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This research studies how current social and environmental concerns about consumption are reviving the topic of meaning in consumption practices. In a postmodern world characterized by symbolism in consumption and a global “crisis of meanings”, ethical and responsible consumption behaviors are studied through their contribution to identity construction. A responsible consumption typology based on the meanings given by the narrators is suggested; it distinguishes the acts of “moral conformity” from the deep critical postures, the latter of which derive either from political essence or a desire for liberation from the consumption “system”.

This paper aims to examine consumption behavior to understand how individuals become culturally plural consumers through exploratory research conducted in one of the world's most urban multi‐cultural environments, the UAE. As a starting point consumption was deemed as “consummatory” in accord with Holbrook.

The data were collected through 20 interviews with UAE residents. This included men and women, ages ranging from 20s to 60s, representing 11 countries from five continents. Broadly a hermeneutic approach was followed in eliciting how culturally plural consumption behaviors emerged and interpreting how the process unfolded. The study examined multicultural habits pertaining to products or services chosen by the respondents. These covered food, cuisine, books, beverages, music, dance, clothes, TV and health treatments among others.

Patterns of consumption acts create a consumption behavior that may be described as extemporaneous, expedient and emergent. The nature of the consumption process depends on a host of triggers that includes culturally diverse predisposition of the consumer, multi‐cultural identities, social cues, contextual factors and individuals' proclivity towards experimentalism. Taken together it is found that the praxis of becoming a culturally plural consumer is a learning process that has an emergent quality.

This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature with no firm conclusions.

In culturally plural markets consumers have to be approached with a fine brush. Many of the current taken‐for‐granted ideals of marketing will be questioned by the approach suggested in this paper. As Stewart aptly said, understanding of praxis “would allow for practical action, based on edifying philosophy”.

While Holbrook's idea of consummation is a metaphor for consumption that is well‐known, it is not adequately understood nor followed up with research. This inquiry into consumption praxis is a contribution to that end with significant implications for twenty‐first‐century marketing.

Literature examining resistant consumer behaviour from an ethical consumption stance has increased over recent years. This paper aims to argue that the conflation between ethical consumer behaviour and “anti‐consumption” practices results in a nihilistic reading and fails to uncover the tensions of those who seek to position themselves as ethical while still participating in the general market.

The study adopts an exploratory approach through semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with a purposive sample of seven ethical consumers.

The analysis reveals the process through which ethical consumption is constructed and defined in relation to the subject position of the “ethical consumer” and their interactions with the dominant market of consumption.

This research is limited to a single country and location and focused on a specific consumer group. Expansion of the research to a wider group would be valuable.

The impact of ethical consumption on the wider field of consumption can be witnessed in the “mainstreaming” of many ethical ideals. This highlights the potential movements of power between various stakeholders that occupy particular spaces of social action.

Understanding the analysis through Bourdieu's concepts of field and the margins created between spaces of consumption, the paper focuses on the theoretical cross‐section of practice between ethical and market‐driven forms of consumption, advancing discussion by exploring how self‐identified “ethical consumers” defined, legitimatised and negotiated their practices in relation to consumption acts and lifestyles.

Increasing numbers of consumers are expressing concerns about reports of questionable corporate practices and are responding through boycotts and buycotts. This paper compares competing theories of consumer empowerment and details findings that examine the applicability of the theory to “ethical consumer” narratives. The nature and impact of consumer empowerment in consumer decision making is then discussed.

The study takes an exploratory approach by conducting semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with a purposive sample of ten consumers. These were recruited from an “ethical product” fair in Scotland.

Results indicate that the participating consumers embraced a voting metaphor, either explicitly or implicitly, to view consumption as an ethical/political domain. Setting their choices within perceived collective consumer behaviour, they characterised their consumption as empowering. This results in an ethical consumer project that can be seen as operating within the market. It, therefore, suggests some tensions between consumer power and sustainable living.

This small‐scale study relates to a single country and location. A particular group of accentuated consumers was recruited. Studies of the narratives of other consumer groupings would clearly be valuable.

To the extent that political democracy is perceived as failing, it appears that the profile of the market as a site of consumer engagement is raised. Marketers would be wise, therefore, to take increasingly account of “empowered” consumers.

Little attention has been paid to the theory of consumption as voting. However, a continuing rise in the consideration of ethics among consumers and producers suggests its rehabilitation and further exploration would be worthwhile.

This paper aims to contribute to the special issue theme by analysing intentional non‐consumption through anti‐consumption and consumer resistance lenses.

A total of 16 in‐depth interviews with women who intentionally practise non‐consumption for sustainability were completed.

Two major themes where identified: I versus them: the careless consumers, and The objective/subjective dialectic in mundane practices.

While it is tempting to delineate one concept from another, in practice, both anti‐consumption and consumer resistance intersect and represent complementary frameworks in studying non‐consumption.

