Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review

ARTICLE IN PRESS Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Australasian Marketing Journal j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / a m j

Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review Sheau-Fen Yap *, Sommer Kapitan Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

A R T I C L E

I N F O

Article history: Received 21 September 2016 Revised 24 April 2017 Accepted 27 April 2017 Available online Keywords: Life events Consumption behaviour Transitions Coping Stress

A B S T R A C T

Marketing scholars have devoted considerable effort to researching the impact of life transitions on consumption behaviour. However, prior literature on life events is broad and fragmented. This paper provides an up-to-date synthesis of past findings using an integrative review covering 116 articles on life events and consumption over the last 35 years. This critical review reveals important gaps in current knowledge, and puts forward avenues for future research that flow logically from the theoretical gaps identified, thereby contributing to extant literature on life events and consumption. The resulting framework of consumption coping provides an understanding of how consumer motivations build, grow, and alter as life events occur. The goal of the review is to stimulate the field to consider deeper contextual examination of the role of life events in acquisition, consumption, and disposal of material and experiential consumption opportunities. © 2017 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction How do consumers cope with life transitions? Although the literature has pointed to the impact of some life transitions and postevent consumption patterns, such as the way in which leisure activity consumption changes following marriage, divorce, and parenthood (Enberg et al., 2012), the field has yet to synthesize the broad range of studies that examine how people consume through and in reaction to salient life events from marriage, parenting and relocation to retirement and ageing. These events anchor consumption to the context in which the consumption occurs, allowing for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of consumer behaviour. This paper begins with an integrative review of 35 years of literature to build a critical framework (Fig. 1) that allows researchers to study how individuals cope with life events via consumption opportunities. The goal of this framework of consumption coping during transitions is to motivate the field to consider deeper contextual examination of the role of life events in acquisition, consumption, and disposal of material and experiential consumption opportunities. This framework proposes that how an individual consumer copes with life course events – choosing either to approach the life event and related identity change or avoid the life event – is a key determinant to predicting the resulting changes in consumption. Life events refer to circumstances that dramatically influence one’s daily routines and priorities such as marriage, child birth, divorce and retirement (Luhmann et al., 2012). People initiate coping strategies to manage stress, solve problems and restore balance after

* Corresponding author. Fax: +64 9921 9999. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.-F. Yap).

experiencing critical life events (Ong and Othman, 2007). Behavioural readjustments in response to stressful events can have profound implications for consumer behaviour: Coping actions can change consumers’ perceptions of self, their consumption habits, and the symbolic meanings they draw from consumption objects (Lee et al., 2001). These changes in consumer behaviour can be triggered by a change in or a loss of a sense of self, role transitions, and stress, even when the life transition is a welcome one such as a job promotion (Luhmann et al., 2012). Understanding consumer coping behaviours thus influences the study of consumer choices and well-being. Consumer researchers have endeavoured to disentangle how consumer behaviours function as coping mechanisms during the course of life transitions (Hopkins et al., 2014). Nevertheless, the scope of published literature on the impact of life events on consumer outcomes is fragmented and large, making it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from these past studies. Three initial conceptual reviews of life events narrowly focus on only one life event: marital dissolution (Fellerman and Debevec, 1992) or retirement (Heslop and Marshall, 1991; Schewe and Balazs, 1992). Although recent reviews cover a broader scope of life events, they focus only on outcomes for leisure consumption (Enberg et al., 2012; Kleiber et al., 2002). The time is ripe now for a consolidation of past evidence in the form of a comprehensive review. This paper systematically reviews research on life events and consumption behaviour. The authors argue that key consumer behaviours can be better explained in the context of consumer life events and coping with transitions, from brand switching to shopping for vacations and increases in acquisition. That is because, as proposed in the critical framework (Fig. 1), stress from life events yields coping strategies and behavioural adjustments that are reflected in altered consumption patterns. The disruptions that occur

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ausmj.2017.04.003 1441-3582/© 2017 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

2

Fig. 1. The consumption coping process.

during periods of life transitions, even for welcomed transitions such as marriage and the arrival of a child, can create emotional distress that impacts individuals’ physical and psychological wellbeing (Enberg et al., 2012; Mathur et al., 1999). Whether a consumer feels the life event is goal relevant, and if so, if it is congruent or incongruent with goals, can collude with personality traits (Duhachek and Iacobucci, 2005; Mathur et al., 1999) to determine the type of consumer coping response adopted, from strategies for approaching the life change (such as consuming more healthful food and purchasing identity-relevant brands) to strategies that avoid the source of stress (e.g., increased use and acquisition of alcohol, taking a vacation to escape). 2. Method The authors first turn to an integrative review to synthesize past streams of life transitions research. An integrative review allows a more rigorous selection and evaluation of articles (Torraco, 2005). Searches included articles (published between 1980 and 2016) written in English, but no limits were applied for country or population of interest. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of life events research, a broad range of databases focused on marketing, psychology, and consumer behaviour were included: ABI/INFORM Complete (ProQuest), Business Source Complete (EBSCO), Emerald Fulltext, Scopus, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, PsycINFO, and ScienceDirect. The references listed on those retrieved articles were also searched for other potentially relevant studies. Furthermore, key relevant marketing journals were also searched to ensure

that articles in the marketing discipline are covered comprehensively. To promote quality control, the authors focused only on scholarly works including published, peer-reviewed journal articles while books, book chapters, conference proceedings, dissertations, working papers, and any other unpublished works were excluded. Empirical studies that employed either quantitative, qualitative, or mixed method approaches were considered. In line with the research objective, only articles focusing on the association between a life event and coping responses and/or consumption changes were selected. Internal life events which most people experience in their life span were of chief interest. This paper focused on events that require more adjustment during transitions and categorized them into seven major groups: (1) transition to adulthood; (2) job related; (3) relationship related; (4) parenthood; (5) transition to old age; (6) moving; and (7) a category that examines research on general life events from each of the above categories and their impact on consumption outcomes. External life events which originate from experience with an event such as economic crisis, natural disaster, war and health crises were excluded from this review to allow for a focus on life course stages as a context variable that any consumer might reasonably face. In line with the research objective and to ensure relevance, only articles focusing on the association between at least one life event (listed above) and consumption behavioural changes and coping responses were selected. Boolean search was used to search for articles containing relevant the following keywords: life event, life transition, role transition, life transitory situations, life-change events, life

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

experiences, life changes, life trajectories, life status, life course, life circumstances, transitional, and liminality. To restrict the literature search to relevant consumption related studies, these keywords were combined with addition terms including consumer behaviour, consumption, coping, disposition, consumption and/or behavioural change, adjustment, and adaptation. Two researchers screened through the title, abstract and introduction of every retrieved article independently to exclude articles that were out of scope. Articles without abstracts (or with abstracts that contained insufficient detail) were retained for full text review by both the researchers. In an integrative review, systematic methods are also employed to review the evidence and enhance the rigour of research interpretations (Whittemore and Knafl, 2005). To build a clear analytical strategy, a table of evidence was created and coded by both researchers in terms of (a) relevance to life events and consumer responses, (b) type of life event included, and (c) type of consumption coping evidenced. This information was then parsed chronologically and then according to type of life event, to result in both a synthesis and review of findings (presented next) and a summary framework as the key synthesizing element to drive future research. 3. An integrative review The central task of this integrative review is to organize and summarize extant evidence about consumption responses to life events in a way that the current state of knowledge is fully assessed (i.e., Whittemore and Knafl, 2005). The final sample of 116 articles were ordered and classified according to year of publication, disciplines, methods, types of life events, and study location. As shown in Table 1, the number of articles on the theme has been growing steadily over the years, showing a rising interest in life course events. Notably, approximately 40 percent of the reviewed articles have been published since 2010. This reflects a surge in academic attention

3

to this stream of research, and further reveals why a critical review is necessary to help the field consolidate findings and advance theory. Reviewed articles were published in 72 different journals, although dominated by marketing (46%) and economics (24%). Of note, 43% of the reviewed studies are from the U.S. Changes in consumer consumption habits and preferences during the life course hinge, as proposed in this integrative review and resulting framework, on the occurrence of critical life events that prompt consumers to seek ways to cope with change. Life events that are perceived positively by some consumers may be viewed as a negative experience by others or with mixed emotions (Hopkins et al., 2014). Review findings overall indicate that life events, positive or negative, often create stress due to disruptions in the person’s daily routines and practices (Duhachek and Kelting, 2009; Mathur et al., 1999). Social identity and symbolic consumption emerge as key to understanding how life events can influence and encourage consumption coping. In social identity theory, an individual’s sense of identity is forged from both self-perceptions and social group memberships (from family roles to demographic age groups, ethnicity, gender and sports teams) that form a key part of that person’s sense of pride, satisfaction and self-esteem (Tajfel et al., 1979). The symbolic meanings conveyed by consumable goods, services, and experiences viewed in this way are richer than functional, physical characteristics of material goods (Belk, 1988; Schouten, 1991). From a consumer behaviour perspective, identities can be accessed, stored and communicated to others via products, services, and activities that together form a constellation or complementary set that symbolically invokes an identity (Belk, 1988; Solomon, 1983). Consider the yoga enthusiast who dons Lululemon athletic wear, buys a monthly yoga studio pass, and drinks Starbucks coffee daily, or the executive who wears fine suits and drives a late model BMW (i.e., Kleine et al., 1993). Individuals choose products and services that are congruent with their selves or their identity concept (i.e., Belk, 1988; Kleine et al., 1993). As life events and transitions alter both group memberships

