Consumer Value ‘Serving the customer’ and ‘customer satisfaction’ are central to every formulation of the marketing concept, yet few books delve with sufficient depth into issues concerning the dimensions that such service to the customer entails. This comprehensive volume fills the gap by bringing together leading US and UK scholars to explore this contentious issue—the nature and types of consumer value. Various contrasting methodological and theoretical domains are employed to provide a comprehensive analytical framework that is applied to the full range of consumption-related phenomena. The framework provides eight interrelated ways to think about these issues: • efficiency • excellence • status • esteem • play • aesthetics • ethics • spirituality With an international range of contributors and a highly individual approach, Consumer Value offers a useful teaching supplement to anyone studying a course on marketing in general or consumer behaviour in particular. Morris B.Holbrook is Professor of Marketing at The Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. His previous publications include Consumer Research (1995) and he’s the co-author of The Semiotics of Consumption (1993) and Postmodern Consumer Research (1992). Routledge interpretive marketing research series Edited by Stephen Brown University of Ulster, Northern Ireland and Barbara B.Stern State University of New Jersey Recent years have witnessed an ‘interpretive turn’ in marketing and consumer research. Methodologies from the humanities are taking their place alongside those drawn from the traditional social sciences. Qualitative and literary modes of marketing discourse are growing in popularity. Art and aesthetics are increasingly firing the marketing imagination. This series of scholarly monographs and edited volumes brings together the most innovative work in the burgeoning interpretative marketing research tradition. It ranges across the methodological spectrum from grounded theory to personal introspection, covers all aspects of the postmodern marketing ‘mix’, from advertising to product development, and embraces marketing’s principal sub- disciplines. Representing Consumers Voices, views and visions Edited by Barbara B.Stern Romancing the Market Edited by Stephen Brown, Anne Marie Doherty and Bill Clarke Consumer Value A framework for analysis and research Edited by Morris B.Holbrook Consumer Value A framework for analysis and research Edited by Morris B.Holbrook London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1999 Morris B.Holbrook All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Consumer value: a framework for analysis and research/Morris B. Holbrook [editor]. p. cm. —(Routledge interpretive market research series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Consumer behavior. 2. Consumers—Research—Methodology. I. Holbrook, Morris B. II. Series. HF5415.32.C6593 1999 658.8′342—dc21 98–33544 CIP ISBN 0–415–19192–0 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–19193–9 (pbk) ISBN 0–203–01067–1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0–203–20287–2 (Glassbook Format) For John O’Shaughnessy— philosopher and friend Contents List of figures and tables ix List of contributors x Preface xiii Introduction to consumer value 1 MORRIS B.HOLBROOK 1 The value of time in the context of waiting and delays 29 FRANCE LECLERC AND BERND H.SCHMITT 2 Value as excellence in the consumption experience 43 RICHARD L.OLIVER 3 The value of status and the status of value 63 MICHAEL R.SOLOMON 4 Possessions, materialism, and other-directedness in the expression of self 85 MARSHA L.RICHINS 5 The dangers and opportunities of playful consumption 105 KENT GRAYSON 6 Aesthetic value: beauty in art and fashion 126 JANET WAGNER 7 Ethics and the Typology of Consumer Value 147 N.CRAIG SMITH viii Contents 8 Devaluing value: the apophatic ethic and the spirit of postmodern consumption 159 STEPHEN BROWN Conclusions 183 MORRIS B.HOLBROOK Index 199 Figures and tables Figures 2.1 Six representations of satisfaction and value 54 2.2 Nomological net of value concepts in consumption 59 4.1 Theoretical and observed sources of value 87 4.2 Using objects to shape identity 90 4.3 Materialism scores of consumers low and high in self-monitoring and self-esteem 99 5.1 Seven ways in which ‘X’ can play with ‘Y’ 112 5.2 Playful consumption in context 114 Tables 1 A Typology of Consumer Value 12 2.1 The comparative operators in consumption 56 3.1 Stages of status-seeking and the Typology of Consumer Value 66 7.1` Holbrook’s Typology of Value in the consumption experience 149 List of contributors Stephen Brown is Professor of Retailing at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. His books include Postmodern Marketing (Routledge); Marketing Apocalypse, co-edited with Jim Bell and David Carson (Routledge); Postmodern Marketing Two: Telling Tales (International Thomson Business Press); Consumer Research: Postcards from the Edge, co-edited with Darach Turley (Routledge); and Romancing the Market (Routledge). Brown wishes to assure his readers that ‘these works are available from all good second- hand bookstores, charity shops, and remainder bins everywhere.’ Kent Grayson is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the London Business School. His research focuses on two general areas. The first centers on issues of truth and deception in consumer behavior. The second examines network- marketing organizations, which are sometimes called pyramid-selling companies or multi-level marketing organizations. Before earning his doctorate at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Grayson worked for several years in advertising and public relations. He has published articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Sloan Management Review. Morris B.Holbrook is the W.T.Dillard Professor of Marketing in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. Holbrook graduated from Harvard College with a BA degree in English (1965) and received his MBA (1967) and PhD (1975) in Marketing from Columbia University. Since 1975, he has taught courses at the Columbia Business School in such areas as Marketing Strategy, Sales Management, Research Methods, Consumer Behavior, and Commercial Communication in the Culture of Consumption. His research has covered a wide variety of topics in marketing and consumer behavior with a special focus on issues related to communication in general and to aesthetics, semiotics, hermeneutics, art, entertainment, and advertising in particular. Holbrook pursues such hobbies as playing the piano, attending jazz and classical concerts, going to movies and the theater, collecting musical recordings, taking stereographic photos, and being kind to cats. Contributors xi France Leclerc earned her PhD in Marketing from Cornell University and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago where she teaches MBA courses on Advertising and International Marketing. Her research interests include the psychology of time (waiting and delays), consumer promotions, and brand loyalty. Leclerc has published articles on these themes in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Richard L.Oliver is the Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management and Area Head of Marketing in the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Oliver received a BSME degree from Purdue and the MBA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests are in the area of consumer psychology with a special focus on customer satisfaction and postpurchase processes. Oliver is the author of Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer (Irwin/McGraw-Hill) and co-editor with Roland Rust of Service Quality: New Directions in Theory and Practice (Sage). In recognition of his work on the satisfaction response, he was elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Consumer Psychology. Oliver teaches buyer behavior and customer-satisfaction theory at Vanderbilt. He has served on the review boards of several journals and, previously, has taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the only member of the value team who rides a Harley-Davidson. Marsha L.Richins is Professor of Marketing at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Richins received a Masters degree in Social Psychology and a PhD in Marketing from the University of Texas, Austin. Her early work dealt with customer responses to dissatisfaction in the marketplace. More recent research has investigated consumers’ relationships with their possessions, the influence of advertising on consumers’ self-perceptions, and materialism. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing,