The Meaning of Happiness in Consumer Research: Results from an Inductive Exploratory Pilot Study

In this study we investigate the meaning of happiness in a consumption context. We employ an inductive approach and present the results of an exploratory pilot study with eight consumers. The study is based on a Multi-Sensory-Sculpting (MSS) procedure in which we asked consumers to build sculptures that represent consumer happiness. Following the MSS guidelines, consumers were interviewed about the meanings of their sculpture in order to elicit embodied cognition about the topic at hand. In this paper we present the meanings of consumer happiness in the participants‟ accounts and discuss implications for consumer research. Further, we discuss the applicability of the MSS-procedure to the topic of consumer happiness, and how to optimize it for later studies on consumer happiness.