of fifty advertising billboards and street signs promoting plastic procedures and located in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. We read both visual and textual data against the traditional Confucian literature. This methodological direction for our study was developed with the purpose to fill in the gap in the existing research, as detailed in the literature review, followed by the analysis of data, discussion of our findings, and the final section outlining a potential course for future research.

This work aims to explore how authenticity of a newly independent country is being restored in the face of legacy left by invaders. To surface crucial elements of geopolitical authenticity, I turn to Estonia as a country representative of many nations that went through the tumultuous changes of the last century. The end of the twentieth century left a powerful mark on the geopolitical scenery of the planet. Countries’ borders were changed or restored, and new formal maps were redrawn. Only the break up of the former Soviet Union has resulted in 15 independent countries, with Estonia being one of them. The joy of freedom came up with economic, political, and cultural challenges including the challenge of restoring authenticity of a country.

The author invites attendees of the Special Session on Film Making for Marketing Research and Communication to have a critical look at the short history of film making in the marketing discipline and foresee its future. There are two perspectives for this discussion: one is a broad overview of film making for consumer behavior research, and the second is the personal reflection of the author who first engaged in film making nine years ago. Film making as a research approach in the academic areas of marketing and consumer behavior is just beginning its early “teenage” years. It counts its formal age from the time it obtained legitimacy when the first Film Festival took place at the Association for Consumer Research Conference in Atlanta, USA, in 2002. Since then, the Film Festival has become an integral part of this major conference that draws together a global academic audience of consumer researchers. In fact, film festivals are now included in the European, Asia-Pacific, and Latin American ACR conferences, and as of 2012, there were more than 125 films accepted into the various ACR Film Festivals (Belk and Kozinets 2012). The current number of accepted films probably exceeds 150, which demonstrates growing interest in film making in the academic discipline of marketing. Russell W. Belk and Robert V. Kozinets,“founding fathers” of the ACR Film Festivals have become instrumental in developing guidance and academic criteria for the novel research approach of videography. Films are expected to be topical, theatrical, theoretical, and technical. That means that 1) the topic under visual investigation should relate to consumer research; 2) the film should flow in a dramatic and engaging way; 3) a theoretical perspective and contribution should be evident; and 4) the film should have good production values (Belk and Kozinets 2012). The author, who started making films without prior expertise after attending a workshop, has since produced four videographies of various lengths and levels of mastery. They have been presented at conferences globally, one was published in a special multi-media issue of an academic journal, two have earned academic awards, and all of them have found use in the classroom. Topic-wise, the films related to consumer research by exploring happiness (“Finding Harmony in the Jungle”), the role of narratives on food product packaging (“It All Began with a Kiss, or When Packaging Sells a Country”), the transformational power of street language (“Red Bull on the Roof of the World or From Landscape into Servicescape”), and the Easternization of the West (“Yoga and Fashion”). The videographies were filmed in Belize, Italy, England, Indonesia (Bali) and China (Tibet). The film making process for the author has been rewarding because of the creative potential that comes with videography and the use of visual channels of communication for academic purposes. Challenges include making sure the films have the necessary rigor to qualify as academic work.