Unpacking package free shopping: Alternative retailing and the reinvention of the practice of shopping

Abstract The aim of this paper is to understand how the practice of package free shopping takes shape and is established. Taking a shopping-as-practice approach, and drawing on an ethnographic study of a Swedish ecological food store, this paper shows that to be able to successfully remove a key artefact - packaging - from the practice of shopping, the practice itself must be reinvented. Developing package free shopping therefore requires the re-framing of the practice of shopping (making it meaningful in a new way), the re-skilling of the consumer (developing new competencies needed for its performance), and the re-materialization of the store (changing the material arrangement that makes this mode of shopping possible). This suggests that the promotion of alternative modes of sustainable shopping is a complicated matter that requires a profound understanding of the practice of shopping.