From watching to being seen: conceptualizing emerging new marketing govern mentality regarding multilayer image interpretation and technological interaction

Within the service industry and consumer research, the importance of images has been long established. More recently, however, a systemic shift has occurred within the ecosystem opening a space for the cultural (re)framing of digital images. Enhanced by technological interaction, new behaviours are re-shaping the understanding and interpretation of the boundaries of digital images in advertising. Images on/via Smartphone(s), for example, have recently opened a new layer of interaction, by captivating the consumer’s sense of interactivity, creativity and emotions. Although extensive research has been undertaken in investigating image interpretation, from a consumer’s cultural framing perspective, no work exists that analyses manipulated digital images as epistemic consumption objects. The present paper attempts to redress this deficit by conceptually analyzing the case of ‘Wonderbra’ advertising, from 1994 to 2012. Adopting a cultural resources perspective, we review the challenges digital image technologies face and develop a set of propositions on the consequences and the likelihood of a rapid engagement by all stakeholders. We then conceptualise how the technologies of the new digital images re-frame, re-shape and ultimately improve the relation between marketers and consumers by building upon the new cultural framework emerging from social network sharing, and Smartphone ecosystems.