The Lived Meaning of Symbolic Consumption and Identity Construction in Stable and Transitional Phases: Towards an Analytical Framework

In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for the investigation of consumers’ lived experience of identity related consumption in stable and transitional phases. The framework integrates the ideas (1) that objects can support the consumer’s identity construction because of their ’signal’ value - or because of their potential to provide the consumer with a certain ’experience’ of self, (2) that these meanings can reside in a ’common’ domain - or in a more ’private’ domain, and (3) that these meanings can be vehicles for the ongoing ‘maintenance’ as well as ‘acquisition’ or ‘disposition’ of important life roles.