Atmospheres are experiences of place involving transformations of consumers’ behaviors and emotions. Existing marketing research reveals how atmospheric stimuli, service performances, and ritual place-making enhance place experiences and create value for firms. Yet it remains unclear how shared experiences of atmosphere emerge and intensify among groups of people during collective live events. Accordingly, this paper uses sociological interaction ritual theory to conceptualize ‘social atmospheres’: rapidly changing qualities of place created when a shared focus aligns consumers’ emotions and behavior, resulting in lively expressions of collective effervescence. With data from an ethnography of an English Premier League football stadium, the authors identify a four-stage process of creating atmospheres in interaction ritual chains. This framework goes beyond conventional retail and servicescape design by demonstrating that social atmospheres are mobile and co-created between firms and consumers before, during and after a main event. The study also reveals how interaction rituals can be disrupted, and offers insight as to how firms can balance key tensions in creating social atmospheres as a means to enhance customer experiences, customer loyalty, and communal place attachments.

气氛是涉及消费者行为和情感转变的场所体验。现有的营销研究揭示了大气刺激，服务表现和仪式场所营造如何增强场所体验并为企业创造价值。然而，目前尚不清楚在集体现场活动中，人们如何共享气氛，并在不同人群之间加强气氛。因此，本文使用社会学互动仪式理论来概念化“社会氛围”：当一个共同的焦点使消费者的情感和行为保持一致时，所创造的场所质量便会迅速变化，从而产生了集体冒泡的生动表达。利用来自英超联赛足球场的人种学数据，作者确定了在互动仪式链中营造氛围的四个阶段。该框架证明了在主要事件之前，期间和之后，公司和消费者之间的社交氛围是可移动的并且共同创造的，从而超越了传统的零售和服务场景设计。这项研究还揭示了如何扰乱互动仪式，并提供了有关公司如何在创造社交氛围时平衡主要紧张关系的见解，以此来增强客户体验，客户忠诚度和公共场所的依恋感。