Introduction

Marketing researchers have recognized the importance of prior life experiences in shaping patterns of consumer behavior during later stages in life, but they have had inadequate theoretical and methodological bases for investigating these consumer behavior issues over the life course. Consumer research over the life course has been predominantly cross-sectional, focusing on the consumer behavior of different age groups, and confined to describing the observed differences that exist across age categories of individuals, not explaining the inferred changes in consumer behavior over the life span (e.g., Noble and Schewe 2003; Rentz and Reynolds 1991; Wilkes 1995). Studies that demonstrate age-related differences do not show changes in consumer behavior or how previous experiences affect present patterns of consumer behavior, because individual consumers or segments are not examined relative to earlier experiences or stages of life within historical and cultural contexts (Baltes et al. 1980; Campbell and O’Rand 1988; Salthouse 1991). Furthermore, interpretations of age- or time-related findings do not permit unconfounded inferences about life course issues, because there is no way to determine conclusively whether the findings are due to age, period, or cohort (e.g., Gaeth and Heath 1987; Noble and Schewe 2003; Oropesa 1993; Rentz and Reynolds 1991).

The life course approach, which has flourished in recent decades as a framework that extends across substantive and theoretical boundaries of social and behavioral sciences (e.g., Abeles et al. 1980; Clausen 1986; Elder et al. 2003; Mayer and Tuma 1990), can fill gaps in previous efforts that focus on time- and context-dependent consumer issues. Unlike many other approaches to the study of behavior, life course research focuses on examining gradual or abrupt changes in the behavior of a unit (e.g., individual, family, organization) that take place over time. These changes are assumed to be embedded with prior life experiences and studied as multiple time- and context-dependent events, changes, or transitions within historical and socio-cultural contexts by considering their timing, spacing, order, and duration. Behavior at any stage in life or given point in time is viewed as the product of responses to earlier life conditions and the way the individual or other units have adapted to those circumstances (e.g., Mayer and Tuma 1990).

The purpose of this article is to advocate the life course approach for studying various types of consumption-related phenomena and show how it could help researchers study the development and change in consumption orientations in an innovative way. Specifically, the paper first presents a general conceptual life course framework that serves as a blueprint for discussing theoretical perspectives and organizing, integrating, and reporting consumer research relevant to the life course paradigm. Second, methods of data analysis compatible with life course research are discussed briefly. Third, using select areas of interest to marketing researchers, I illustrate how the life course approach might contribute to previous efforts to study consumer behavior over time. Finally, the paper suggests areas of interest to marketers, consumer researchers, and pubic policymakers that could be studied in an innovative way.

Background

The definition of life course varies with the disciplinary background of the investigator. Psychologists usually refer to life-span development (e.g., Baltes et al. 1980; Perlmutter 1988), sociologists use the term “life course” in connection with role transitions and duration in particular states or roles (e.g., Elder 1998; George 1989), and others (e.g., Abeles et al. 1980, p.308) refer to a perspective that encompasses the “increasing convergence between certain theoretical work in life-span development psychology and the sociological analysis of age.” In this latter multitheoretical view, the term “life course” is used in the specific context of adaptation, which is necessary because of the biological, psychological, and social changes, events, or circumstances a person may experience during his or her life (Clausen 1986).

The study of individuals over the course of their lives has employed three general approaches: growth models, life-span models, and life course models (Pulkkinen and Caspi 2002). Growth models view the person in the context of the developmental stages people go through from birth to the end of their life. Each stage involves the acquisition of new skills or competencies (as in Piaget’s theory), age-specific challenges (crises) that must be resolved satisfactorily (as in Erikson’s theory), or life structures (important aspects of one’s life) that are subject to change during transitional periods (as in Levinson’s model). Life-span models, in contrast, assume that a person’s life is influenced by age-graded factors (e.g., education), history-graded events (e.g., wars), and non-normative events (e.g., accidents). People are contributors to their development throughout their lives by constructing strategies for coping with various challenges, by setting goals and making choices (Pulkkinen and Caspi 2002).

