This seminar will be held in a hybrid format.

You can attend it either in person (room EP004) or online.

Registration is mandatory. Please register by April 23rd indicating if you will be attending in person or online. The weblink will be emailed to online attendees after registration.

 

Michael Kleinaltenkamp is a Professor Emeritus at the Marketing Department of Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) where he held the position as a Professor of Business and Service Marketing and as the director of the “Executive Master of Business Marketing” program from 1992 to 2020. He received his PhD in Business Administration and Economics (Dr. rer. oec., 1984) as well as his Habilitation (Professorial Dissertation, 1992) at the Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany). In November 2013 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of Rostock (Germany).

Professor Kleinaltenkamp’s research and teaching focusses on business-to-business and service marketing, customer success management, and marketing theory. He published in leading marketing journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Marketing Theory, and Journal of Service Theory and Practice.

Michael Kleinaltenkamp has been a Visiting Scholar at the School of Marketing of the University of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia), at the Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University, Melbourne (Australia), at UWA Business School, University of Western Australia, Perth (Australia), and regularly serves as a Visiting Professor at Católica Porto Business School, Porto (Portugal), and at the Marco Biagi Department of Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena (Italy).

Abstract

In sectors across the experience economy—from live sports to festivals, nightlife entertainment, private members’ clubs, and invite-only events—firms compete by staging social atmospheres. When firms successfully stage social atmospheres, they benefit from enhanced customer experiences, loyalty, and place attachment. However, social atmospheres often fail when firms struggle to bring together the “optimal” mix of customers. Yet marketing research offers limited insight into how firms can attract and select heterogeneous customers who fit together productively to create meaningful shared experiences of place. Accordingly, this article draws on aesthetic work literature to conceptualize social atmosphere curation—the process through which firms manage customer heterogeneity to achieve social fit as a means to stage social atmospheres. Through an ethnographic study of Berlin’s iconic electronic music club scene, this article reveals a three-stage social atmosphere curation model, comprising curation mechanisms of cultivation, selection, and mystification. This research advances marketing scholarship’s understanding of social atmospheres, customer heterogeneity, and marketplace inclusion and exclusion. By outlining the managerial tasks associated with each curation mechanism, this research provides actionable guidance for managers across various service contexts on how to curate the right crowd to deliberately stage social atmospheres.