Table 1 Characteristics of the reviewed articles. Year of publication

Discipline/Subject area

Methods

Types of life events

Locations

1981 (1) 1983 (1) 1984 (3) 1987 (1) 1989 (1) 1991 (4) 1992 (5) 1994 (3) 1996 (4) 1997 (2) 1998 (1) 1999 (1) 2000 (3) 2001 (4) 2002 (2) 2003 (3) 2004 (4) 2005 (6) 2006 (7) 2007 (7) 2008 (6) 2009 (3) 2010 (3) 2011 (2) 2012 (10) 2013 (6) 2014 (8) 2015 (10) 2016 (5)

Marketing (55) Economics (27) Tourism/Leisure (10) Psychology (4) Cultural Studies (4) Public Health (3) Sociology (2) Nutrition & Dietetics (2) Sports Sciences (2) Clinical Sciences (2) Curriculum & Pedagogy (1) Business & Management (1) Policy & Administration (1) Education (1) Food Sciences (1)

Quantitative (62):

Transition to old age (35)

– Survey (29) – Existing/panel data (33)

Various life events (21)

Qualitative (38)

Motherhood/pregnancy (18)

USA (49) UK (10) Canada (7) Germany (5) Denmark (3) Malaysia (3) Italy (3) Greece (2) Austria (2) France (2) Australia (2) New Zealand (2) Taiwan (2) Korea (2) Brazil (1) China (1) Sweden (1) Holland (1) Japan (1) Spain (1) Scotland (1) Finland (1) Cyprus (1) Multiple countries (3) Conceptual papers (8) Unknown (2)

Multiple methods (8) Relationship/family disruption (17) Conceptual (8) Job related (13) Moving (7) Transition to adulthood (5)

Parentheses denote number of articles.

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

4

(i.e., the transition from childhood to university student; from single to married or married to divorced; from employment to retirement) and resulting self-concept, identity can be confused before it is reconstructed to suit the new life event (Moschis, 2007a, 2007b). The process of identity reconstruction in this way involves consumption offerings that allow a consumer to assume (or reject) new role identities following a life event. As Fig. 1 shows, consumption can help a consumer either embrace a new identity following a life event or help aid a consumer’s motivation to delay identity reconstruction. Next, this work discusses findings according to each of the seven major emergent categories of life events studies as identified in our integrative review. For each of these life event categories, key issues worthy of further research and a set of associated research questions are proposed (see Table 2). Later in this paper, the framework of consumption coping (Fig. 1) drawn from this review will demonstrate how individual traits and motivations collude with these life events to yield either approach coping or avoidance coping strategies. Such strategies are key to predicting what type of consumption coping opportunities consumers might embrace, from consumption opportunities offering escapism to those offering social networking, well-being, and role adaptation.

3.1. Adulthood The passage from childhood into adulthood is associated with clear lifestyle changes and related consumption patterns, from alcohol and drug use (Junge et al., 2016) to accumulation of possessions and new skills that aid in identity reconstruction. The major areas of this transition include the passage to secondary school, leaving high school to join a work place as young adults, transitioning to higher education, and transitioning away from home and parents into the broader community. The literature shows that individuals construct a new way of living in their attempts to cope with the stress of becoming young adults and to signal their new role and identity. Only 4 papers uncovered in this review focus on adulthood transition. Two articles focus on possessions and materialism as American consumer coping in the transition, finding that: (1) the Mormon missionary experience, which involves renouncing possessions, often leads young men to re-evaluate their relationship to material items (Ozanne, 1992) and (2) consumers rely on possessions that symbolize the past and the present emerging roles, to help facilitate identity during the major life transition (Noble and Walker, 1997). Another two papers focus on food consumption and cooking habits as potential coping as young Danish adults transition to life at university: Gram et al. (2015) determine that moving away from home is a period of intense reconstruction of food consumption habits and skills, which draws a thread back to the family home and serves to help young adults navigate evolving intergenerational relationships. While students who were accustomed to cooking experienced the least problems adopting proper and healthy food consumption habits when at university, these young adults did not automatically extend practices and habits unchanged from home (Blichfeldt and Gram, 2013). Instead, they actively developed and cultivated new food habits. Importantly, each of these papers points towards consumption that facilitates identity reconstruction. Of note is that the transition to adulthood seemingly and rather clearly leads to a new way of living and new consumption needs. However, this integrative review reveals a lack of research into the effect of young adulthood transitions on resulting consumption activities and consumption patterns. The authors also note a lack of empirical focus on the identity change and related consumption changes that accompany the passage from childhood to adulthood. Furthermore, the focus in the life event category research to

date is on developed, Western cultures; more empirical evidence is needed from less developed and from Eastern perspectives.

3.2. Employment Stressful events related to employment include promotions and starting new jobs, job burnout, giving up employment, changes in employment status, career changes, loss of employment and unemployment. Stressful events such as career changes and loss of employment can affect an individual’s self-esteem and ability to maintain their social identity and ultimately their financial status, which can negatively affect individuals’ psychological well-being. Important to the consideration of the cyclical nature of the consumption coping process (Fig. 1), the experience of stress may not end after gaining new employment, due to uncertainty and adjustments associated with the new job. Yet this review demonstrates that little research has investigated these facets, and even less research has examined the role of promotion and positive employment transitions. Twelve papers in total examine employment changes and related consumption coping. The majority of the reviewed articles approached unemployment from an economic perspective, using panel data to chart the overall negative change in household consumption and expenditure. Mere perceptions of job insecurity are associated with sacrifices of daily consumption from apparel to entertainment and life-project related consumption such as buying a home (Lozza et al., 2012). Anticipating future job loss results in decreased consumption patterns, such as deferred spending on durables like motor vehicles and clothing (Stephens, 2004). Tellingly, job loss risk can decrease consumption by 1.6%, as found by Benito (2006), while Bloemen and Stancanelli (2005) show that the average household can experience 17% lower food consumption following job loss. Such losses, from symbolic clothing and motor vehicles to even quality and amount of food consumed, can be staggering for self-identity perceptions and might as a result drive avoidance consumption and escapism. Only 1 article on employment changes from the reviewed pool in the past 35 years is written from the consumer research perspective. Job loss can bring devastating consequences to an individual’s identity, such that individuals experiencing job loss seek to protect and re-define their identities (Roberts, 1991). This should have clear implications for changes in consumption, although greater empirical evidence is needed to examine the impact of unemployment on sense of self as well as consumption activities. This also points to a clear gap in the study of job changes in the life course; as proposed in Table 2, this literature warrants a more firm consumer behaviour perspective.

3.3. Relationships Interpersonal relationship issues include divorce, marriage, loss of loved ones, and family disruption. Among the 19 reviewed papers, 14 are from a marketing perspective. The reviewed studies focused on negative events and are dominated by how consumers cope with family disruption stress through materialism and compulsive buying. The review reveals that family communication styles that are fostered in disrupted families play a role in promoting the importance of material possessions and materialistic values (Moschis et al., 2013; Roberts et al., 2006) and development of compulsive purchase tendencies (Grougiou et al., 2015; Weaver et al., 2011). Family disruptions affect compulsive buying through intangible family support and communications (Baker et al., 2013), revealing that parents in disrupted families who provide material support as a substitute for emotional support can instil compulsive shopping

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

5

Table 2 Life events and consumption behaviours: important research questions. Types of events/Research issues Adulthood: Limited empirical evidence on the impact of adulthood transitions on consumption activities and patterns. The changing role and identity that accompany the passage from childhood to adulthood is largely neglected. Empirical evidence from less developed and Eastern culture is lacking. Employment: Dominated by articles from economic discipline. Largely econometric approach; qualitative work is lacking. Too narrow focus on consumption changes in terms of expenditure alone, i.e. expenditure changes following job loss. A clear gap that warrants more work from consumer behaviour perspective. Existing work on employment life event is clearly dated.

