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Consumerism

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

  • 24 Accesses

Synonyms

Consumer-centered strategies; Consumption crisis/critiques; Citizen/consumer shifts; Consumer experience; Resource depletion debates; Human-made waste/pollution; Output-focused economies; User activism; Social/commerce tensions; Use-goal utility; Tangible leisure attainment

Definition

There are two essential and opposing ways of looking at the long-contested subject of consumerism; a set of combined, context-dependent approaches have been emerging as sustainability discourses, management practices, and consumer behaviors had grown and developed over time.

Two very restricted opposing definitions may be offered at this point, before due elaboration ensues. The third may not (yet) be fully formulated at a level of definition:

First, as the practice of upholding the rights and enfranchisement of consumers – and the very notion of consumption as a doctrine fundamental to the conception of capitalist systems, especially in their advanced mass-market forms – understood to be...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guildhall School of Business and Law, London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Milan Todorovic

Authors
  1. Milan Todorovic
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Milan Todorovic .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. Canberra Law School, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Benedict Sheehy PhD

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Todorovic, M. (2022). Consumerism. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_427-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_427-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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