Meaningful choice: Existential consumer theory
研究消费能否构成真正的存在意义，提出存在主义消费与目的性消费的动态关系，认为消费者选择在有助于发展或实现个人美好生活愿景时具有存在意义。
It is controversial whether consumption can constitute genuine, existential meaning for the individual. Building on philosophical explorations of subjective meaning, this study suggests a dynamic relationship between existential and teleological consumption. On the one hand, consumers demonstrate deep-level engagement with entities in the marketing eco-system (such as brand narratives and certain service encounters) to explore their own potentiality and develop an authentic vision of the good life. This is existential consumption. On the other, consumers adopt teleological modes of consumption where products and services are used more instrumentally to enact their vision of the good life. It is proposed that consumer choice is existentially meaningful insofar as it is conducive to the development or realisation of the individual vision of the good life. The theory and its implications are discussed in the context of recent deterministic and pessimistic/nihilistic challenges to marketing theory.