Future research opportunities

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Relationships: Focus on negative events (e.g. parental separation & divorce) whilst positive ones like marriage is largely overlooked. Lack of focus on the potential interacting variables that might interact with life events to produce different coping strategies. Long term impact of divorce and parent separation on children’s psychological well-being and development is neglected. Literature regarding consumption activities following family disruption (mostly in the 1990s) is dated by now. Conflicting findings regarding the impact of relationship events on materialism and compulsive buying. Research on co-habiting couples is lacking. Dominated by cross-sectional research design. Largely focus on the Western context, mainly the U.S.

•

Parenthood: Mainly focus on mother’s experience and perspective, with far less academic attention on fatherhood. Lack of qualitative research into why consumers wanted a specific life event to occur in their lives (e.g., child birth). The ambivalent emotions of parenthood and how expectant and new parents may resolve conflicts between positive and negative feelings remain unclear.

– –

• • • • • • • • • • •

– – – – –

–

What are the consumption coping strategies possibly acquired by young adults which reflect the negative psychological state of transition? How may adulthood transition affect health-risk consumption behaviour (e.g. smoking, drugs use, unsafe sex, alcohol intake, etc.)? What are the impact of transition on young adults’ consumption activities such as brand preference changes, brand switching behaviour, changes in leisure, media and other entertainment, shopping habits, spending patterns, etc. as they are experiencing stress and anxiety? How do young consumers redefine their role as they transit to adulthood? How may the sense of identity change as young adults move on to the next stage of their life? How would adulthood transition affect consumer lifestyle and personality as the freshmen move on the next stage of life? What are the changes in the perception towards ‘the meaning of money’ during and after the transition to adulthood? How may cultural differences interact to influence the impact of adulthood transition on consumption behaviour? How would consumers who are experiencing job related stress behave in a way to protect their self? And why? To what degree does positive aspect of employment life events (e.g. promotion and starting a new job) affect consumption activities compared with the negative employment changes (e.g. job loss)? How do consumers cope with employment related life events? How do the coping strategies affect consumer decision making? How do employment changes affect consumer needs and wants? And why? To what degree does job insecurity play a role in influencing consumer lifestyle and their personal values? What is the impact of employment changes (be it positive or negative) on brand loyalty? How does unemployment transition affect consumption practices such as media usage, shopping habits and entertainment choices? What are the impacts of stressful job-related events on leisure consumption? How does unemployment transition relate to psychological well-being (e.g. self-esteem, happiness, life satisfaction)? How might positive aspect of employment life events (e.g. promotion and starting a new job) affect one’s sense of self compared with the negative employment changes (e.g. job loss)? How does job related stress influence one’s self-esteem which in turn leads to various forms of compulsive behaviour and compensatory behaviour? How might employment life event influence conspicuous consumption? Would positive aspect of employment life events (e.g. promotion and starting a new job) encourage individuals to consume more conspicuously compared with the negative employment changes (e.g. job loss)? To what degree does marriage play a role in influencing one’s lifestyle, personality, beliefs and values system? Do these relationships apply to co-habiting couples? How do consumers redefine their role as they transit from single to married? Are there gender differences in the role redefinition? How may consumers’ sense of identity change following their marriage? Does the change apply to co-habiting couples? How might marital transition affect household consumption? Particularly, to what degree does positive aspect of relationship events (e.g. marriage) affect consumption activities compared with the negative one (e.g. divorce)? To what extent do intervening variables such as individual traits, social and cultural capital, and socio-economic status alter the impact of family disruption on consumption behaviour? How might individual traits and their social and cultural capital interact with life events to produce different coping strategies? When a household unit is dissolved, it reforms into two household members of which the new spouse/partners’ consumption behaviour may affect other family members’ routines/lifestyle/practice/habits. How does this work? How might stress associated with family disruption events reflect in health behaviour (e.g. dietary, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption)? Is there a gender difference in health decision making following family disruption event? How might consumers from different cultural background (e.g. American versus Chinese) differ in the way they handle divorce/separation, marital happiness? And how do these coping differences affect their subsequent consumption behaviour and decision making? How do consumers in relationship event transition, be it positive (e.g. marriage) or negative (e.g. divorce), view their futures? How do the views affect their decision making and future consumption (in their new life)? What are the long term effects of negative relationship events (e.g. divorce, family disruption) on children psychological well-being? How does the custody agreement following a divorce affect subsequent consumption behaviour? There are several options here: child living with father/mother; child be the suitcase kids (e.g. living with mom 3 days and dad 4 days); child living with mom/dad as well as step mom/dad (plus step sisters/brothers). How do these household arrangements affect their subsequent consumption patterns (e.g. toys, food, education, insurance, childcare, property, etc.)? What are the changes in their lifestyle? How do consumers cope with motherhood events? What are the motivations that underlie the choice of coping strategies? What are the situation factors that may alter the relationship between motherhood transition and health and lifestyle behaviours (e.g. dietary, stress management, etc.)? To what extent does parenthood influence existing lifestyle, media, leisure and shopping habits? What are the changes in the meaning of consumption to new mother/father due to their new social roles and/or self? How do men conceptualize parenthood? How do their consumption activities and patterns change during the transition? Parenthood is traditionally perceived as feminine – How do men reconstruct their identity given their new role as a father? To address the ambivalent situations that expectant mothers are potentially facing (e.g. love and joy of expecting a child but will have more obligations and have to face the challenges of juggling both work and family). What are the mixed emotions of expectant mothers? Does the same set of emotions experience by father? How do they deal with these conflicts, demand and challenges both physically and psychologically? Any difference between mother and father in their coping with parenthood? What are the drivers and hinders of their choice of consumption while the expectant mothers are coping with the transition? Are the same drivers and barriers affect the choice of consumption of father during the parenthood transition? (continued on next page)

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

6

Table 2 (continued) Types of events/Research issues Ageing: Mainly from the economic discipline with less consumer behaviour focus. Much emphasis on retirement while other specific later life events such as death of a spouse, hospitalization, illness and injury have been overlooked. Less is known about the interrelationship between later life events and consumer behaviour. Few attempt exploring posttransition lifestyle changes Lack of empirical evidences on the situational factors that may alter the relationship between old age transition and consumption.

Future research opportunities

• • • •

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ –

– –

–

–

– Relocation: Relatively less empirical attempts on relocation and immigration compared to other life event categories in the marketing literature. The complex mechanisms underlying the impact of leisure as a coping consumption on psychological well-being of immigrants is unexplored. Less empirical evidence on why consumers seek relocation and immigration opportunities. Lack of research in the marketing literature linking immigration and relocation events to changes in consumption behaviour.

– – – – –

– –

–

How should marketers apply the knowledge relating to prevalent events (e.g. illness, injury and hospitalization, loss of spouse/friends) and stress management in later life for marketing interventions? How could the knowledge about later life events and coping be applied in the development of social, economic and public policies? The devastating impact of the unexpected loss of a child on both physical and psychological well-being, and how do older individuals cope with the stress and feeling of guilt associated with the loss of their loved ones? How do the lifestyle and consumption patterns change due to the changed nature of the individual’s life during the grieving process? The nexus between later life events and consumer behaviour would be a fertile area for further research. For example: 1. How do consumers reconstruct their roles and identities through consumption activities at later age? 2. How do the psychological age versus chronological age influence consumption behaviours at later age? 3. What are the effects of old age events such as illnesses, loss of spouse, facing death, retirement on various consumer behaviour aspects including: the attitude and behavioural change; decision making; consumption motives; emotions, attributions and perceptions; and social development of retirees in their old age. Experimental research is encouraged to examine how old age consumers response to various marketing stimuli. For example, elderly consumers’ ability to deal with aggressive salespeople, their complaint behaviour, attitude towards brands and advertising, etc. What are the changes in leisure activities, social interaction with others, media habits, shopping and other entertainment, etc. following retirement? To what extent retired couples will? ■ make more joint decision and information seeking than non-retired couples? ■ spend more time in leisure activities than non-retired couples? ■ enjoy shopping more than non-retired couples? ■ do more joint shopping than non-retired couples? Are there gender differences in the way old age consumers adapt to their later life? For example: ■ Gender differences in leisure involvement ■ Gender differences in household consumption – spending versus saving ■ Gender differences in social interactions ■ Gender differences in lifestyle changes ■ Gender differences in stress coping at later life How might cultural differences affect elderly consumers’ perceptions at later life? For example, how do Western consumers at old age transition view their future compared to their Eastern counterparts? The extent to which Eastern consumers’ perception towards the concept of retirement village differs from the Western elderly consumers? The extent to which moderating variable such as socio-economic status, gender, culture, personality may alter the relationship between retirement and consumption coping outcomes? What are the psychological mechanisms at work behind the impact of leisure coping consumption on well-being of immigrants? Why do consumers seek to immigrate or relocate to another place? How does the move affect their subsequent consumption pattern? What are the post-transition lifestyle changes following the immigration to another country? What are the changes in the way consumers engage in social interactions after they immigrated to another country? What are the implications of these changes on opinion leadership, word-of-mouth and other forms of social influence? How might immigration/relocation affect consumption behaviour? For example: ■ Would there be more joint decision following immigration (due to the unfamiliar environment)? ■ What changes can we expect in leisure pursuits, household consumption, lifestyle changes, shopping and media habits following immigration? ■ Would consumers have different priorities and goals following the immigration? Immigration transition may involve both positive and negative experiences simultaneously. What are the mixed emotions associated with immigration/relocation? How does consumer react to this ambivalence? How do immigrants co-create friendship, instrumental and emotional support, esteem, shared sense of responsibilities through the online community? To what extent does this online social connectedness influence the psychological well-being of immigrants? Moving leads to not only new consumption needs but also involving disposition of some household goods as individuals move from one country to another. How do consumers deal with the detachment of special possessions during the process of reconstructing the social role and self in a new society?

