Increasingly, circumstances such as divorce, employment commuting, and
military service have resulted in the geographic dispersion of family
networks, and this reality holds both risks and opportunities for
brands, products, and services embedded in family life. The authors
leverage a longitudinal design including group interviews
(initial/follow-up) and participant diaries to track how families’
consumption practices shift in response to separation, morphing across
time and place to retain and strengthen family bonds. Their findings
generate a framework that explains how and when colocated consumption
practices reassemble through technologies across distances. The
framework considers practice dimensions, separation type, motivation,
potential/realized capacities, and mobilized technologies to forecast
potential practice trajectories under conditions of extended separation.
Five potential trajectories emerge: no trial, heroic quests, failed
trial, easy translations, and sacred pieces. The authors’ discussion of
managerial implications provides suggestions to enable companies to
anticipate trajectories and take action to enhance brand use and loyalty
to ensure that their brands survive reassembly within existing family
practices or become integral to new family practices that feature the
brand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]