Suchergebnisse

This conceptual paper explores how consumers become entangled in persistent struggles of care in consumption. While extant marketing theory focuses on the neoliberal responsibility of care as an autonomous and independent act, we problematise and extend the current theorisation of consumers' struggles of care by examining the interrelated struggles of consumer responsibility of care and market relations of care. Building on marketing and interdisciplinary insights, we develop a novel lens of consumer interdependency of care to capture how a consumer responsibility is negotiated within varied relations of care. We contribute to a holistic and critical understanding of care in consumption as a problematic interplay between a responsibility of care and a dependency of care. By examining three types of consumer interdependency across consumption contexts, we discuss challenges and future research direction in the provision, mediation, and positioning of care, and bring critical attention to the power imbalances of care and consumer vulnerability.

This study examines how consumers navigate their spiritual needs for transcendence in everyday consumption. While extant literature shows that both spiritual utilities and tensions emerge in sacred consumption, we build on and extend this research by illuminating how consumers navigate sacralisation and problematise profane consumption objects and practices. We employed Mary Douglas's pollution theory to examine how consumers navigate cultural meanings of purity and transgressions. Through a qualitative study of vegan fashion consumption, we found that consumers negotiate the meaning of purity to govern everyday consumption practices in ways that resemble characteristics of religious institutions (e.g. faith and doctrines). Vegan consumers tolerate consumption transgressions through practices and rituals to sustain their faith within what is regarded as a polluted marketplace. Our study contributes to a novel perspective on consumer spirituality in regulating sacred and secular consumption and moralising relationships with the material world.