tendencies. Early studies reveal that a materialistic life helps people reduce stress following divorce (Rindfleisch et al., 1996) and suggest that possessions help children cope with the stress of parental separation through restoring identity and control (Burroughs and Rindfleisch, 1997). Family structure issues have been related to happiness, centrality and success dimensions of materialism (Roberts et al., 2003, 2006). The effects of family disruptions on compulsive buying in particular are shown to operate through intangible family support and communications, such as when parents provide material support as a substitute for emotional support (Baker et al., 2013). As the family unit changes, dissolves, or grows, challenging the social identity of parents and children alike, symbolic

consumption opportunities that mark new identity or that indicate resistance to identity reconstruction can thus become vastly more important. The review also found emergent patterns of consumption activities. Experiential consumption activities (e.g., vacations, new clothing, or hairstyles) helped consumers either avoid facing the present family structure or approach their identity in the new family structure, and, importantly, provided an emotional release (McAlexander et al., 1992). Disposition of marital possessions also emerged as a way to facilitate or impede these life transitions (McAlexander, 1991), while acquisition of new goods becomes a way to modify relationships with others (Granbois, 1994). Holidays and

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

gift-giving emerged as a bridge to acknowledge the existence of new life partners (Otnes et al., 1994). From this review, it is apparent that the literature that links relationship life events to consumption is dominated by crosssectional research design and a focus on the Western context, mainly the U.S. As Table 2 suggests, this literature also focuses solely on negative life events, while positive ones such as marriage receive limited academic attention. Most tellingly, conflicting findings from Roberts et al. (2003, 2006) suggest the need for further investigation into the impact of relationship events on materialism and compulsive buying. Furthermore, the literature on this set of critical life events does not consider much inclusion of intervening variables, such as what individual traits might interact with life events to produce different coping strategies. Lastly, current literature appears to focus on short term emotional changes during the transition. Future research should examine the long-term effect of negative relationship events on children’ psychological well-being as they enter adulthood using longitudinal studies. 3.4. Parenthood The transition to parenthood includes events such as pregnancy, child birth, and adoption. The transition to motherhood represents a physiological, psychological and cultural process (AbiGhannam and Atkinson, 2016; Tonner, 2016) which can yield significant changes in individuals’ lives as consumers (Hemetsberger et al., 2015). The current review on parenthood and consumption comprises 18 papers. The work overall explores consumption experience and changes, alongside the development of meaning, adaptation to new roles, and identity changes through the consumption coping process. Each paper in this review examines the mother’s experience and perspective, with very little academic attention on fatherhood. This is an important research agenda given the different ways fathers navigate their identity via consumption opportunities. Consumption activities that are important for maintaining and developing an identity emerge as the leading way new parents and parents-to-be cope with the change in their life circumstances. Studies that focus on consumption during the motherhood transition generally find that consumption in the transition is fluid (Hemetsberger et al., 2015) and perceived with ambivalence due to the feelings of anxiety but also of joy and hope (The Voice Group, 2010). Another strand of research concerns the use of consumption to create and maintain the desired motherhood identity and to adapt to new social roles (Carrigan and Szmigin, 2006; Thompson, 1996; Thomsen and Sorensen, 2006). While Johnstone and Todd (2012) find that stay-at-home mothers use the retail environment as a coping space during the transitional period, more recent articles demonstrate how anti-consumption is utilized as a coping mechanism (AbiGhannam and Atkinson, 2016). Overall, these studies find that consumption evokes symbolic and emotional meanings which help to smooth the transition. In the public health literature, the motherhood transition has been associated with positive changes in food consumption (Olson, 2005), although correlated with negative food consumption among lowerincome women (George et al., 2005). These mixed findings suggest the presence of moderating effects; is the link between becoming a parent and health-related outcomes dependent on factors such as socio-economic status, culture, or social capital? Past research reviewed here has focused on how motherhood events affect consumers and consumption with less attention on why consumers wanted a specific life event to occur in their lives (e.g., child birth). Exploring the why, the goal orientations and motivations behind the change, each important questions in understanding the context of consumption, can provide key insights into subsequent changes in consumption. Furthermore, further research on the ambivalent emotions of parenthood and how

7

expectant and new parents may resolve conflicts between positive and negative feelings so they can advance into their transition is warranted. 3.5. Ageing Specific events in the transition to old age identified in this review are encompassed in research on retirement, ageing, widowhood, facing death and downsizing. Consumption changes are expected during the transition as consumers attempt to reflect on and reconstruct new identities while facing their own mortality (Hogg et al., 2004). Critical life events surrounding ageing emerge as the most studied phenomena for understanding consumer responses to life changes, with 35 total papers in the integrative review. Of those, 18 are economic in nature and 5 are in consumer behaviour. The vast majority of these published works (85%) focus on retirement, lacking a focus in particular on ageing and widowhood consumption responses. Overall, these articles suggest that whether retirement is voluntary or involuntary, it causes stress that requires adjustments to later-life consumption. The reviewed articles published in the 1980s have a narrower focus on the way consumption changes in retirement. Main findings show a decline in savings and household consumption following retirement (Davies, 1981; Hamermesh, 1984), and reveal that the consumption of blue-collar households declines at a higher rate compared to white-collar households (Robb and Burbidge, 1989). Work in the 2000s began to paint a clearer picture of the relationship between retirement and the potential for declines in both consumption spending and new acquisitions. Households that include individuals who have already retired, for instance, report significantly smaller drops in consumption than are expected by those who are still working (Ameriks, Caplin & Leahy, 2007). And although individuals with low income replacement in their retirement are likely to lower their monthly savings, they also compensate with increased home-production activities such as doing their own errands, housework, cooking, gardening and yard work (Schwerdt, 2005). Retirement is typically a discrete event, yet its occurrence involves inherent uncertainty. As Blau (2008) concludes, unexpected events such as a sudden health or medical issue can lead to a sudden drop in lifetime resources, which in turn affects consumption behaviour for households. More recent articles look at some situational factors such as income and education level, wealth, retirement bonus and pensions that may alter the way retirement is related to household consumption. In essence, post-retirement consumption rates vary depending on each household’s pre-retirement wealth level (Cho, 2012). Retirees with no pension and lower incomes experience a larger fall in food spending and household consumption rates (Borella et al., 2014; Stephens and Unayama, 2011). Another line of later-life studies notes an increase in food production at home (i.e., Schwerdt, 2005; Velarde and Herrmann, 2014). Findings also reveal that quality of food consumed improves after retirement (Brzozowski and Lu, 2010) and vegetable consumption increases with ageing (Plessz et al., 2015). Venn, Burningham, Christie and Jackson (2017) reveal that the consumption patterns of older consumers are influenced by variables such as parental values, upbringing and household context. This literature has provided some valuable insights into how consumption behaviours are contingent upon other situation factors during the transition. The studies that focus on identity-oriented consumption in ageing transitions have produced insights into how ageing consumers redefine their roles through consumption activities. Retirement can be a period of extensive identity work (Schau et al., 2009), with a new lease of life and a sense of belonging factoring into new identity creation and maintenance (Grant, 2004). Retirees who adapt to retirement quickly and view the transition to old age transition as

