Hyperreality

Abstract: This article develops a new model depicting how organizations can help customers test out and experience a service prior to purchase and consumption or use. When customers buy a new car, for instance, they are allowed to test-drive it to get the feel of it. When customers wish to purchase services, it can be more difficult to provide customers with a “test drive.” In some service situations, service organizations can and do provide “test drives,” but it is suggested that such experiences take place in a simulated setting. This article introduces the notion of hyperreality, the simulated reality of a service experience. It also introduces the concept of the “experience room,” the place where the simulated experience takes place. Based on the existing literature, the authors apply six dimensions of experience rooms to demonstrate how organizations can cocreate value, in conjunction with the customer, through hyperreality in a preservice experience.

Abstract: This paper draws on two independent strands of literature—Baudrillard’s orders-of-simulacra theoretic and financial accounting theory—to investigate the ontological status of information in accounting reports. It draws on Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra, hyperreality and implosion to trace the historical transformations of the accounting signs of income and capital from Sumerian times to the present. It posits that accounting today no longer refers to any objective reality but instead circulates in a ‘‘hyperreality’’ of self-referential models. The paper then examines this conclusion from the viewpoint of recent clean surplus model research and argues that the distinction between income and capital is arbitrary and irrelevant provided the measurement process satisfies the clean surplus relation. Although accounting is arbitrary and hyperreal, it does impart a sense of exogeniety and predictability, particularly through the income calculation. Therefore, it can be relied on for decisions that do have real, material and social consequences. The paper ends with some implications of Baudrillard’s theoretic for accounting, reflections on accounting’s implications for Baudrillard’s theoretic and suggestions for future research. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Commodities, needs and consumption Baudrillard and Marxism media, simulations and the end of the social the postmodern carnival provocations the metaphysical imaginary beyond Baudrillard.