This paper furnishes an inaugural reading of abjective consumption by drawing on Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of abjection within the wider terrain of consumer cultural research. It offers a conceptual framework that rests on three pillars, viz. irrationality, meaninglessness, dissolution of selfhood.

Qualitative research design that adopts a documentary ethnographic approach, by drawing on a corpus of 50 documentary episodes from the TV series “My Strange Addiction” and “Freaky Eaters”.

The findings from this analysis point to different orders of mediatized discourse that are simultaneously operative in different actors’ frames (e.g. moralizing, medical), in Goffman’s terms, yet none of which attains to address the phenomenon of abjective consumption to its full-blown extent.

Although some degree of bias is bound to be inherent in the data because of their pre-recorded status, they are particularly useful not in the least because this is a “difficult sample” in qualitative methodological terms.

The multi-order dimensionalization of abjective consumption opens up new vistas to marketers in terms of adding novel dimensions to the message structure of their communicative programs, in line with the three Lacanian orders.

The adoption of a consumer psychoanalytic perspective allows significant others to fully dimensionalize the behavior of abjective consumption subjects, by becoming sensitive to other than symbolic aspects that are endemic in consumer behavior.

This paper contributes to the extant consumer cultural research literature by furnishing the novel conceptual framework of abjective consumption, as a further elaboration of my consumer psychoanalytic approach to jouissance consumption, as well as by contrasting this interpretive frame vis-à-vis dominant discursive regimes.

This paper argues that there is a need to theorize socially constituted temporal phenomena, such as the fragmentation and multiplication of futures in media representations of technology, since this contextualizes consumption in important ways.

However, this argument requires a critique of agentic bias in phenomenological approaches to time. By drawing on Husserl, Heidegger and Ricœur, it is shown that phenomenological time is fundamentally intersubjective and contextualized in a tension between chronological and experienced time, rather than first and foremost created and felt by the individual consumer subject or experienced only as “flow.” This implies a switch from an egological to a sociological approach to time and consumption.

Thus, the multiplication of socially constituted narratives about the future, in late-modernity, disrupts instrumental modes of thinking about the consumer object, making it “unhandy” and “disturbing.” The meaning of the object therefore becomes “damaged.” However, this also allows the possibility for it to be known in wholly new ways.

Since many definitions of consumption are future oriented, the fragmentation of the future speaks to how we form meanings about consumption. Thus, a socially constituted theory of consumer temporality impacts the experience of consumer objects.

This theorization of time and consumption suggests the possibility of comparative studies of temporality to understand the universe in which consumer choices can unfold.

This is the first attempt to apply the epistemological criteria from the context of context debate in regard to consumer temporality.

Purpose: This chapter aims to evaluate the significant impact of Gandhian values on sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB) by applying the value-attitude-behaviour (VAB) framework. This chapter contributes by incorporating Gandhian values as one influencing factor for SCB.

Need for the Study: Values are considered as guiding principles in people’s lives. Studies suggest that values and other social and psychological factors can be vital in determining consumers’ behaviour towards sustainable consumption. There needs to be more empirical research on consumer behaviour facets of sustainable consumption for markets in India.

Methodology: The study uses partial least square structural equation modelling to empirically test proposed hypotheses and the research model of the relationship. The study results are based on data collected by administering a survey through a questionnaire confined to India.

Findings: The results indicated that Gandhian values, attitude, and sustainable consumption intention significantly influence SCB. Intention acts as a mediator between both outward and inward environmental attitudes and behaviour. The study provides directions for further research.

Practical Implications: This research study is helpful for researchers, marketers, and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate recent changes made by Australian consumers in their consumption of beef, chicken, pork and lamb, as well as the factors motivating both decreased and increased consumption of each type of meat. Reasons for meat-avoidance are also examined.

An online questionnaire was completed in July 2016 by two Australian samples comprising: adults from the general population; and vegetarians. Data were analysed for 287 meat consumers and 82 meat avoiders. Descriptive statistics and results of multinomial logistic regression models are presented.

Meat consumers most commonly reported reducing consumption of beef in the last 12 months (30 per cent); followed by lamb (22 per cent), pork (14 per cent) and chicken (8 per cent). The following factors were associated with reductions in meat consumption: concerns regarding price and personal health; age and household income; and food choice motivations related to personal benefits, social factors and food production and origin. Main reasons motivating meat-avoidance were concerns regarding animal welfare, health and environmental protection.

This is the first Australian study providing national-level insight on how and why meat consumption patterns are changing. Reasons for changes are examined through an anti-consumption lens, investigating rationale for avoiding, reducing and increasing consumption. This provides a more comprehensive understanding of meat consumption and anti-consumption decisions, which are becoming increasingly complex. Insights on the psychologically distinct motivations underpinning avoidance, reductions and increases in meat consumption can inform the development of strategies aimed at promoting a societal-shift towards consumption of more sustainable dietary protein sources.