Hidden Commitments and Future Opportunities: Implicit Moral Philosophies in Consumer Psychology

Consumer researchers have historically shied away from explicitly assessing the moral “rightness” of consumer decisions. In this article, however, we argue that experimental consumer research often implicitly endorses moral philosophies that do exactly this. We focus on three key philosophical theories: consequentialism, hedonism, and deontology. After providing brief definitions of each, we highlight ways in which they have been implicitly adopted in mature and often moralized areas of consumer research—self-control, prosocial behavior, and sustainable consumption. By considering past research in each domain through a different lens than originally adopted, we see how the recognition of implicit moral philosophies can help generate new inquiries. Finally, we propose that a philosophically aware consumer research may have much to offer future theory and practice: to take consumers’ moral philosophical commitments into account when designing interventions, and to explore truly new questions that arise from the critique of each moral lens.