Consumer Deceleration

Abstract

People increasingly seek out opportunities to escape from a sped-up pace of life by engaging in slow forms of consumption. Drawing from the theory of social acceleration, we explore how consumers can experience and achieve a slowed-down experience of time through consumption. To do so, we ethnographically study the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain and introduce the concept of consumer deceleration. Consumer deceleration is a perception of a slowed-down temporal experience achieved via a decrease in certain quantities (traveled distance, use of technology, experienced episodes) per unit of time through altering, adopting, or eschewing forms of consumption. Consumers decelerate in three ways: embodied, technological, and episodic. Each is enabled by consumer practices and market characteristics, rules, and norms, and results in time being experienced as passing more slowly and as being an abundant resource. Achieving deceleration is challenging, as it requires resynchronization to a different temporal logic and the ability to manage intrusions from acceleration. Conceptualizing consumer deceleration allows us to enhance our understanding of temporality and consumption, embodied consumption, extraordinary experiences, and the theory of social acceleration. Overall, this study contributes to consumer research by illuminating the role of speed and rhythm in consumer culture.

Consumer spirituality

“…Together, the two articles add a novel, embodied perspective to research on consumer spiritualty. Previous research has shown that painful bodies can be a powerful vehicle to slow down consumers' minds (Husemann & Eckhardt, 2018) as well as to enable consumers to escape the self and help create the story of a fulfilled life (Scott, Cayla, & Cova, 2017). These two articles add that, via the body or bodily sensations such as pain, consumers can actualise a spiritual experience.…”

“…Recent consumer research on pilgrimage has discussed the use of technology in search of spirituality with mixed results. Whereas pilgrims' search for practical information in online forums (Husemann & Eckhardt, 2018) as well as online word-of-mouth about sacred sites (Hamilton & Higgins, 2016) can facilitate and promote the spiritual journey, research has shown that pilgrims need to control their technological engagement while travelling to keep the modern world at bay, and thus, be able to truly immerse into the pilgrimage experience (Husemann & Eckhardt, 2018). Van Laer and Izberk-Bilgin's study adds to the theorisation of the relationship between technology and consumer spirituality by showing that, in the aftermath of a pilgrimage, narrating and rating the pilgrimage experience in online reviews can extend the spiritual beyond the physical journey.…”

“…Research on consumer spirituality, however, which studies how consumers engage with spiritual goods, services and places that are (more or less) purposefully designed to enhance consumers' spiritual well-being and actualise a spiritual experience, has just recently begun to spark interest among marketing scholars. This new body of research has explored the consumer experience of pilgrimage and the role of consumption practices, objects and markets in realising a spiritual experience (Higgins & Hamilton, 2016Husemann & Eckhardt, 2018;Husemann et al, 2016;Kedzior, 2013;Moufahim, 2013;Turley, 2013). Kedzior (2013), for example, studies the New Age pilgrimage experience of visiting the vortex energies in Sedona and highlights the conflict-laden, but important, role of materiality and commerce in accessing the spiritual.…”

“…Moufahim (2013) explores gift-giving practices in Islamic pilgrimage and concludes that gift-giving rituals imbue the pilgrimage with meaning and that this meaning becomes materialised 'via the consumption of sacred and profane objects' (p 422). Furthermore, Husemann and Eckhardt (2018) reveal how pilgrims achieve a slowed down temporal experience via limiting their use of technology, curbing their physical movements and reducing their consumption levels while walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. Deceleration, they argue, can be seen as a new post-secular form of spirituality.…”

‘Alternative Hedonism’: Exploring the Role of Pleasure in Moral Markets

“…Secondly, we know that navigating moral complexity is difficult for consumers (Devinney et al 2010;Geisler and Veresiu 2014;Henry 2010;Luedicke et al 2010) and recent scholarship has indicated that consumers are tasked with the 'impossible': 'to enjoy, provide, realize yourself, be authentic but also recycle, protect workers in China, prevent illegal arms trading, end the killing of animals, and so on, all in order to save capitalism from digging its own grave', (Carrington et al 2016, p. 32). Therein, calls to 'downshift', 'voluntary simplify' and 'decelerate' affluent consumer lifestyles (Etzioni 1998;Husemann and Eckhardt 2018;Schor 1998), alongside other morally moderating behaviours such as 'ethical consumption' (Devinney et al 2010), suggest that a dichotomy might exist between morality and pleasure; the emphasis of "hedonic, self-interested outcomes, in contrast to the more societal-centered viewpoint of ethical consumers", Shiu 2003, p. 1485). Alongside illuminating the process of ethical decision making, alternative hedonism would instead view pleasure and morality as two sides of the same coin, rather than diametric opposites (Shaw and Shiu 2003).…”