The life course paradigm is a multitheoretical framework that integrates several approaches and perspectives used in different disciplines to study people over the course of their lives. It incorporates growth and stage models of cognitive development and personality development, as well as life-span models (Elder and Johnson 2002). However, whereas stage and life-span models specify the temporal order of life stages, life course models tend to emphasize social-role demands at different ages and the importance of early life-stage transitions and experiences for understanding behavior in later life.

Life course research is typically organized around issues of stability and change. Such research either identifies factors early in the life course that provide continuity in behaviors over time or highlights the person’s changing circumstances, particularly events that act as turning points in the life course. Biological and psychological changes across the life span and social demands across the life course define typical life events and social roles in the person’s life that serve as turning points and determine his or her social trajectories (Pulkkinen and Caspi 2002). Life course trajectories are nonlinear patterns of forward movement that include pauses, loops, and shifts in directions (Pearlin and Skaff 1996). They are influenced by the timing of events, human agency (i.e., the choices that persons make about their own lives), and the socio-cultural and historical contexts in which people are embedded (Elder 1998).

A conceptual model

Figure 1 presents a general conceptual model that incorporates the types of variables and relationships that are relevant to the main theoretical orientations of life course research. The model elements can be classified into three broad categories: events that occur at a specific point in time (T1) in the person’s life course, processes triggered by these events, and events that occur at later points in time (T2) as a consequence of the processes or prior events. Events, whether viewed as causes (T1) or consequences (T2), are environmental, social, and individual (biological, cognitive, and behavioral) changes experienced or anticipated by a person.

Figure 1
figure 1

A general conceptual model based on the assumptions of the three life course perspectives.

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The model elements appear in Fig. 1 without reference to specific variables. Examples of specific variables for the model elements might include the types of unexpected or expected events/changes people experience at different stages in life, such as parents’ divorce or loss of spouse (e.g., Johnson and Bradlyn 1988; Lee et al. 2001); socialization processes such as family and peer communications (e.g., Mortimer and Simmons 1978; Moschis 1987), and role identities such as “parent” and “volunteer” (e.g., Moen et al. 1992); stress processes such as acute and chronic stress (e.g., Elder et al. 1996; Thoits 1995), and coping responses such as primary and secondary (e.g., Heckhausen and Schulz 1995); indexes of development or growth and decline (e.g., intelligence, memory), and knowledge, competence or mastery such as planful competence (Elder 1998) and adaptivity or behavioral plasticity (Baltes and Baltes 1990); and various types of consumption-related orientations as outcome variables, such as product purchases and changes in preferences.

Contextual variables shown in the model are structural factors that define the context in which people are embedded (Bolger et al. 1988). They range from macro-level factors (e.g., culture, SES) to specific characteristics and circumstances a person experiences (e.g., gender, family composition) and affect specific relationships among the model variables; they thus moderate the effects of the processes triggered by events (T1) (Elder et al. 1996; Thoits 1995).

The life course model suggests that changing life conditions in the form of life event experiences create physical, social, and emotional demands and circumstances to which people must adapt. Development and changes in patterns of thought and action may be viewed as outcomes of adaptation to various demands and circumstances, with adaptation entailing the processes of socialization, stress and coping responses, and development and growth. These processes, which are triggered by specific circumstances that occurred at previous points in time or stages in life and are moderated by contextual variables, are the underlying change mechanisms of the three most widely-accepted life course perspectives (Abeles et al. 1980): normative, stress and human capital. Table 1 summarizes these perspectives. The first section (first column) shows the types of theories related to each life course perspective. The middle section (three columns) presents the major elements of the models according to each of the three theoretical orientations. The last section (two columns) shows examples of consumer research for each orientation.

Table 1 Life course perspectives, model elements, and consumer research
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Theoretical perspectives

An important consideration in life course theory is why and how certain events that take place at an earlier age or stage in life influence thoughts and actions later in life. Life course research has been guided by three major theoretical orientations: normative, stress, and human capital perspectives (Abeles et al. 1980).

