Childlike Narratives in Postmodern Consumption: Emotional Marketing in the Luxurification Process of Adult Toys

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-874-5_128How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Emotional Marketing; Postmodern Consumption; Cultural Sociology

Abstract

The current consumer behavior is transforming into postmodern consumption. Emotional marketing research has overlooked the cultural mediation of childhood narratives in toy luxury’s emotional premium, focusing on functionality within traditional frameworks. This study explores adult toy luxurification’s emotional marketing in postmodern consumption, to analyze brand Jellycat’s. However, the existing research on the emotional premium of toy luxury goods is still limited to the traditional marketing theoretical framework, focusing on product functions while ignoring the cultural mediating role of childhood narratives in brand value construction. Therefore, this study investigates emotional marketing in the context of adult toy luxury in postmodern consumption. The research methods are unfolded as follows: Firstly, to restructure Jellycat’s path of building emotional luxury, the brand activates human protective instincts through baby-like designs and creates symbolic scarcity through the “retirement system” scarcity strategy and limited editions in specific regions, and through UGC content co-creation, it transforms users’ emotional investment into unpaid structural labor. Secondly, it reveals three paradoxes: identity-value-behavior. This study, from an interdisciplinary perspective of cultural sociology and marketing paradigms, fills the theoretical gap in this field, provides strategic references for traditional brands seeking “emotional upgrading”, and emphasizes the integration of business logic and the authenticity of users’ emotions.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xiaoxian Ye
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/03
TI  - Childlike Narratives in Postmodern Consumption: Emotional Marketing in the Luxurification Process of Adult Toys
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 International Conference on Financial Innovation and Marketing Management (FIMM 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1119
EP  - 1127
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-874-5_128
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-874-5_128
ID  - Ye2025
ER  -