IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jconrs/v44y2017i3p582-597..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liquid Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Fleura Bardhi
  • Giana M. Eckhardt

Abstract

This article 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 are discussed 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. Lastly, managing the challenges of liquid consumption and its effect on consumer welfare are explored.

Suggested Citation

  • Fleura Bardhi & Giana M. Eckhardt, 2017. "Liquid Consumption," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 44(3), pages 582-597.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:44:y:2017:i:3:p:582-597.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucx050
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James H. McAlexander & Beth Leavenworth Dufault & Diane M. Martin & John W. Schouten, 2014. "The Marketization of Religion: Field, Capital, and Consumer Identity," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 41(3), pages 858-875.
    2. Markus Giesler, 2008. "Conflict and Compromise: Drama in Marketplace Evolution," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(6), pages 739-753, August.
    3. Russell W. Belk, 2013. "Extended Self in a Digital World," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 40(3), pages 477-500.
    4. Belk, Russell W, 1988. "Possessions and the Extended Self," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 15(2), pages 139-168, September.
    5. Lawson, Stephanie J. & Gleim, Mark R. & Perren, Rebeca & Hwang, Jiyoung, 2016. "Freedom from ownership: An exploration of access-based consumption," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 2615-2623.
    6. Amber M. Epp & Linda L. Price, 2010. "The Storied Life of Singularized Objects: Forces of Agency and Network Transformation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(5), pages 820-837, February.
    7. Richins, Marsha L & Dawson, Scott, 1992. "A Consumer Values Orientation for Materialism and Its Measurement: Scale Development and Validation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 19(3), pages 303-316, December.
    8. Avery, Jill, 2012. "Defending the markers of masculinity: Consumer resistance to brand gender-bending," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 322-336.
    9. Kozinets, Robert V, 2002. "Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations from Burning Man," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(1), pages 20-38, June.
    10. Giana M. Eckhardt & Fleura Bardhi, 2016. "The Relationship between Access Practices and Economic Systems," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(2), pages 210-225.
    11. Liad Weiss & Gita Venkataramani, 2016. "Products as Self-Evaluation Standards: When Owned and Unowned Products Have Opposite Effects on Self-Judgment," Journal of Consumer Research, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(6), pages 915-930.
    12. Stephanie M. Tully & Hal E. Hershfield & Tom Meyvis, 2015. "Seeking Lasting Enjoyment with Limited Money: Financial Constraints Increase Preference for Material Goods over Experiences," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 42(1), pages 59-75.
    13. Jordan Etkin, 2016. "The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification," Journal of Consumer Research, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(6), pages 967-984.
    14. Holt, Douglas B, 1995. "How Consumers Consume: A Typology of Consumption Practices," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 22(1), pages 1-16, June.
    15. Hill, Ronald Paul & Stamey, Mark, 1990. "The Homeless in America: An Examination of Possessions and Consumption Behaviors," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(3), pages 303-321, December.
    16. Aric Rindfleisch & James E. Burroughs & Nancy Wong, 2009. "The Safety of Objects: Materialism, Existential Insecurity, and Brand Connection," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(1), pages 1-16, June.
    17. Matthew J. Bernthal & David Crockett & Randall L. Rose, 2005. "Credit Cards as Lifestyle Facilitators," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(1), pages 130-145, June.
    18. Charla Mathwick & Caroline Wiertz & Ko de Ruyter, 2008. "Social Capital Production in a Virtual P3 Community," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(6), pages 832-849, November.
    19. Harvey, David, 2007. "A Brief History of Neoliberalism," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199283279.
    20. Mehta, Raj & Belk, Russell W, 1991. "Artifacts, Identity, and Transition: Favorite Possessions of Indians and Indian Immigrants to the United States," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(4), pages 398-411, March.
    21. Deborah J. MacInnis & Valerie S. Folkes, 2010. "The Disciplinary Status of Consumer Behavior: A Sociology of Science Perspective on Key Controversies," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(6), pages 899-914, April.
    22. Ernest Baskin & Cheryl J. Wakslak & Yaacov Trope & Nathan Novemsky, 2014. "Why Feasibility Matters More to Gift Receivers than to Givers: A Construal-Level Approach to Gift Giving," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 41(1), pages 169-182.
