Digital Consumer Rituals: The New Culture Codes of Connection
Chapter from the book: Yavuz, E. (ed.) 2025. Next-Generation Marketing: Reconnecting with Consumers in the Digital Age.

Şahver Omerakı Çekirdekci
İstanbul Galata University

Synopsis

The digital ecosystem has come to dominate nearly all domains of contemporary life, propelled by the relentless growth in global internet and social media penetration. Consequently, firms spent a significant part of their marketing expenditures to master brands’ presence on the digital environment and specifically on social media platforms. In the digital age, brands increasingly connect and form relationships with consumers by enabling ritualized forms of engagement that carry cultural and ceremonials dimensions. What appears to be an individual consumer act often transforms into a collective ritual of forming a digital identity, allowing the development of emotional connections and the sharing of collective meanings and experiences with like-minded consumers. In this context, the chapter explores digital rituals by focusing on how digital platforms create new cultural codes for reconnecting with consumers through shared experiences. By providing an overview of rituals across different disciplines, the chapter explores the transformation of the theoretical constructs of rituals and consumption rituals in the digital environment by discussing a typology of social media rituals and how the brand ecosystem is actively involved in the creation and management rituals. The co-creation of brands and their respective rituals can also threaten brand meanings and performances creating tensions between authenticity and performative participation. Digital rituals are presented as emotional, symbolic, and community-based practices through which brands reconnect and build enduring bonds with consumers as well as with other stakeholders.

How to cite this book

Omerakı Çekirdekci, Ş. (2025). Digital Consumer Rituals: The New Culture Codes of Connection. In: Yavuz, E. (ed.), Next-Generation Marketing: Reconnecting with Consumers in the Digital Age. Özgür Publications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58830/ozgur.pub1132.c4650

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Published

December 29, 2025

DOI