The present study aims to investigate the possible difficulties that human beings (especially young people) face in finding the existential meaning in consumer society. It tries to outline answers to ...the following questions: Does consumerism feed the crisis of meaning in contemporary society? Do consumerist ideologies and lifestyles meet the fundamental needs of the human being or do they rather induce false needs? Doesn't it propose false clues in search of meaning, in search of happiness? Maintaining the illusion that by purchasing goods, services, experiences (as many and as expensive as possible) we gain self-esteem and respect for others, consumerism can induce a dangerous sense of self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction. After the job, or even before it, the feverish, compulsive rush for shopping has become the main concern of hyperconsumerists. Under these conditions, do they still have time and energy to search for self, otherness, the purpose of life? Isn't consumerism a real obstacle in cultivating existential (spiritual) intelligence? If consumerism through (pseudo) values, the behaviors it cultivates, supports and maintains the existential crisis, then what is to be done, how can we get out of the impasse? Could the increase of the preoccupation of the society, of the socialization factors, of each individual for the development of his own existential / spiritual intelligence be a solution?
How do public actors visualize the future? Mediations of the future often construct audiences’ prospective actions, and offer insights into society’s imagination of desirable and undesirable futures. ...In the visually-saturated environment of social media, projections are often visual. Unlike their textual counterparts, future-oriented election visuals have remained understudied. Thus, our paper explores how public actors substantiate their future-oriented, multi-modal claims and the rhetorical outcomes of different strategies. Building on the notion of technologies’ “temporal affordances”, we utilize an inductive qualitative approach to visual rhetoric and analyze projection anchoring strategies using a sample of 400 future-oriented multi-modal tweets. We find that anchoring is carried out in two layers: evidential (the validity of the future-oriented narrative), and visual (the level of aesthetic realism in the image). Examining recurring patterns of anchoring strategies across the sample result in a rhetorical typology of future-oriented visuals, in two modes (consumerism and competition). Overall, our findings highlight the rhetorical pliability of visual anchoring, through which actors utilize an interplay of temporal and technological strategies to generate alternative anchoring in sharing their projections, and to remain authentic in visualizing the unknown.
Ethical consumerism is a burgeoning movement, yet ethically-minded consumers rarely purchase ethically. Understanding obstacles to ethical consumption is limited. This study explores the underlying ...mechanics of the ethical purchase intention–behavior gap in the context of consumers' daily lives. The study employs multiple qualitative methods across multiple sites, explores the intention–behavior gap in observed modes of shopping behavior, and uses an interpretive approach. The analysis reveals four interrelated factors affecting the ethical intention–behavior gap: (1) prioritization of ethical concerns; (2) formation of plans/habits; (3) willingness to commit and sacrifice; and (4) modes of shopping behavior. Awareness of these four factors provides both strategic and tactical implications for marketing managers seeking to reach the elusive ethical consumer. Understanding and enhancing ethical consumption – closing the gap – has positive outcomes for the future sustainability of economies, societies and environments.
Political consumerism: A meta-analysis Copeland, Lauren; Boulianne, Shelley
International political science review,
01/2022, Letnik:
43, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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Political consumerism refers to the deliberate purchase or avoidance of products, goods, or services for political reasons. For decades, researchers have studied the micro-level predictors of ...political consumerism in many countries and across a variety of contexts. However, many questions remain. Do resource-based models of political participation or theories of lifestyle politics best explain why some people are more likely to engage in political consumerism? To answer this question, we conduct a meta-analysis of 66 studies with more than 1000 tests. We find more support for theories of lifestyle politics. Political consumerism is associated with political distrust, liberal ideology, and media use, as well as education, political interest, and organizational membership. The findings help us understand the subset of people who are using their purchasing power to express political opinions. They also help us identify gaps in existing research.
Adopting green practices does not always guarantee customer retention and loyalty. Employing the theoretical lens of cue utilization theory, we conceptualize green perceived quality as sending ...internal and external cues which help consumers form judgments about product quality and perceived value. Based on a survey of 280 restaurant customers, we hypothesize and report a positive and significant influence of both green consumerism and green perceived value on customer revisit intention. Further, the results confirm the moderating role of green perceived quality. From a practical point of view, managers interested in benefiting from the green practices of their restaurants should focus on increasing their customers' evaluation and overall judgment of the environmental quality of both their food and services.
Scholars increasingly argue that the vegan lifestyle reflects a broader pattern of how political behavior is becoming more individualized and private. Veganism is particularly viewed as an ...unconventional form of political participation, as it is conducted to address ethical concerns and to change market practices. However, this argumentation lacks detailed empirical data. By means of an original standardized survey of a purposive sample of 648 vegans in Switzerland, this study shows that (1) a vast majority of vegans is politically motivated and aims to induce change in society at large; (2) they are highly engaged in a broad variety of political activities; and (3) politically motivated vegans live vegan more strictly and are more politically active than vegans motivated by personal concerns. This study contributes to the understanding of political participation in current times, and the insights gained may prove useful to vegan movement groups or the food industry.
Consumer choices reflect not only price and quality preferences but also social and moral values, as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly ...products. Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we found that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences. In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, results showed that people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products. Together, our studies show that consumption is connected to social and ethical behaviors more broadly across domains than previously thought.
As the prevalence of "conscious" consumption has grown, questions have arisen about its relationship to political action. An influential argument holds that political consumption individualizes ...responsibility for environmental degradation and "crowds out" genuine forms of activism. While European and Canadian empirical research contradicts this perspective, finding that conscious consumption and political engagement are positively connected, no studies of this relationship have been conducted for the United States. This article presents ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models for two datasets, the 2004 General Social Survey and a detailed survey of approximately 2,200 conscious consumers conducted by the authors, to assess the nature of the relationship between conscious consumption and political activism. The authors find that measures of conscious consumption are significantly and positively related to political action, even when controlling for political involvement in the past. The results suggest that greater levels of political consumption are positively related to a range of political actions.
Critics of political consumerism argue that it perpetuates a neoliberal belief that complex societal problems are best redressed through the market-coordinated choices and actions of socially ...responsible consumers. However, such critiques overlook how neoliberalism is actually enacted in particular socio-cultural contexts and the variegated ideological effects that result. To redress this gap, we analyze the “actually existing neoliberalism” manifest in a Slow Food network. This discursive system presents an intersection between a neoliberal discourse of passionate entrepreneurialism and a politicized therapeutic ethos that traces to the organization’s historical roots in Italian leftist politics. Through this actually existing neoliberalism, Slow Food enthusiasts constitute themselves as ethical agents who are sharing their passion and helping others gain autonomy from the corporate controlled, industrialized food system. This ideological framing buttresses the ethical authority of the Slow Food movement by countering the cultural condemnation that its politicized taste practices are elitist affectations.
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