Beyond the Extended Self: Loved Objects and Consumers’ Identity Narratives

Abstract

This article investigates the possessions and activities that consumers love and their role in the construction of a coherent identity narrative. In the face of social forces pushing toward identity fragmentation, interviews reveal three different strategies, labeled "demarcating," "compromising," and "synthesizing" solutions, for creating a coherent self-narrative. Findings are compared to Belk's "Possessions and the Extended Self." Most claims from Belk are supported, but the notion of a core versus extended self is critiqued as a potentially confusing metaphor. The roles of loved objects and activities in structuring social relationships and in consumer well-being are also explored. I n all probability, the word "love" is used as often with objects and activities as with people. We hear it all the time, from "I love skiing" to "I love your new dress." In Sherry and McGrath's (1989, 163) study of a gift store, they note that "not only do our respondents 'love to shop'. .. but they also 'fall in love' with the items they select." In the use of products, Richins (1997) finds that love is a common consumption-related emotion. Love is so prevalent in consumption that when Schultz, Kleine, and Kernan (1989) asked participants to list feelings that they experienced when they thought about objects with which they had an emotional attachment, love was the second most commonly listed emotion, superseded only by happiness. The people, and things, we love have a strong influence on our sense of who we are, on our self. Using response time studies, Aron et al. (1991) have shown that interpersonal love involves a fusion of identities in which one's sense of self grows to include the loved other. In the consumer behavior literature, consumer identity has frequently been linked to constructs related more or less directly to love, including special possessions (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981), involvement (e.g., Celsi and Olson 1988), cathexis (e.g., Rook 1985), and consumerbrand relationships (e.g., Fournier 1998). Love differs from

“My plastic dreams”: Towards an extended understanding of materiality and the shaping of consumer identities

“…Consumer research has extensively examined how interactions with products help consumers to shape their identities and selves (Belk, 1998;Ahuvia, 2005). Product design, for instance, can elicit infatuation in object-consumer relations (Lastovicka and Sirianni, 2011), and consumers may become attached and develop relationships with specific material objects, independently of these objects' brands (Lastovicka and Sirianni, 2013).…”

“…The marketing efforts objectified in consumption objects have been extensively covered in the branding literature (Ahuvia, 2005; Fernandez and Lastovicka, 2011). Hence, while we keep in mind the marketing efforts that shape brand identity, we center our analysis of object-consumer relations on the other two pre-objectification elements: material substances and design intentions.…”

“…Current research largely overlooks how material interaction shapes the broader cultural context where it happens (Watson, 2008), focusing instead on outcomes manifested at the individual level (e.g., Belk, 1988;Ahuvia, 2005; Shankar, Eliott and Fitchett, 2009). Recent exceptions (Bettany, 2007;Watson and Shove, 2008) have highlighted the importance of understanding consumer interactions with material in order to complement our understanding of how meanings shape the socio-cultural world (Levy, 1959;McCracken, 1986).…”

How Can Consumer Research Contribute to Increased Understanding of Tourist Experiences? A Conceptual Review

“…Findings about narrative identities (Ahuvia, 2005), experiences as identity expressions (Belk, 1988), significance of meanings with emphasis on the symbolic sphere of products and the dynamic process of consumption (Celsi et al, 1993) are examples of conceptual elements that extend the entrance to the understanding of the tourist as consuming experiences. The introduction of the "clan" perspective, and consumers' belonging and identification within the "clan", offers a complementation to the analysis of the home environment.…”

“…Researchers have developed Belks (1988) notion of the "extended self" by connecting product use and consumption to the notion of "narrative identity" (Ahuvia, 2005;Thompson & Haytko, 1997); i.e. how identity is structured through narratives.…”