IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/wsi/wschap/9789814280280_0012.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Sneakerheads and Custom Kicks: Insights into Symbolic Mass Customization

In: Handbook of Research in Mass Customization and Personalization (In 2 Volumes)

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Giebelhausen

    (Department of Marketing, College of Business, Florida State University, USA)

  • Stephanie Lawson

    (Department of Marketing, College of Business, Florida State University, USA)

Abstract

This chapter presents an exploratory study involving a group of athletic shoe enthusiasts and their feelings towards customized footwear. These ‘sneakerheads’ demonstrate their infatuation with sneakers via activities ranging from creating catalogs of custom shoes to buying and selling rare athletic footwear online. The key characteristic these individuals share is that, for them, athletic shoes are a fundamental fashion accessory steeped in symbolism and meaning. A series of in-depth interviews utilizing the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) provide a better understanding of how issues such as art, self-expression, exclusivity, peer recognition, and counterfeit goods interact with the mass customization of symbolic products by category experts.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Giebelhausen & Stephanie Lawson, 2009. "Sneakerheads and Custom Kicks: Insights into Symbolic Mass Customization," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Frank T Piller & Mitchell M Tseng (ed.), Handbook of Research in Mass Customization and Personalization (In 2 Volumes), chapter 12, pages 226-239, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789814280280_0012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814280280_0012
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814280280_0012
    Download Restriction: Ebook Access is available upon purchase.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789814280280_0012. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscientific.com/page/worldscibooks .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.