Liquid Consumption

Abstract

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...

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