Normative

Sociologists envision the life course as a progression through a series of socially-defined, age-linked social roles, including points of transition and unfolding trajectories (Elder 1998; George 1989). The basic premise of the normative perspective is that “there are social norms governing the order, continuity, and timing of role transitions and that deviations from the prescribed patterns result in the application of sanctions” (Abeles et al. 1980, p. 319). The normative perspective assumes that certain life experiences and cognitive and behavioral changes are manifestations of the person’s assumption of new roles and relinquishment of old ones. Major life events such as marriage, the birth of a child, and retirement serve as markers of transition into important life roles (e.g., spouse, parent, retiree), with their timing operationalized as the average or median age at which the transition occurs. Through the process of socialization, people acquire skills and attitudes compatible with the roles they enact. The person gradually changes his or her identity to fit the assumed or anticipated role and engages in activities consistent with the role (Gierveld and Dykstra 1993; McAlexander et al. 1993; Mortimer and Simmons 1978; Moschis 1987) (hence the unidirectional flow of socialization influence on new role/identity perceptions and subsequent behavioral changes in Fig. 1). Similarly, the process of becoming an “ex” involves stages that range from experiencing first doubts to the occurrence of a turning point (i.e., a specific event that triggers the role exit) to the creation of a new identity as a former role occupant (Ebaugh 1983).

Unlike prior views of socialization that were restricted to the socialization that takes place during different stages of life (e.g., childhood, adolescence, adulthood) (Moschis 1987), the life course view recognizes the importance of earlier-in-life experiences. Behaviors at a given stage in life relate to experiences (e.g., behaviors, socialization) at earlier stages, and “Behaviors can not be fully explained by restricting analysis to a specific life stage” (Elder and Johnson 2002, p. 57). Furthermore, whereas traditional socialization theories focus on outcomes that are either stable or fluid (Mortimer and Simmons 1978), the life course paradigm makes a distinction between processes that lead to stable and those that lead to fluid outcomes. The normative perspective on life course regards socialization outcomes as relatively pervasive and impervious to change, such that the socializee changes in response to socializers or adapts to the requirements of the environment. The person learns to enact new role behaviors that ensure perpetuation of the group (role theory), internalizes the model’s values (identification theory), and develops traits that are adaptive to the task and can be generalized to other situations (generalization theory) (Mortimer and Simmons 1978) (Table 1). In addition, the life course perspective considers the dynamic processes of change that produce different (fluid) outcomes according to new circumstances in the context of human growth and development (discussed under “human capital”).

Stress

The stress perspective views short-term and long-term changes as outcomes of the person’s responses to stress, with homeostatic, control, and behavioral theories offering explanation for changes (Table 1). Stress refers to environmental, social, or internal demands that are disruptions of previously more or less balanced (homeostatic) states and requires the person to adjust his or her usual behavior patterns (Thoits 1995). Change is the underlying mechanism of stress because “Stress involves internal or external changes of sufficient magnitude to threaten the homeostatic equilibrium of the organism” (Elder et al. 1996, p. 256). A central idea of life course models is that life events––negative, positive and neutral––create disequilibrium; they therefore are treated as stressors that create a generalized demand for readjustment so the person can establish a new balance (Gierveld and Dykstra 1993). Stressors can be acute (the result of objective, discrete events of relatively short duration) or chronic (subjective and persistent, usually due to enactment of social roles). The person builds a unique set of strategies to cope with the unacceptable and painful feelings produced by normative and unscheduled events over the life course (Vaillant 1977). Coping strategies represent efforts to restore control over life outcomes, with control theory offered as a framework for understanding the employment of specific strategies over the life course (Heckhausen and Schulz 1995; Rothbaum et al. 1982). Thoughts and behaviors that help reduce the stress a person experiences during a particular time span in his or her life course are originally effortful and reflect coping, but over time, they may be reinforced and become conditioned responses that result in habitual forms of behaviors, such as hobbies or a wide variety of compulsive disorders (e.g., Hirschman 1992). Stress and coping are viewed as both events and processes that lead to biological, mental, and behavioral changes (e.g., Elder et al. 1996).

Whereas traditional views of stress and coping focus on the present and recent past (e.g., Duhachek 2005), life course researchers call attention to chronic and acute stresses experienced over the lifetime and their cumulative impact (e.g., Elder et al. 1996). They cite studies that document the effects of traumatic childhood experiences (e.g., loss of a parent) on psychological states during adulthood, as well as the stressors experienced quite long ago. This expanded view of stress is “highly compatible with the life course perspectives that highlight the long-term trajectories or pathways within which contemporaneous social situations are embedded” (Elder et al. 1996, p. 261).

