Co-constructing the narrative experience: staging and consuming the American Civil War at Gettysburg

Using the Gettysburg storyscape as the experiential context where narratives are commercialised and consumed, this paper provides theoretical and managerial insight into the co-constructed nature of commercial narrative experiences. It is illustrated that while marketers are responsible for staging the storyscape in both substantive and communicative ways, consumers are actively participating in shaping the experiential product by using their prior familiarity with history, struggling to fill narrative gaps, re-contextualising their new experiences, and using their imagination to immerse in the story of the past. This study extends our knowledge on commercial staging, builds on existing under-theorised ideas on consumer agency, and provides insight on the spatialisation of stories.