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

8

a “new start” are more likely to increase their expenditures in experiential and outward-oriented product categories. In contrast, those who perceive retirement as the beginning of “old age” tend to increase their expenditures on non-experiential and inward-oriented product categories (Hopkins et al., 2006). Individuals are shown to cope with ageing through leisure, revealing a creative use of consumption opportunities to foster social connections and reaffirm identities. Retirement did not negatively impact entertainment consumption (Li et al., 2015). Rather, leisure pursuits became a connection to previous lifestyle and a way to establish a new identity. Lifestyle within a retirement village was shown to offer potential fulfilment via pursuit of activities and social relationships (Grant, 2004). Interestingly, retired consumers who identify more strongly with other retirees are also more likely to respond positively to age-based marketing stimuli (Wolf et al., 2014). Gender differences revealed that women tend to seek out new social partners and new activities following retirement and widowhood, while men continue participation in life-long leisure activities (Jaumot-Pascual et al., 2016). As the majority of the reviewed literature focused on retirement as the transition to ageing, current research has overlooked some specific later-life events such as death of a spouse and widowhood, hospitalization, illness and injury (see Table 2). Transition events such as retirement have been well studied in economics and sociology; however, consumer researchers know relatively little about the interrelationship between later life events and consumer behaviour. The review suggests very few scholars attempt to explore the post-transition lifestyle changes, although the strong marketing and policy implications of lifestyle changes following retirement merit a deeper look. 3.6. Relocation This events category includes relocation, moving house, and immigration. The moving process becomes complicated if the move involves immigrating to a new country and encountering new regulations and social cultural environment. These disruptions of routines may cause stress (Hasmi et al., 2014) and yield consumption coping that helps relocated individuals face identity confusion. Most of the reviewed papers in this category focus on immigration and suggest that immigration causes stress due to language and cultural gaps, financial difficulties and lack of social support, which require adaptations to later consumption. Adaptation is more complex than changing buying patterns: Market offerings most readily adopted by Mexican immigrants to the U.S. were low-cost, high-visibility items, absent of any language barrier, such as clothing (Penaloza, 1994). Consumption coping also stems from motivations that vary according to cultural roots, which impact consumer decision making and brand choice (Sekhon, 2007). Research points to consumption coping that varies depending on acculturation level: increased conspicuous consumption for those who feel less Chinese, as in the case of Canadian Hong Kong-immigrants in Canada (Chung and Fischer, 2001), and distinctive brand choices revealed by British Indians in Vijaygopal and Dibb’s (2012) study. Other consumption coping outcomes show how social support, leisure, and even sustainable consumption habits can result from relocation life events. Relocating to new places led to more sustainable consumption including decreased car use (Schäfer et al., 2012). Socially and culturally meaningful forms of leisure activities provide a sense of psychological comfort and facilitate social connections (Stack and Iwasaki, 2009). Spiritual consumption and social support programmes also help immigrants adjust to a new society faster (Lee and Hwang, 2014). Important to this review, most research focuses on how relocation impacts consumer coping outcomes, but not on why consumers seek relocation and immigration opportunities. This added context of relocation motivations should

provide deeper insights into subsequent changes in consumption patterns. The emerging stream of research on leisure as a coping consumption strategy to ease the immigration transition is encouraging, yet the transition is complex. The mechanisms underlying the impact of leisure consumption on psychological well-being of immigrants remain unclear and, to date, underexplored. The disruptions to daily habits and life course that occur during immigration transitory periods may create emotional distress that negatively affect individuals’ physical and psychological well-being. Given the social and policy importance, the impact of immigration on psychological well-being deserves concerted attention. 3.7. General life events Seventeen articles examined the influence of assorted and general life events on consumption behaviour. For the purposes of this review, these studies can be categorized by three major foci: consumption changes, role transitions and the self, and lifestyle changes. Findings show that stress experienced following life events drives consumption changes including change in brand preference (Lee et al., 2007; Ong and Othman, 2007) and retail patronage preference (Lee et al., 2001). Consumers who do not adapt their brand preferences to meet new lifestyle and consumption needs tend to experience frustration and dissatisfaction with their consumption (Andreasen, 1984). Demographic factors also play an important role in general life circumstances. Moschis and Ong (2012) found that Chinese (as opposed to Malay) change their consumer preferences more in response to stressful life events. Andreasen (1984) reports that white-collar workers are less likely to change their brand preferences compared to blue-collar workers, showing that there is room to analyse individual traits and motivations alongside critical life events as the context that together codetermine consumption coping outcomes. The process of role reconstruction following critical life events has also been shown to influence disposition behaviour, such that individual consumers discard or donate old possessions that no longer represent their identity (Price et al., 2000). Life events also change consumer lifestyle and related consumption choices including leisure, travel, and hobbies. Leisure provides self-protection, selfrestoration, and personal transformation and hence can be helpful in coping with life events (Kleiber et al., 2002), though importantly, consumers with more money can afford more leisure activities that help reduce stress (Andreasen, 1984). Similarly, Pöllänen (2015) found that crafts and hobbies provide optimism, satisfaction, and support that are helpful in coping with negative affect. Stress is an intervening factor that links life transition to change in lifestyle consumption activities such as physical activity (Enberg et al., 2012), travelling, TV watching, hobbies, sports, and gardening (Mathur et al., 2008; Moschis and Ong, 2012). 3.8. Important research questions What emerged most clearly from the integrative review of 30 years of data is that the literature surrounding critical life events and resulting consumption changes is overall dated, tends to exhibit a narrower focus on a set of given consumption outcomes, and fewer work from a consumer behaviour perspective. The literature as a whole demonstrates that empirical evidence from non-Western consumer perspective is lacking. Further, the reviewed studies are dominated by quantitative studies and hence deeper insights that contribute to a consumer’s coping response to life transitions using a qualitative approach is needed. These issues are important considerations for future research. Table 2 provides a summary of the largest areas for future research identified in the integrated literature review of 116 articles on consumer coping from 1980 to 2016.

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

While the list is not exhaustive, the goal of Table 2 is to showcase the most prevalent areas that future research can focus on to advance the field’s integration of the context variable of life events and allow for a more nuanced understanding of consumer behaviour. Importantly, this research demonstrates the need for a unified framework of consumer coping that shows critical life events in greater context, and also reflects the cyclical and evolving nature of life course transitions and related coping consumption choices. Such a framework, proposed in Fig. 1, should reveal both the inputs and individual traits that affect choice of coping consumption strategy as well the outcomes from coping choices that aim to approach the life event in an adaptive manner (i.e., switching to a familysize vehicle in a parenthood life change) or that aim to avoid directly facing the life change in a more maladaptive manner (i.e., taking a vacation to avoid facing the impending change; Mathur et al., 1999). 4. Implications: consumption coping framework The integrative review of 35 years of literature on life events and consuming through life transitions informs a clear need for researchers to consider the variable of consumer lifecycle stage and its impact on consumption. Findings from the review informed development of a framework of the consumption coping process (Fig. 1). The goal of this framework is to contextualize consumption decisions faced by consumers to examine their antecedents in (a) life events that provide a situational stressor and (b) personality traits that collude with transitions to determine the repertoire of consumption coping opportunities a consumer is likely to embrace. The consumption coping process begins with a preparation phase, which when possible for certain life events – such as preparing for marriage or for parenthood, planning a relocation, and retirement planning – can shape the resulting coping strategies for individual consumers. The availability and propensity for planning influences the confluence of critical life events and individual traits to determine the coping strategy chosen by each consumer, whether it be an approach strategy that embraces the life change via consumption opportunities or an avoidance strategy that drives individual consumers away from dealing with the impact of the life event. 4.1. Preparation The framework introduces the role of preparation for some life events (Moschis, 2007a) as the first phase in the consumption coping process. For life events in which preparation is possible, information search sets in motion consumption decision making that occurs prior to the actual life event (Schäfer et al., 2012). The preparation phase is not limited to planning activities, but involves problemfocused rational coping strategies, which can result in learning new skills or changing goals to meet the demands of an anticipated life event (Mathur et al., 1999). Schäfer et al. (2012) propose that the preparation phase preceding the life event, followed by adaptation and re-routinization phases, is decisive for changes in daily routine and daily consumption habits. The critical framework proposes that a preparation phase is the first insight into the choice of consumption coping strategy. Importantly, some consumers evidence preparation and planning activities for foreseeable life events and/or may have plans for unforeseeable circumstances via such devices as savings accounts, pre-nuptial agreements and household or car insurance. Other consumers, however, can exhibit a lack of preparation, with incomplete planning and preparedness for future anticipated events and/or little contingency planning, such as the purchase of insurance, for unforeseeable life events (i.e., Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). Although activities undertaken in preparation for a life change may determine how comfortable individual consumers are with life events once they have occurred, the magnitude of the transition and an