Human capital

Human capital refers to the resources, qualifications, skills, and knowledge that people acquire and “influence future income and consumption” (Frytak et al. 2003, p. 627). A mechanism that increases or decreases one’s efficiency in producing or maintaining certain outcomes (Frytak et al. 2003), human capital typically is viewed as a developmental or life course process that begins with the intergenerational cultivation of human capital in early life that ultimately leads to an income, education, and occupational status that indicates the person’s socioeconomic standing (Waid and Frazier 2003). Its development is derived from and influenced by environmental factors that are defined at different levels of aggregation and stability. These factors have been viewed as nested, hierarchical, and interrelated structures ranging from distal (macro-level) settings (e.g., class, culture) to those located proximally (e.g., family, work). The macro-system defines the character, structure, and function of proximal settings, which include the environment with which the person is in contact and can interact directly (e.g., family, school, leisure settings), that constitute “the vehicles of behavior change and individual development” (Bolger et al. 1988, p. 2). Thus, a person’s social location (e.g., SES, family structure) affects his or her capital accumulation, and explanations that link structures to outcome range from empirically verifiable mechanisms such as income (e.g., Conger et al. 1994; Elder 1998) to what is often viewed by psychologists as an “amorphous and unclearly differentiated set of influences” (Bolger et al. 1988, p. 2)

The life course perspective on human capital development views events and roles as sources of intellectual growth that are likely to bring about changes in patterns of thought and action and make the person able to act in new ways (Abeles et al. 1980; Elder et al. 1996; Frytak et al. 2003; Portes 1998). Life course researchers are interested in identifying salient life events that alter developmental or life course trajectories and the processes that characterize continuity and discontinuity in human capital attainment. Unlike the normative perspective, which views the outcomes of socialization as impervious to change, theories of human capital development acknowledge that outcomes and processes are likely to shift. The sources of change that explain the development and growth of human capital over the life course, as well as subsequent changes in mental and behavioral patterns, are the focus of three types of theories (cf. Perlmutter 1988) (Table 1): (1) organismic theories, proposed by scholars such as Piaget and Kohlberg, attribute change to the natural unfolding of life stages or developmental sequences and view humans as active constructors of knowledge within the context of biological constraints; (2) mechanistic theories, represented by the work of scholars such as Bandura, view humans as reactive, and knowledge development directly reflects the external environment; and (3) contextual theories developed by scholars such as Baltes and Riegel that view development and changes in competencies as a reciprocal or bidirectional process between the person and his or her environment due to the continual emergence of needs, potentialities, and successive “crises” that mark the transition between phases of the life cycle. The latter theories allow for change in outcomes, which may include maladaptive (e.g., excessive, compulsive) and deviant responses to the dynamic course of process (Mortimer and Simmons 1978); they recognize the influence of people’s choices on outcomes.

In addition to these theory-based explanations of changes or responses suggested by the normative, stress, and human capital perspective, life course research suggests relationships between events or changes (Table 1). Many life events and role transitions are interdependent, and some occur simultaneously (e.g., Gierveld and Dykstra 1993; Mayer and Tuma 1990). The occurrence of one event or transition may increase or decrease the probability of occurrence of another. Events that increase the probability of the occurrence of another are referred to as “transactional” events (Lee et al. 2001; Mayer and Tuma 1990). For example, childbirth may interfere with work and lead to other events (e.g., giving up employment, worsened financial status) and role transitions (e.g., parenthood). An adaptation to various circumstances that requires a change in a given domain may require subsequent adjustments in other domains of the person’s patterns of thought and actions. Stability and changes can be considered with respect to the length of time the person has been in a particular state; they therefore must be studied in the context of behavioral and cognitive changes experienced by the person or during earlier points in time (Mayer and Tuma 1990) and other contextual variables (e.g., socio-cultural, historical, environmental) (Elder et al. 1996; Thoits 1995).

Sherrod and Brim (1986) note that the various disciplinary approaches to life course research are neither conflicting nor mutually exclusive; they are complementary. In this context, the life course paradigm provides a framework for integrating diverse theoretical perspectives into a multi-theoretical conceptual framework (Fig. 1), which is consistent with recent efforts of life course researchers to develop models that include variables derived from diverse theories (e.g., Elder et al. 1996; Pearlin and Skaff 1996; Mortimer and Shanahan 2003). Such models are helpful for showing how the same proposition can be built from more than one perspective and provide a framework to test competing theories.

