Access-based consumption, defined as transactions that can be market mediated but where no transfer of ownership takes place, is becoming increasingly popular, yet it is not well theorized. This study examines the nature of access as it contrasts to ownership and sharing, specifically the consumer-object, consumer-consumer, and consumer-marketer relationships. Six dimensions are identified to distinguish among the range of access-based consumptionscapes: temporality, anonymity, market mediation, consumer involvement, the type of accessed object, and political consumerism. Access-based consumption is examined in the context of car sharing via an interpretive study of Zipcar consumers. Four outcomes of these dimensions in the context of car sharing are identified: lack of identification, varying significance of use and sign value, negative reciprocity resulting in a big-brother model of governance, and a deterrence of brand community. The implications of our findings for understanding the nature of exchange, consumption, and brand community are discussed.

The last decade has seen the emergence of the sharing economy as well as the rise of a diverse array of research on this topic both inside and outside the marketing discipline. However, the sharing economy’s implications for marketing thought and practice remain unclear. This article defines the sharing economy as a technologically enabled socioeconomic system with five key characteristics (i.e., temporary access, transfer of economic value, platform mediation, expanded consumer role, and crowdsourced supply). It also examines the sharing economy’s impact on marketing’s traditional beliefs and practices in terms of how it challenges three key foundations of marketing: institutions (e.g., consumers, firms and channels, regulators), processes (e.g., innovation, branding, customer experience, value appropriation), and value creation (e.g., value for consumers, value for firms, value for society) and offers future research directions designed to push the boundaries of marketing thought. The article concludes with a set of forward-looking guideposts that highlight the implications of the sharing economy’s paradoxes, maturation, and technological development for marketing research. Collectively, this article aims to help marketing scholars not only keep pace with the sharing economy but also shape its future direction.

This paper introduces a new dimension of consumption as liquid or solid. Liquid consumption is defined as ephemeral, access based and dematerialized, while solid consumption is defined as enduring, ownership based and material. Liquid and solid consumption are conceptualized as existing on a spectrum, with four conditions leading to consumption being liquid, solid, or a combination of the two: relevance to the self, the nature of social relationships, accessibility to mobility networks, and type of precarity experienced. Liquid consumption is needed to explain behavior within digital contexts, in access based consumption, and in conditions of global mobility. It highlights a consumption orientation around values of flexibility, adaptability, fluidity, lightness, detachment, and speed. Implications of liquid consumption for the domains of attachment and appropriation, the importance of use value, materialism, brand relationships and communities, identity, prosumption and the prosumer, and big data, quantification of the self and surveillance are discussed. Finally, managing the challenges of liquid consumption and its effect on consumer welfare are explored.Liquid consumption, Digital, Access based consumption, Dematerialization, Ephemerality, Bauman 4 In this paper we introduce a new dimension of consumption as solid and liquid. We define liquid consumption as ephemeral, access based and dematerialized, and solid consumption as that which is enduring, ownership based and tangible. The consumer behavior literature to date has focused primarily on solid consumption. Liquid consumption represents a novel concept in consumer behavior necessary to understand the types of consumption-related phenomena related to the digital, access-based practices, and global mobility. It argues for a different logic of consumption, from that of accumulation, appropriation, and celebration associated with solidity, to those practices embodying fluidity, use, access, immediacy, and dematerialization. That is, consumer value moves from appropriation to the acquisition, use and circulation states of the consumption cycle. Liquid consumption also argues for an ephemeral attachment to digital or physical consumption, which is valued temporarily and because of the access it provides, as well as the speed by which it provides access.In developing the concept of liquid consumption, we are inspired by Bauman's (2000; 2007a, b) theorizing of liquid modernity. In it, he uses the metaphor of liquidity to explain how everyday life has moved from being stable and secure to being more uncertain and rapidly changing. We apply a similar logic to the domain of consumption. We are not arguing that solid consumption will be disappearing. Rather, we conceptualize liquid consumption as existing along with solid consumption on a spectrum, and we point out factors which are likely to result in one or the other. Bauman (2000, 2007a, b) also points out that at the societal level, liquidity is rarely beneficial, as more uncertainty and less st...

Many consumers profess to want to avoid unethical offerings in the marketplace yet few act on this inclination. This study investigates the nature of the rationales and justifications used by consumers to make sense of this discrepancy. The data was collected via indepth interviews across eight countries. The respondents were presented with three ethical consumption scenarios, and discussed their views on the consumption issues as well as their consumption behavior. The majority of the discussion focused around their rationalizations for their lack of ethical consumption patterns. Three justification strategies emerged from the data: economical rationalization, institutional dependency, and developmental realism. Economic rationalization focuses on consumers wanting to get the most value for their money, regardless of their ethical beliefs. Institutional dependency refers to the belief that institutions such as the government are responsibility to ethically regulate what products can be sold. Finally, developmental realism features the rationalization that some unethical behaviors on the part of corporations must exist in order for macro level economic development to occur. Consumer resistance in the marketplace is currently limited to small niche groups. This study investigates why resistance is so limited, in spite of survey results which suggest that a much larger group of people are interested in ethical consumption. This is the first study to investigate the nature of consumer rationales, and reinforces the need for non-survey-based research to understand nuanced consumer reactions and behaviors in ethical consumerism.

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