The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy on the Odyssey RUSSELL W. BELK MELANIE WALLENDORF JOHN F. SHERRY, JR.* Two processes at work in contemporary society are the secularization of reiigion and the sacraiization of the secular. Consum er behavior shapes and reflects these processes. For many, consumption has become a vehicle for experiencing the sacred. This article explores the ritual substratum of consumption and describes properties and ma nifestati ons of the sacred inherent in consumer behavior. Sim- iiarly, the processes by which consumers sacralize and desacraiize dimensions of their experience are described. The naturalistic inquiry approach driving the insights in this article is advanced as a corrective to a premature narrowing of focus in consumer research. I t has been argued that revelatory incidents are the primary source of insight in ethnographic field- work (Fernandez 1986; Sherry 1988). These are highly charged encounters su ffu se d with meani ng. Because these incidents are directly experienced by the researcher, the significance of the phenomenon under study is more f ull y appreciated t han might oth- erw ise be possible. A numbe r of such revelatory incidents have c aused us to reevaluate some oft he field's fundamental constructs for understanding market- place and consumer behavi or. Consider the foll owing abbreviated examples: Among the wares fo r sale at the edge ofthe midway of a bustling Southwestern swap meet are decorative brooms and handcrafted dolls which closely resemble Cabbage Patch Kids. The vendor, a vibrant middle- • Russell W. Belk is the N. Eldon Tanner Professor of Business Administration at the College of Business, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. Melanie Wallendorf is Associate Professor of Marketing, College of Business and Public Administration, Uni- versity of Arizona, Tucson, AZ85716. John F. Sherry, Jr. is Assis- tant Professor of Marketing, Kellogg Graduate School of Manage- ment, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60608. Financial support and intellectual encouragement from John Farley and Marketing Science Institute, Bill Wells and DDB Needham, David Berger and Foote, Co ne, and Belding enabled the data collection on which this article is based. The authors also thank Howie Becker, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Andrew Greeley, and Deborah Heisley for insightful commen ts on an earlier draft. Professor Wallendorf appreciates the hospitality ofthe Departments of Marketing at the University of Utah and Northwestern University, where uninter- rupted time and other support was provided to complete this manu- script during a sabbatical. All three authors acknowledge the support of their respective institutions and the other members of th e Odyssey research team during the data collection phase ofthe Con- sumer Behavior Odyssey. aged woman named Sarah, fashions the dolls with lov- ing detail born of remarkable social circumstance. A f - te r the birth of her first child—a son now embarking upon a trying preadolescence—an automobile accident prevented Sarah from conceiving other children, most notably the daughter she al ways wan ted. During her re- covery, Sarah began doing handicrafts, and eventually began "making the babies." In joining the dolls' fabric bodies and faces, Sarah sees the babies "come to life." She views her skill as a special gift, just as babies are a gift from God . As she talks about her dolls, she adopts a different linguistic register, shifting into baby-talk, and caresses their foreheads as she speaks. Prior to closing the sale of each doll, Sarah performs a deliberate tran s- action. She kisses the doll before releasing it to a customer, wishing it well and knowing all the while ho w happy the doll will make other children. Describing his arrangement of sculpted ceram ic figures alternately as a "surrealistic fantasy" and a "dream," Garth W arren watches viewers strolling past his exhibit at the open air art festival. The young Southern Califor- nian artist has created a series of figures ("Eygot," "Wewants," "Sleep Drive," "Swollen Pride") complete with framed misspelled proem cautionary tales, which represent aspects of his own personality (notably "consumerism") which he purports to dislike greatly. He is building a portfolio suitable to entering galleries, an d is using this show to gain some exposure. Signifi- cantly, he is little concerned with business matte rs, and finds pricing his artwork troublesome. He gives many of his pieces away fo r nothing, and is as content with a talkative looker as a paying customer. His younger sis- ter, however, is sales-oriented, and has undertaken to protect Garth from his own philanthropy. Using a pricing policy that is at turns intuitive and strategic, she is not above reviling critical lookers or altering her bro th- er's work to suit a prospective buyer. Garth's philoso- © JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH •Vol. 16«June 1989

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