Dress Code: mining rich autoethnographic data to generate insights into international consumer behaviour of luxury fashion goods

Business Schools are not the most likely home for story-telling research. However, increasingly, we recognise that business research needs to recognise the socially constructive ontological nature of our domain. We see that whilst telling us about the frequency of phenomena, the positivistic characteristics of much published research fail to gain social insight into those phenomena.  Broadly, within the business domain there is a confusion of purpose, in that research ‘quality’  has become and can only be researched by, positivistic method.
 
Our autoethnographic work combines ethnography, biography and analysis of self by using story-telling in a collaborative, co-constructed narrative.  The stories focus on the experience of two researchers in the purchase of clothing of Jordanian origin, and the importance that place of origin has in consumer behaviour decisions.  
 
The paper uses community autoethnography, whereby stories are commented upon by a third, objective researcher, drawing on the similarities and differences between the two stories.  The findings relate to the socio-cultural implications of the importance of brand personality to self-concept and also the significance of place of origin.