Consumers and their transformation tales

Pilar Rojas Gaviria

No 08-039.RS, Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Inspired by an on-going empirical research on consumers and their tales about disruptive events they have faced in their life, this paper illustrates the value of using interpretative hermeneutics for analyzing consumption during these transformations. Such disruptive events are for instance: Divorce, death of beloved ones, marriage of convenience, or expatriation. In these kinds of contexts, a hermeneutical analysis allows researchers to study punctual consumption occurrences (buying, consuming or dispossessing) as being an expression of a personal narrative re-building that facilitates a deeper understanding of underlying motives. Investigating life disruptive events and their consequences on consumption behaviors appears to be particularly important in contemporary societies, where people are increasingly facing new endings and new beginnings during life, making reconstruction and adaptation a necessary process.

Keywords: Consumer transformation; narrative identity; symbolic consumption and interpretative hermeneutics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 p.
Date: 2008-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published by: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solvay Business School, Centre Emile Bernheim (CEB)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/14651/1/rou-0234.pdf rou-0234 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sol:wpaper:08-039

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... ulb.ac.be:2013/14651

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().