Unlike pure autoethnography, this study was influenced
by accountability to corporate marketing decision making.
Sponsorship of the Jeep-related research by DaimlerChrysler
and Bozell (Jeep Division’s principal advertising agency)
forced us periodically to withdraw from the situatedconsumer
perspective and engage in analysis of the owner as
“other” in order to consider marketing implications of our
emergent findings. Consistent with the current psychological
notion of fluid, dynamic, and contextual self structures
(Markus and Wurf 1987), shifting our roles as researchers
turned out to be almost as easy as shifting context.