ABSTRACT
The preceding argument is based on the view that what transforms consumer activity into consumer choice is the temporal conflict between purchasing or consuming immediately and deferring these pleasures. Consumer choices form a spectrum from everyday purchasing which is minimally consequential to compulsive and addictive consumption that generates far more serious outcomes. Everyday shopping usually entails minor conflict but addiction is an example of a more major struggle. The book has sought to link context, conceived in terms of the pattern of rewards and sanctions that consumption occasions, and cognition, the consumer’s conception of these outcomes, via the intentional consumer-situation which is the immediate precursor of consumer choice. The exposition has been directed toward the conceptual elaboration of this concept: by viewing consumer choice as action rather than behavior, by exploring the role of psychological rationality in consumer decision making, by initiating and applying the concept of perceptual contingency-representation as a central component of consumer-situation, and by expanding the personal level of exposition, that concerned with the subjective experience of the consumer. This concluding chapter summarizes the argument and considers a broader perspective.
