ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an impressionistic autobiographical SPI approach to trace the development of Concept of Consumer Value (CCV) to position CCV as an extension of the earlier work on the Consumption Experience. Consumer Value is relativisitic in at least three senses such as comparative, personal, and situational. Thus, legitimate value judgments involve relative preferences among objects for a given person rather than illegitimate utility comparisons among people. The chapter describes the different types of Consumer Value. The types are Economic, Social, Hedonic, and Altruistic. Ethics concerns the active manipulation of a consumption experience intrinsically appreciated for its own sake by virtue of the way it affects others or how others respond to it. Consumer Value entails a Subject-Object interaction in which the consumption experience resulting from a product or event appeals to one or another individual. This aspect of consumer value has inspired disciples of the Service-Dominant Logic or the managerial gurus who espouse Experiential Marketing.
