Getting Lost ‘Into the Wild’: Exploring the Role of Narrative Transportation in the Experiential Consumption of Movies

Although it is obvious that consumers enjoy watching movies for many reasons that range from mere short-term entertainment to the complete personal immersion into the movie narrative, a full understanding of the experiential consumption of movies and its contribution to a consumer’s subjective quality of life is still lacking. Thus, this paper takes an existential-phenomenological perspective to provide some alternative insights into consumers’ holistic movie consumption experiences. By using a form of interactive introspection, the two researchers examine and discuss hereby their own individual private consumption experiences with the recently released movie Into the Wild (US 2007) as a complex tapestry of interrelated factors. The introspective data indicates that a consumer’s personal engagement with the movie narrative, its characters, atmosphere and underlying philosophy is of particular importance for one’s enjoyment of the movie, as this allows for and even enhances the consumer’s temporary feeling of complete immersion into its imaginary world. The intensity and nature of an individual’s experienced transportation into the movie narrative is hereby determined less by socio-demographic variables such as age or gender, but by one’s own very private motives and intimate involvement with the holistic movie consumption experience.