9

individual’s motivational responses remain the chief determinants of the mode of consumption coping adopted. 4.2. Context The 7 categories of life events as set out in the review help form the second phase in the framework of the consumption coping process: Context, via transitions centred in (1) adulthood, (2) employment, (3) relationships, (4) parenthood, (5) ageing, (6) relocation, and (7) general life events. In this framework, life events are the key situational elements that shape the stressful context that leads to a coping response, and create disequilibrium for consumers, resulting in a change in consumer environment or in an individual’s internal goals and desires that requires an adaptive response (Mathur et al., 1999). The literature on consumer coping focuses on how consumers respond to encountering stressful issues that arise in the marketplace, such as retail stress, encountering new technology, and marketplace discrimination (Mick and Fournier, 1998). Individuals can use consumption to cope with life changes as well (Mathur et al., 1999; Moschis, 2007b). For instance, consumption decisions helped breast cancer survivors through their life crises, via “[using] control over their consumption as a surrogate for their loss of control in other dimensions of their lives” (Pavia and Mason, 2004, p. 452). As shown in the integrative review, individuals consume through life transitions, and the types of consumption they rely upon help them cope and adjust to changes. The life event alone does not determine consumption coping. How individuals appraise and evaluate the life event, which arises from personality traits, processes related to motivation, and individual assessments of confidence and efficacy in the face of managing the life event, emerges as a key determinant of consumption coping. Trait factors further develop the context phase of the consumption coping process. In the transactional theory of coping, personality and trait factors are a directing force for determining if a stressful situation, such as a job change or experiencing a divorce, has goal relevance (Duhachek and Kelting, 2009; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Whether a given life event is perceived as helpful and congruent with goals (e.g., parenthood for individuals with family goals), or harmful and incongruent with goals (e.g., job loss for those whose goal is employment) plays a key role in determining how consumers cope. Importantly, personality factors are key to coping confidence, or a belief that an individual can cope with the life event, as well as appraisal of the valence and influence of future events following the life change (Duhachek and Kelting, 2009; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). How much individuals believe they have the ability to cope with a perceived stressor translates to successful adaptation and consumption coping that approaches the life event, such as growing into a new role as a parent via purchase of a larger family vehicle, or embracing identity change as a divorcee by joining a fitness club. The framework lists some of the key internal consumer traits – including consumer assertiveness, extraversion, and selfesteem (Duhachek and Iacobucci, 2005) – which interact with cognitive appraisals of life events to determine how consumers choose to cope. 4.3. Coping strategies Conceptual process models of coping throughout the psychology and consumer behaviour literature have charted a dialectical pull between personal and environmental factors (Duhachek and Iacobucci, 2005; Mathur et al., 1999). The most-cited process model presents problem-based coping that occurs when consumers tend to have control of the outcomes and embrace a stressful event, and emotion-based coping that tends to result when consumers are not in control and seek to avoid a stressful situation (Lazarus and

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS 10

S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

Folkman, 1984). Models with up to five dimensions of coping have also emerged as valid ways to view responses to stress (e.g., (i) problem-solving, (ii) seeking support, (iii) avoidance, (iv) distraction, and (v) cognitive restructuring; Ayers, Sandler, West & Roosa, 1996). Pitting three decades of coping models together in empirical tests, Duhachek and Oakley (2007) conclude that a twodimensional hierarchal model of coping strategies as either (a) approach strategies or (b) avoidance strategies was the best fit for responses to both episodic focal stress stimulus (such as a life event) and dispositional responses to stressors. In the approach and avoidance model of coping strategies (Duhachek and Oakley, 2007), individuals can either (a) adopt approach strategies that pull themselves towards environmental conditions and tackle the life event or stressor directly, or (b) adopt avoidance strategies that push individuals away from artefacts of the life event or from considering its implications, inspiring an indirect means of adjustment. Such approach and avoidance coping strategies are motivated responses, driven by consumer perceptions of both goal relevance and either goal congruence or goal threat from the life transition (Duhachek and Kelting, 2009; Sobh, 2011). Any psychological imbalance that stems from either a change in the environment or an internal change – i.e., a major life event – creates a disequilibrium which motivates adjustment of typical behaviour patterns and drives coping strategies (Mathur et al., 1999). The amount and type of coping resources an individual has at their disposal can help determine what the individual will draw upon when dealing with stressors, from personality characteristics to access to social support. For instance, higher self-esteem contributes to a sense that a situation can be within one’s control, and thus adds confidence and motivation to attempt coping to alter the environment or the self (i.e., learn new skills, or change goals to match the new environment) in response to a new stressor (Duhachek and Iacobucci, 2005; Mathur et al., 1999). Individual traits and motivational processes that aid in appraisals of confidence are more prone to producing approach strategy coping in response to life events. Consumers with higher self-esteem, for instance, are more likely to believe they have the ability to cope with the change and to experience a life event to be within their control. Thus, high selfesteem individuals are more prone to embrace an approach coping strategy and take direct action via consumption opportunities to both attenuate the source of stress and adjust their identity to the new life circumstances. Differing coping strategies can sometimes appeal to a consumer simultaneously. Transitioning to life as a parent is often experienced as an ambivalent situation, with joy for the new child occurring alongside conflicts from juggling work and new family obligations. Mixed emotions in particular can complicate the coping strategies and resulting consumption coping opportunities available to an individual. The literature has shown that consumption decisions are not made in isolation and can counteract one another. Responses to ambivalence in facing life events thus remain an unexplored arena with potentially far-reaching impact for consumer behaviour scholars. 4.4. Consumption coping opportunities The type of consumption coping predicted by each coping strategy forms the final phase of the process described in the framework. Consumption coping is here organized into consumption opportunities that help consumers cope with the life event following adoption of (1) an approach coping strategy or (2) an avoidance coping strategy. Consumption coping following an approach strategy includes such options as joining social support groups, increasing consumption of new role-related gear, joining a fitness club, and purchasing more leisure experiences or leisure-related products (i.e., golf clubs).

Consumption coping following the avoidance strategy includes such options as increased instances of compulsive buying, increased use of alcohol, delaying consumption, and disposing of consumption objects and relics of prior lifecycle stage. The framework documents a more extensive list of possible approach and avoidance consumption coping options as drawn from the literature review. Importantly, consumers can and do adopt one, a few, or a combination of consumption coping options in response to a life event. This means consumers have a “coping repertoire” or a reliance on a certain pattern of coping responses that can themselves become a habitual response (Duhachek and Kelting, 2009). Individual consumers can vary in their propensity to rely upon some consumption coping modes over others (i.e., overeating, overspending, or attending yoga and meditation classes), or may rely on different consumption coping habits over time as they adapt to the life transition. Importantly, a coping repertoire is a learned set of behaviours that can build, grow, or change with time, as situations that arise in the process of life transitions interact with individual traits to determine and build new coping strategy responses (i.e., Duhachek and Kelting, 2009). Consumption decisions are not made in isolation, and one form of consumption coping can influence other coping decisions, such as eschewing restaurant meals in order to counteract for overspending in apparel. Although the consumption choice made by each individual consumer facing a life transition forms the outcome of the consumption coping framework, the authors consider the process to be a cyclical and ongoing (Duhachek, 2005). That is, each life event sets this process of consumption coping in motion, and each form of consumption coping helps determine ultimate adaptation to a life event, which can have a cascading impact on future life events. 5. Conclusion The integrative review of the literature on consumption through life events and the resulting framework of the consumption coping process aims to broaden the consumer literature from a focus on isolated consumer behaviours to viewing the context in which many of these behaviours tend to occur. Integrating a consideration of life events into consumption opportunities allows researchers to move beyond trait-based or motivation-based accounts that, in isolation, might not fully predict consumer outcomes such as preferences for a given brand, brand switching, spending changes, disposal decisions, or experiential consumption choices. Life events create stress and a need for coping, and via consumption individuals can either embrace their new role or can escape from its effects. Seen in this light, consumption coping is evidence of adaption to life events (Mathur et al., 1999), and is it thus of key importance that consumer behaviour researchers begin to examine the broader context of consumption decisions. What emerges most saliently in this review is the power of critical life events to spur identity change and yield role-related consumption. The use of consumption goods, services, and experiences to redefine and reconstruct a social image fulfils consumption coping outcomes that allows a consumer the resources to respond, either directly or indirectly, to the threat and opportunity to selfidentity represented in any critical life event. Importantly, individual traits and motivational processes that aid in appraisals of confidence are more prone to producing an approach strategy coping in response to life events that results in consumption around role adaptation, social networking, and furthering well-being. The integrative review and resulting framework chart where the literature currently stands and is based on foundational work developed since the 1980s. However, both the review and the framework point to salient arenas in need of academic attention. Chief among these, the vast majority of studies reviewed in this work focus clearly on independent societies. The cultural environment to which

