Selling the Wild: Aestheticized Dining, Participatory Culture, and Lifestyle Consumption in Yeego

Abstract Book of the 10th World Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities

Year: 2026

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Selling the Wild: Aestheticized Dining, Participatory Culture, and Lifestyle Consumption in Yeego

Xing Nan

ABSTRACT:

Within the context of the excessive presence of social media in everyday consumption practices, some types of eating experiences have been transformed into cultural consumption practices where visual presentation, spatial atmosphere, affective value, and social circulation are all combined. Using Yeego as a key case study, this paper focuses on how restaurant consumption is constituted as a mode of aestheticized dining within a platformized consumer milieu and how the form generates brand value through brand positioning, offline space, online communication, and user participation. The article employs a qualitative single-case study, relying on official brand materials, media reports, and platform-based user content. It combines textual analysis, visual analysis, and platform analysis with netnographic sensitivity. The research concludes that Yeego converts Yunnan–Guizhou regional foods into a brand experience through its emphasis on natural flavours, rare ingredients, and mountain-wild imagery. It is reinforced by its offline space, ritualized service, and high-end location in the mall, which is further enhanced by consistent visuals on the web and user-driven recirculation. This paper contends that the consumer appeal of Yeego is built not just through visual aesthetics, but through the interplay between visual aesthetics, cultural coding and participatory culture, making it an object of urban consumption with price legitimacy and lifestyle value.

Keywords: Aestheticized Dining, Participatory Culture, Digital Food Culture, Lifestyle Consumption, Yeego