TY  - JOUR
AB  - In postmodernity, consumption is a prime site for the negotiation of conflicting themes of freedom and control. Explores the consumption of symbolic meaning through five consumption dialectics: the material versus the symbolic, the social versus the self, desire versus satisfaction, rationality versus irrationality, and creativity versus constraint. Argues that consumers are engaged in authentic choices in the construction and communication of self and social meanings, and that these consumption choices can be conceptualized as the exercise of existential freedom, even if constrained by inequalities in the economic system and by ideological hegemony.
VL  - 31
IS  - 3/4
SN  - 0309-0566
DO  - 10.1108/03090569710162371
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/03090569710162371
AU  - Elliott Richard
PY  - 1997
Y1  - 1997/01/01
TI  - Existential consumption and irrational desire
T2  - European Journal of Marketing
PB  - MCB UP Ltd
SP  - 285
EP  - 296
Y2  - 2024/05/05
ER  -