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

consumers have been exposed can influence perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours. Of the 116 articles on life events reviewed here from 1981 to 2016, only 6 were based on analysis of populations in interdependent countries (Table 1). Although lifestyle within a retirement village may be perceived to be a supportive environment (Grant, 2004) within a Western culture, a retirement home is likely to be associated with unacceptable conditions and abandonment by off-springs within an Eastern culture. Being able to understand cross-cultural dynamics in life-stage cycles and transition experiences should show how individual traits will vary across cultural determinants and how life events themselves are managed via coping strategies. This integrative review contributes to the marketing and consumer psychology literatures by providing a comprehensive overview of the current status of knowledge in the domain of life events and consumption research. In so doing, this work identifies important theoretical gaps in current knowledge, derives a theoretical framework of consumption coping, and identifies key avenues for future research. The goal of this review and the resulting framework of consumption coping is to stimulate the field to integrate deeper contextual examinations of the role of life events in acquisition, consumption, and disposal of material and experiential consumption opportunities. Acknowledgements The authors thank Margarita Lyulicheva for excellent research assistance in this project. References AbiGhannam, N., Atkinson, L., 2016. Good green mothers consuming their way through pregnancy: roles of environmental identities and information seeking in coping with the transition. Consum. Mark. Cult. 19 (5), 451–474. Ameriks, J., Caplin, A., Leahy, J., 2007. Retirement consumption: insights from a survey. Rev. Econ. Stat. 89 (2), 265–274. Andreasen, A.R., 1984. Life status changes and changes in consumer preferences and satisfaction. J. Consum. Res. 11 (3), 784–794. Ayers, T.S., Sandier, I.N., West, S.G., Roosa, M.W., 1996. A dispositional and situational assessment of children’s coping: testing alternative models of coping, J. Person. 64 (4), 923–958. Baker, A., Mathur, A., Fatt, C.K., Moschis, G.P., Rigdon, E.E., 2013. Using life course paradigm to explain mechanisms that link family disruption to compulsive buying. J. Consum. Aff. 47 (2), 263–288. Belk, R.W., 1988. Possessions and the extended self. J. Consum. Res. 15 (2), 139–168. Benito, A., 2006. Does job insecurity affect household consumption? Oxf. Econ. Pap. 58 (1), 157–181. Blau, D.M., 2008. Retirement and consumption in a life cycle model. J. Labour Econ. 26 (1), 35–71. Blichfeldt, B.S., Gram, M., 2013. Lost in transition? Student food consumption. High Educ. 65 (3), 277–289. Bloemen, H.G., Stancanelli, E.G., 2005. Financial wealth, consumption smoothing and income shock arising from job loss. Economica 72 (287), 431–452. Borella, M., Moscarola, F.C., Rossi, M., 2014. (Un)expected retirement and the consumption puzzle. Empir. Econ. 47 (2), 733–751. Brzozowski, M., Lu, Y., 2010. Home cooking, food consumption and food production among retired Canadian households. Can. Pub. Policy 36 (1), 107–128. Burroughs, J.E., Rindfleisch, A., 1997. Materialism as a coping mechanism: an inquiry into family disruption. Adv. Consum. Res. 24 (1), 89–97. Carrigan, M., Szmigin, I., 2006. Mothers of invention: maternal empowerment and convenience consumption. Eur. J. Mark. 40 (9/10), 1122–1142. Cho, I., 2012. The retirement consumption in Korea: evidence from the Korean labour and income panel study. Glob. Econ. Rev. 41 (2), 163–187. Chung, E., Fischer, E., 2001. When conspicuous consumption becomes inconspicuous: the case of the migrant Hong Kong consumers. J. Consum. Mark. 18 (6), 474–487. Davies, J.B., 1981. Uncertain lifetime, consumption, and dissaving in retirement. J. Pol. Econ. 89 (3), 561–577. Duhachek, A., 2005. A multidimensional hierarchical model of coping: examining cognitive and emotional antecedents and consequences. J. Consum. Res. 32 (1), 41–53. Duhachek, A., Iacobucci, D., 2005. Consumer personality and coping: testing rival theories of process. J. Consum. Psychol. 15, 152–163. Duhachek, A., Kelting, K., 2009. Coping repertoire: integrating a new conceptualization of coping with transactional theory. J. Consum. Psychol. 19 (3), 473–485. Duhachek, A., Oakley, J.L., 2007. Mapping the hierarchical structure of coping: unifying empirical and theoretical perspectives. J. Consum. Psychol. 17 (3), 218–233.

11

Enberg, E., Alen, M., Kukkonen-Harjula, K., Peltonen, J.E., Tikkanen, H.O., Pekkarinen, H., 2012. Life events and change in leisure time physical activity. A systematic review. Sports Med. 42 (5), 433–447. Fellerman, R., Debevec, K., 1992. Till death do us part: family dissolution, transition and consumer behaviour. In: Sherry, J.F. Jr., Sternthal, B. (Eds.), NA – Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 19. Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 514–521. George, G.C., Hanss-Nuss, H., Milani, T.J., Freeland-Graves, J.H., 2005. Food choices of low-income women during pregnancy and postpartum. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 105 (6), 899–907. Gram, M., Hogg, M., Blichfeldt, B.S., MacLaran, P., 2015. Intergenerational relationships and food consumption: the stories of young adults leaving home. Young Consum. 16 (1), 71–84. Granbois, D., 1994. Consumer learning and coping behaviours in transitory situations. Adv. Consum. Res. 21 (1), 41–42. Grant, B.C., 2004. A new sense of self and a new lease of life: leisure in a retirement village. Ann. Leis. Res. 7 (3–4), 222–236. Grougiou, V., Moschis, G., Kapoutsis, I., 2015. Compulsive buying: the role of earlier-in-life events and experiences. J. Consum. Mark. 32 (4), 278–289. Hamermesh, D.S., 1984. Consumption during retirement: the missing link in the life cycle. Rev. Econ. Stat. 66 (1), 1–7. Hasmi, H.M., Gross, M.J., Scott-Young, C.M., 2014. Leisure and settlement distress: the case of South Australian migrants. Ann. Leis. Res. 17 (4), 377–397. Hemetsberger, A., von Wallpach, S., Bauer, M., 2015. Women in transitionconsumption narratives of first-time motherhood. In: Diehl, K., Yoon, C. (Eds.), Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 43 (pp. 368–373). Association for Consumer Research, Duluth, MN. Heslop, L.A., Marshall, J., 1991. On golden pond: elderly couples and consumer decision making. Adv. Consum. Res. 18 (1), 681–687. Hogg, M.K., Curasi, C.F., Maclaran, P., 2004. The (Re-) configuration of production and consumption in empty nest households/families. Consum. Mark. Cult. 7 (3), 239–259. Hopkins, C., Wood, C., Siemens, J., Raymond, M.A., 2014. A multi-method investigation of consumer response to marketing activities during life transitions. J. Consum. Mark. 31 (1), 39–53. Hopkins, C.D., Roster, C.A., Wood, C.M., 2006. Making the transition to retirement: appraisals, post-transition lifestyle and changes in consumption patterns. J. Consum. Mark. 23 (2), 87–99. Jaumot-Pascual, N., Monteagudo, M.J., Kleiber, D.A., Cuenca, J., 2016. Gender differences in meaningful leisure following major later life events. J. Leis. Res. 48 (1), 83–103. Johnstone, M.L., Todd, S., 2012. Service escapes: the role that place plays in stay-athome mothers’ lives. J. Consum. Behav. 11 (6), 443–453. Junge, C., Krienke, U.J., Böhme, K., Prüß, F., Sander, A., Niemann, J., et al., 2016. The transition from primary to secondary school as stressful life event provoking risky drinking behaviors. J. Addict. Dis. 35 (2), 128–134. Kleiber, D.A., Hutchinson, S.L., Williams, R., 2002. Leisure as a resource in transcending negative life events: self-protection, self-restoration and personal transformation. Leis. Sci. 24 (2), 219–235. Kleine, R.E., Kleine, S.S., Kernan, J.B., 1993. Mundane consumption and the self: a social-identity perspective. J. Consum. Psychol. 2 (3), 209–235. Lazarus, R.S., Folkman, S., 1984. Stress, Appraisal and Coping. Springer, New York. Lee, E., Moschis, G.P., Mathur, A., 2001. A study of life events and changes in patronage preferences. J. Bus. Res. 54 (1), 25–38. Lee, E., Moschis, G.P., Mathur, A., 2007. Stress, coping and consumer preferences: a two-way transitional event history analysis. Int. J. Consum. Stud. 31 (4), 428–435. Lee, K.H., Hwang, M.J., 2014. Private religious practice, spiritual coping, social support, and health status among older Korean adult immigrants. Soc. Work Public Health 29 (5), 428–443. Li, H., Shi, X., Wu, B., 2015. The retirement consumption puzzle revisited: evidence from the mandatory retirement policy in China. J. Comp. Econ. doi:10.1016/ j.jce.2015.06.001. Lozza, E., Libreri, C., Bosio, A.C., 2012. Temporary employment, job insecurity and their extraorganisational outcomes. Econ. Ind. Democr. 34 (1), 89–105. Luhmann, M., Hofmann, W., Eid, M., Lucas, R.E., 2012. Subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: a meta-analysis on differences between cognitive and affective well-being. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 102 (3), 592–615. Mathur, A., Moschis, P.G., Lee, E., 1999. Stress and consumer behaviour: coping strategies of older adults. J. Market. Pract. 5, 233–247. Mathur, A., Moschis, G.P., Lee, E., 2008. A longitudinal study of the effects of life status on changes in consumer preferences. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 36 (2), 234–246. McAlexander, J.H., 1991. Divorce, the disposition of the relationship and everything. In: Holman, R.H., Solomon, M.R. (Eds.), NA – Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 18. Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 43–48. McAlexander, J.H., Schouten, J.W., Roberts, S.D., 1992. Consumer behaviour in coping strategies for divorce. In: Sherry, J.F. Jr., Sternthal, B. (Eds.), NA – Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 19. Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 555–556. Mick, D.G., Fournier, S., 1998. Paradoxes of technology: consumer cognizance, emotions, and coping strategies. J. Consum. Res. 25 (2), 123–143. Moschis, G.P., 2007a. Life course perspective on consumer behaviour. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 35 (2), 295–307. Moschis, G.P., 2007b. Stress and consumer behavior. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 35 (3), 430–444. Moschis, G.P., Ong, F.S., 2012. Effects of life status changes on changes in consumer preferences. J. Glob. Sch. Mark. Sci. 22 (3), 195–217.