    23. Jean-Sébastien Marcoux, 2009. "Escaping the Gift Economy," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(4), pages 671-685, December.
    24. Eric J. Arnould & Craig J. Thompson, 2005. "Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 31(4), pages 868-882, March.
    25. Markus Giesler & Ela Veresiu, 2014. "Creating the Responsible Consumer: Moralistic Governance Regimes and Consumer Subjectivity," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 41(3), pages 840-857.
    26. Bige Saatcioglu & Julie L. Ozanne, 2013. "Moral Habitus and Status Negotiation in a Marginalized Working-Class Neighborhood," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 40(4), pages 692-710.
    27. Schouten, John W, 1991. "Selves in Transition: Symbolic Consumption in Personal Rites of Passage and Identity Reconstruction," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(4), pages 412-425, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernd Schmitt & J Joško Brakus & Alessandro Biraglia, 2022. "Consumption Ideology [Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government]," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 49(1), pages 74-95.
    2. Loussaïef, Leïla & Ulrich, Isabelle & Damay, Coralie, 2019. "How does access to luxury fashion challenge self-identity? Exploring women's practices of joint and non-ownership," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 263-272.
    3. Hollenbeck, Candice R. & Patrick, Vanessa M., 2016. "Mastering survivorship: How brands facilitate the transformation to heroic survivor," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 73-82.
    4. Karin Brondino-Pompeo, 2021. "Mapping spheres of exchange: a multidimensional approach to commoditization and singularization," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 11(1), pages 81-95, June.
    5. Hong, Soonkwan & Vicdan, Handan, 2016. "Re-imagining the utopian: Transformation of a sustainable lifestyle in ecovillages," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 120-136.
    6. Michael J. Dorsch & Kjell Y. Törnblom & Ali Kazemi, 2017. "A Review of Resource Theories and Their Implications for Understanding Consumer Behavior," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 5-25.
    7. Justyna Kramarczyk & Mathieu Alemany Oliver, 2022. "Accumulative vs. Appreciative Expressions of Materialism: Revising Materialism in Light of Polish Simplifiers and New Materialism," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(4), pages 701-719, February.
    8. Gurzki, Hannes & Woisetschläger, David M., 2017. "Mapping the luxury research landscape: A bibliometric citation analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 147-166.
    9. Castilhos, Rodrigo B. & Fonseca, Marcelo J., 2016. "Pursuing upward transformation: The construction of a progressing self among dominated consumers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 6-17.
    10. Thyroff, Anastasia & Kilbourne, William E., 2018. "Self-enhancement and individual competitiveness as mediators in the materialism/consumer satisfaction relationship," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 189-196.
    11. Kumar, Jitender, 2024. "Psychological mechanisms behind access-based luxury brand consumption: Empirical investigation from the lens of new ownership paradigm," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    12. Ruvio, Ayalla & Belk, Russell, 2018. "Strategies of the extended self: The role of possessions in transpeople's conflicted selves," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 102-110.
    13. Martin P. Fritze & Andreas B. Eisingerich & Martin Benkenstein, 2019. "Digital transformation and possession attachment: examining the endowment effect for consumers’ relationships with hedonic and utilitarian digital service technologies," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 311-337, June.
    14. Syrjälä, Henna, 2016. "Turning point of transformation: Consumer communities, identity projects and becoming a serious dog hobbyist," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 177-190.
    15. Seo, Yuri, 2016. "Professionalized consumption and identity transformations in the field of eSports," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 264-272.
    16. Pedeliento, Giuseppe & Bettinelli, Cristina & Andreini, Daniela & Bergamaschi, Mara, 2018. "Consumer entrepreneurship and cultural innovation: The case of GinO12," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 431-442.
    17. Samuel Guillemot, 2018. "Intergenerational transmission in consumer behaviour: An integrative conceptual framework and future research directions," Post-Print hal-02466675, HAL.
    18. Donna L Hoffman & Thomas P Novak & Eileen FischerEditor & Robert KozinetsAssociate Editor, 2018. "Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 44(6), pages 1178-1204.
    19. Voyer, Benjamin G. & Kastanakis, Minas N. & Rhode, Ann Kristin, 2017. "Co-creating stakeholder and brand identities: A cross-cultural consumer perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 399-410.
    20. Erz, Antonia & Heeris Christensen, Anna-Bertha, 2018. "Transforming Consumers Into Brands: Tracing Transformation Processes of the Practice of Blogging," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 69-82.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:44:y:2017:i:3:p:582-597.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.