ABSTRACT
The motive to buy appears to spring from the individual, but its sources run deep into the social and cultural environment. Too often, studies of the why of consumption focus on cognitive, social, or cultural forces, as though one source might be “the” source of motivation. For example, on the one hand, consumer researchers have sought the why of consumption by examining consumer cognitive structures through means-end analysis and related methods (Gengler and Reynolds 1995). But these approaches usually do not relate the structure of motivating beliefs to the structure of the social and cultural environments in which they are produced, shared, and enacted. On the other hand, consumer researchers have striven to reveal the social and cultural motives for consumption through ethnographic inquiry. However, such studies have often not systematically explored how motives of sociocultural origin are represented in the minds of participants (e.g. O'Guinn and Belk 1989). While focus on a particular source of motivation is of value, it is also limiting. Motivation in the daily lives of consumers springs not from cognitive, social, or cultural forces in isolation, but from the swirl of their interaction. It is in understanding this interaction that significant potential for advance in motivation research may lie.