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003

ARTICLE IN PRESS 12

S.-F. Yap, S. Kapitan / Australasian Marketing Journal ■■ (2017) ■■–■■

Moschis, G.P., Mathur, A., Choong, K.F., Pizzutti, C., 2013. Effects of family structure on materialism and compulsive consumption: a life course study in Brazil. J. Res. Consum. 23 (1), 66–96. Noble, C.H., Walker, B.A., 1997. Exploring the relationships among liminal transitions, symbolic consumption, and the extended self. Psychol. Mark. 14 (1), 29–47. Olson, C.M., 2005. Tracking food choices across the transition to motherhood. J. Nutr. Educ. Behav. 37 (3), 129–136. Ong, F.S., Othman, M.N., 2007. A study of life events, stress and coping strategies among older adults in Malaysia: implications for marketers. Asia Pac. Manag. Rev. 12 (1), 63–71. Otnes, C., Zolner, K., Lowrey, M., 1994. In-laws and outlaws: the impact of divorce and remarriage upon Christmas gift exchange. Adv. Consum. Res. 21 (1), 25– 29. Ozanne, J.L., 1992. Material concerns while coming of age in the Mormon faith: Spiritual work in a secular world. In: Sherry, J.F., Sternthal, B. (Eds), Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 19. Provo, UT, Association for Consumer Research, pp. 396–403. Pavia, T.M., Mason, M.J., 2004. The reflexive relationship between consumer behaviour and adaptive coping. J. Consum. Res. 31 (2), 441–454. Penaloza, L., 1994. Atravesando fronteras/border crossings: a critical ethnographic exploration of the consumer acculturation of Mexican immigrants. J. Consum. Res. 21 (1), 32–54. Plessz, M., Guéguen, A., Goldberg, M., Czernichow, S., Zins, M., 2015. Ageing, retirement and changes in vegetable consumption in France: findings from the prospective GAZEL cohort. Br. J. Nutr. 114 (6), 979–987. Pöllänen, S.H., 2015. Crafts as leisure-based coping: craft makers’ descriptions of their stress-reducing activity. Occup. Ther. Mental Health 31 (2), 83–100. Price, L.L., Arnould, E.J., Curasi, C.F., 2000. Older consumers’ disposition of special possessions. J. Consum. Res. 27 (2), 179–201. Rindfleisch, A., Burroughs, J.E., Denton, F., 1996. Family disruption and consumer attitudes and behaviour: an exploratory investigation. Adv. Consum. Res. 23, 83–90. Robb, A.L., Burbidge, J.B., 1989. Consumption, income and retirement. Can. J. Econ. 22 (3), 522–542. Roberts, J.A., Manolis, C., Tanner, J.F., 2003. Family structure, materialism and compulsive buying: a reinquiry and extension. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 31 (3), 300–311. Roberts, J.A., Manolis, C., Tanner, J.F., 2006. Adolescent autonomy and the impact of family structure on materialism and compulsive buying. J. Market. Theory Pract. 14 (4), 301–314. Roberts, S.D., 1991. Consumption responses to involuntary job loss. In: Holman, R.H., Solomon, M.R. (Eds). Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 8. Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 40–42. Schau, H.J., Gilly, M.C., Wolfinbarger, M., 2009. Consumer identity renaissance: the resurgence of identity-inspired consumption in retirement. J. Consum. Res. 36 (2), 255–276. Schäfer, M., Jaeger-Erben, M., Bamberg, S., 2012. Life events as windows of opportunity for changing towards sustainable consumption patterns? J. Consum. Policy 35 (1), 65–84. Schewe, C.D., Balazs, A.L., 1992. Role transitions in older adults: a marketing opportunity. Psychol. Mark. 9 (2), 85–99. Schouten, J.W., 1991. Selves in transition: symbolic consumption in personal rites of passage and identity reconstruction. J. Consum. Res. 17, 412–425. Schwerdt, G., 2005. Why does consumption fall at retirement? Evidence from Germany. Econ. Lett. 89 (3), 300–305.

Sekhon, Y.K., 2007. From saris to sarongs: ethnicity and intergenerational influences on consumption among Asian Indians in the UK. Int. J. Consum. Stud. 31 (2), 160–167. Sobh, R., 2011. Approaching what we hope for and avoiding what we fear: a study of women’s concern with visible signs of skin aging. Aust. Mark. J. 19 (2), 122– 130. Solomon, M.R., 1983. The role of products as social stimuli: a symbolic interactionism perspective. J. Consum. Res. 10 (3), 319–329. Stack, J.A.C., Iwasaki, Y., 2009. The role of leisure pursuits in adaptation processes among Afghan refugees who have immigrated to Winnipeg, Canada. Leis. Stud. 28 (3), 239–259. Stephens, M., 2004. Job loss expectations, realisations and household consumption behaviour. Rev. Econ. Stat. 86 (1), 253–269. Stephens, M., Unayama, T., 2011. The impact of retirement on household consumption in Japan. J. Jpn Int. Econ. 26 (1), 62–83. Tajfel, H., Turner, J.C., 1979. An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In: Austin, W., Worchel, S. (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Pacific Grove-Ca Brooks/Cole, pp. 33–48. Thaler, R.H., Sunstein, C.R., 2008. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Yale University Press. The Voice Group, 2010. Buying into motherhood? Problematic consumption and ambivalence in transition phases. Consum. Market Cult. 13 (4), 373–397. Thompson, C.J., 1996. Caring consumers: gendered consumption meanings and the juggling lifestyle. J. Consum. Res. 22 (4), 388–407. Thomsen, T.U., Sorensen, E.B., 2006. The first four-wheeled status symbol: pram consumption as a vehicle for the construction of motherhood identity. J. Market. Manag. 22 (9–10), 907–927. Tonner, A., 2016. Liminal mothers’ negotiation of conflicting service consumption. J. Market. Manag. 32 (1–2), 100–120. Torraco, R.J., 2005. Writing integrative literature reviews: guidelines and examples. Hum. Resource Dev. Rev. 4 (3), 356–367. Velarde, M., Herrmann, R., 2014. How retirement changes consumption and household production of food: lessons from German time-use data. J. Econ. Aging 3 (1), 1–10. Venn, S., Burningham, K., Christie, I., Jackson, T., 2017. Consumption junkies or sustainable consumers: considering the grocery shopping practices of those transitioning to retirement. Age. Soc. 37 (1), 14–38. Vijaygopal, R., Dibb, S., 2012. Exploring the role of acculturation in brand choice: a new perspective for targeting Indians living in the United Kingdom. J. Target. Meas. Anal. Mark. 20 (1), 47–56. Weaver, S.T., Moschis, G.P., Davis, T., 2011. Antecedents of materialism and compulsive buying: a life course study in Australia. Aust. Mark. J. 19 (4),247–256. Whittemore, R., Knafl, K., 2005. The integrative review: updated methodology. J. Adv. Nurs. 52 (5), 546–553. Wolf, F., Sandner, P., Welpe, I.M., 2014. Why do responses to age-based marketing stimuli differ? The influence of retirees’ group identification and changing consumption patterns. Psychol. Mark. 31 (10), 914–931. Sheau-Fen Yap, PhD, is senior lecturer of marketing, and Sommer Kapitan, PhD, is lecturer of marketing at the Department of Marketing, Advertising, Retailing & Sales at AUT Business School, Auckland University of Technology, 120 Mayoral Drive, Auckland Central 1010, New Zealand. Contact Sheau-Fen at [email protected] or at 64 9 921 9999 (ext: 5800). Contact Sommer at [email protected] or at +64 9 921 9999 (ext: 5131).

Please cite this article in press as: Sheau-Fen Yap, Sommer Kapitan, Consumption coping and life transitions: An integrative review, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017), doi: 10.1016/ j.ausmj.2017.04.003