Moralizing Everyday Consumption: The Case of Self-Care

Abstract

Morality, appraisals of right and wrong, is central to consumers’ identities and decisions. Even everyday consumption choices can be subject to moral judgments and require moral justifications. When and how do consumers moralize formerly taken-for-granted consumption practices? Considering self-care consumption in the United States, which includes practices that range from bathing to dieting to meditating to vacationing, this paper examines the moralization of everyday consumption practices. This research reveals that consumption is likely to be moralized when there are culturally contested meanings of its core constructs, like “self” and “care,” leading cultural authorities to prescribe alternative ways to pursue the same consumption goal (ie, cultural scripts). Exposure to cultural scripts that clash with consumers’ moral intuitions about self-care consumption triggers moral introspection, an evaluation and re-calibration of those intuitions. Consumers then set moral boundaries of acceptable self-care consumption by (1) denouncing, such that they assume a position of moral righteousness; (2) positioning, to indicate moral inclusivity; (3) balancing, which implies moral licensing; or (4) ritualizing, in which case they express moral autonomy. This study advances consumer research by establishing that moral considerations intertwine with consumers’ identities and underlie the symbolic meanings of everyday consumption practices.