Meaningful Consumption

Abstract

While consumers frequently seek meaning through their marketplace interactions, a comprehensive understanding of meaningful consumption is conspicuously absent from marketing literature. Such insight would notably benefit macromarketing scholars who aim to evaluate the implications of consumer purchasing decisions on quality of life. Addressing this gap, our study employs 40 in-depth interviews to arrive at the phenomenological essence of meaningful consumption. We discover that meaningful consumption comprises three key themes—rejuvenation, expansion, and consolidation—accompanied by seven related sub-themes: repair and reconnection; intellectual, pragmatic, and relational expansion; and crystallization and contextualization. Our overarching framework enriches macromarketing theory by virtue of its ability to accommodate a large variety of meaningful consumption experiences while simultaneously enhancing existing discourse on the eudaimonic aspects of consumption.