What do reality shows, slum tourism, erotic webcam and mixed martial arts have in common? They all use voyeurism to entertain the audience. Voyeurism provides a window into one other person’s private life, providing viewers with an insightful and entertaining experience.
IN Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), for instance, permits you to take a better take a look at the brutality of a fight by which no rules apply. In reality shows, e.g Survivor AND Big brothervoyeurism creates the joy, thrill and shock that entertainment-hungry consumers crave.
In most societies, voyeurism is a taboo. However, an increasing variety of companies across industries are successfully selling voyeurism to a growing audience.
As management researchers, we study the intersection of organizations and society. In our recently published researchwe explain how companies use two key dimensions – authenticity and transgression – to create business opportunities through voyeurism.
Authenticity and transgression
Authenticity emerges from seeing the opposite person’s “real life.” and the offense arises from watching something forbidden. What sets erotic webcam apart from most porn is the sensation that viewers are getting a live, interactive look into the cam model’s private bedroom.
Authenticity and transgression work together to create an entertaining experience for viewers. This is how companies promoting authenticity gain dedicated and returning customers.
Delivering value to customers based on something taboo isn’t a straightforward task. The mixed emotions that draw us into voyeurism can easily overwhelm us – there is a very tremendous line between creating entertainment value and creating too many negative emotions (like anxiety and guilt) that turn customers away.
(AP Photo/Berenice Bautista)
It doesn’t take much to show a reality show from a guilty pleasure into something that makes viewers feel too guilty to look at it. In this fashion, authenticity and transgression attract audiences and create value, but they may repel them and destroy value.
For these companies to succeed, they have to walk a tremendous line. How do they do it?
Emotional optimization
To successfully commercialize voyeurism, companies use quite a few tactics to suppress undesirable emotions while maintaining or enhancing desired emotions in customers. The successful ones know their audience well and keep them coming back for more.
Companies comparable to MMA, reality television, slum tourism, and erotic webcams use different approaches to managing viewers’ emotional responses. Strategies comparable to protecting the audience, depersonalizing performers, and creating the impression that performers are willing participants help balance customers’ mixed emotions.
For example, the usage of cages in MMA – versus the less restrictive barriers in boxing or the shortage of barriers in traditional martial arts – prevents the audience from being overwhelmed by fear. The cage acts as a protective barrier between the audience and the violence unfolding before them. But it also reinforces the concept it is a fight by which there are not any limits. In this fashion, feelings of violence and threat are reduced and desired emotions comparable to excitement are maintained.
However, there isn’t a exact level of authenticity and transgression that evokes the specified emotional responses in consumers. Because every viewer is different, the larger and more diverse the audience, the tougher it’s to seek out the sweet spot.
(AP Photo/Chase Stevens)
When MMA was a “street” activity, smaller audiences felt more comfortable with higher levels of transgression and authenticity. But now, since MMA has entered the mainstream, there have been more restrictions on fighting. They still advertise themselves as “unlimited” because that is where the value is created, but that is what happened has implemented many policies to be sure it isn’t too real or too brutal to look at.
What can voyeurism teach us?
The successful commercialization of voyeurism challenges the way in which we take into consideration each authenticity and transgression. Authenticity is assumed to be useful for value creation. In fact, authenticity is utilized in an exponential variety of industries to create value. On the opposite hand, there’s transgression is taken into account harmful to value creationbecause participation in them involves the chance of social disapproval of viewers.
However, within the practice of voyeurism, extreme authenticity may turn off viewers if the experience seems “too real”, while transgressiveness may appeal to viewers in search of a taboo experience.
For example, in an erotic webcam, viewers peer into models’ bedrooms while they perform sexual acts, while their personal lives remain private. This strategy depersonalizes the models in order that viewers don’t empathize with them an excessive amount of, which may disrupt the “entertainment value.”
Our research shows that authenticity and transgression usually are not inherently good or bad. Emotions count for value creation. From a business perspective, effectively managing emotional responses is a fundamental task that facilitates value creation.
The The ethics of voyeurism are widely debated for a great reason. However, understanding how voyeurism creates value is a problem that can not be ignored, no matter one’s ethical views. We need to know how and why this creates value if we’re to have conversations about what should and mustn’t be allowed.
Instead of arguing only about whether voyeurism is moral or notwe should always investigate Why Above all, we’re drawn to voyeurism and where the boundaries of this taboo and at the identical time extremely widespread practice must be.
