The Möbius strip of market spatiality: mobilizing transdisciplinary dialogues between CCT and the marketing mainstream

This paper develops the Möbius strip as an ‘ordering theory’ (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2020) that brings CCT studies into dialogue with mainstream marketing approaches. The aim is to work toward a transdisciplinary understanding of market spatiality, a topic that has become increasingly important for theorists and practitioners (Warnaby and Medway, 2013; Castilhos et al., 2016; Chatzidakis et al., 2018). Building on psychosocial interpretations of the Möbius strip as a ‘tactical’ way of thinking, a range of insights and ideas are organized along a single strip of theorization. This paper maps a continuous plane of logic between the concepts of space, place, emplacement, spatiality, implacement, and displacement. The potential applications of the Möbius strip are then demonstrated by showing how the transdisciplinary topic of ‘atmosphere’ can be theorized from multiple perspectives. The paper concludes by exploring how the Möbius strip might also be employed in other areas of marketing theory and practice, potentially generating further transdisciplinary conversations between CCT and the marketing mainstream.