Vestindo o personagem : a contribuição da experiência cosplay para o bem-estar do consumidor

Abstract

It’s not unusual to see consumers buying and consuming many products and services with the intention to live through ludic experiences. Nowadays, it’s known how these forms of consumptions can contribute to the consumer’s well-being, either by conceiving episodic pleasures, or by leading to some personal growth. Despite a number of studies exploring how services and products can individually be a source of these experiences, little has been dedicated to comprehending how both a product and a service can be consumed at the same time and space. This restricted scope has limited the knowledge of some “ornamented consumption”, on which, with the intention of live a richer experience, the consumer deliberately bring a complementary product to be consumed during a service. Willing to comprehend how the consumers can use such products to create symbiotic experiences with a service, and how these consumptions can benefit his or her well-being, the present dissertation explored the “cosplay experience”. The cosplayers bring and wear their own cosplays at geek conventions, intentionally enriching their experiences inside these spaces by characterizing themselves as some fictional character from the geek culture, widening their range of interactions and activities during the con, such as posing to some photos or playing the character in an improvised scene in front of a crowd of other consumers. Through the observation of geek conventions and a series of videographic interviews with cosplayers, this study assessed how the cosplay can shift the way the consumer interpret the geek convention, becoming seemed as just a stage for the use of cosplays; with the cosplay being used both as a way to intensify the ludic and escapist aspects of the convention experience, and/or a form of self-expression and personal challenge, evoking multiple long term benefits to the consumer well-being, as self-comprehension, social skills and body acceptance.