The Marketplace as intercultural dreaming and collective desire

The paper focuses on intercultural imaginaries and utopia as a collective desire for individuals (micro), organisations (meso) and societies (macro). Drawing on relevant marketing literature, the research paper distinguishes between various utopian concepts and views that then are applied to different levels of the macromarketing system. The research advances the conceptual understanding of the intercultural dimension of utopian desires and shifts the focus of the utopian ideal as a Western into a broader intercultural phenomenon where experiences and imaginaries emerge as a result of collective desires and migration from one place to another emerging from and building up micro, meso and macro utopian desires. The empirical research is built on 131 photos taken by refugees in Finland between 2017-2021. These are coupled with one-on-one photovoice interviews (n=9) and micro focus group interviews (n=23). The paper answers the following questions: How is utopian social dreaming shaped by migration in the macromarketing system? How does intercultural social dreaming create alternative marketplaces for micro, meso and macro utopia? The paper provides a complementary approach to the extant macromarketing literature on utopia by extending the research towards intercultural imaginaries of the ideal exemplified in the empirical sphere.