The articulation of value at the market level

The nature of value for consumers has been of central interest in consumer research. However, understudied is the conceptualization of value at a market level. One reason is the disassociation of value perceptions and experiences from socially constructed repeated patterns of practices. Combining semiotic analysis and practice theory, the authors use participant observation in a community of salsa dancers to explain how an offering becomes valuable at the interfaces between an inner, phenomenological environment, and an outer semiotic-material environment. Three layers signify this interface: 1. Material devices put into action. 2. Sign systems and semiotic interplay. 3. Communities of embodied practices.