Provenance and the liminality of production and consumption: The case of wine promoters

Abstract

Cultural intermediaries actively mediate between production and consumption: they operate at the interfaces between and within firms, and between firms and customers, and reflexively negotiate between their roles as symbolic producers and taste-leading consumers. The article examines the liminality of cultural intermediaries through a case study of wine promoters, using the theme of provenance as an empirical lens through which to examine both their work in creating added value for particular wines, and their identities as reflexive producer/consumers. In its distinctive account of boundary work in practice, the article contributes to emerging research on the subjectivity of market practitioners — a crucial perspective on the relationship between production and consumption, but one which has yet to be fully developed in marketing theory and its discussions of value co-creation and the prosumer.