Methods of life course research

Several data analysis techniques are appropriate for life course research, both positivistic and humanistic, depending on the research perspective (e.g., Thoits 1995) (For a discussion of life course research methods see, for example, Giele and Elder 1998; and Mortimer and Shanahan 2003).

Life course research has been greatly facilitated by the development of statistical models for analyzing discrete-state, continuous-time stochastic processes on probability theory. These models are collectively known as event history analysis (EHA) and believed to have made “a major breakthrough in life course research by providing an appropriate way of studying multiple dependencies in social life” (Mayer and Tuma 1990, p. 4). An EHA can address the dynamics of both discrete and continuous change by relating the rate of transition to time, as well as to other variables (Campbell and O’Rand 1988). Transitions are defined by movement from an original state to a destination state. Most models are defined by expressing the hazard rate or risk of an event (or the transition rate when a shift to one of several states is possible) as a specific function of the relevant time dimension (e.g., duration, age), measured covariates, and an unmeasured random disturbance (Mayer and Tuma 1990). When the life event, transition, or change at any given instant depends on how long the person has already been in that state, it becomes duration-dependent; it can be modeled as a probability in the rate of transition with respect to time based on how long (duration) a person has been in that state. The EHA models are appropriate for examining duration-dependent measures, outperforming traditional analytic techniques such as regression, discriminant, and logit (Fraser et al. 1994).

Longitudinal data are ideal for life course research, though retrospective measures can also be used (e.g., Mayer and Tuma 1990). Life course study owes much to the development of sophisticated data collection instruments for retrospective life histories. These instruments include the event history calendar and the structure of autobiography memory (Axim et al. 1999; Belli 1998). Such instruments significantly improve the quality of data based on retrospective questions, which are far from ideal or perfect, especially in terms of reporting the exact dates of events and previously-experienced subjective psychological states (Gierveld and Dykstra 1993; Henry et al. 1994).

Consumer research in a life course context

Previous efforts to study consumer behavior over the life course empirically have addressed theoretical and substantive issues that are mainly time-dependent. These studies focus on (1) the development of consumer orientations, including adaptive decision skills (e.g., John 1999), compulsive consumption and materialistic attitudes (e.g., Rindfleisch et al. 1997; Roberts et al. 2003), patterns of information processing (John 1999), and the acquisition of products over the life course (e.g., Oropesa 1993); (2) changes in established purchasing patterns, including brand and store preferences (e.g., Andreasen 1984; Lee et al. 2001) and spending on products and services (e.g., Wilkes 1995); and (3) the establishment of new patterns of consumer behavior such as the diffusion of innovations, including the decision-making processes that lead to adoption (Gatignon and Robertson 1985). These and other empirical studies that have addressed time- and context-dependent consumer behavior issues do not show how previous experiences affect present patterns of consumer behavior because they do not examine consumers relative to other stages of life within historical and cultural contexts.

This section shows how previous research efforts to study consumer behavior over the life course can be improved by addressing time- and context-dependent issues using the three life course perspectives. The intent here is to use select areas of inquiry to illustrate the benefits of adopting a life course orientation rather than to discuss every possible previous effort or area that could benefit from it. Our interest is on two consumption orientations, materialism and compulsive consumption, which have been the focus of recent investigations that have used traditional research designs and methods of analysis. Both variables are of great interest to marketing researchers, and they are likely to develop over a relatively long time during a person’s life. We illustrate how the life course approach might help researchers better study consumer behavior in general, and the development of the two consumption orientations in particular, by first discussing how the three perspectives might explain the development and changes due to experiencing life events in general, and, next, by making reference to the specific family disruption events of divorce and separation in particular because these events were used in two recent studies of these consumption orientations (Rindfleisch et al. 1997; Roberts et al. 2003). Several propositions based on relevant theory and research show how these perspectives can be integrated to attain propositions based on more than one perspective.

Materialism

Recent studies by Rindfleisch et al. (1997) and Roberts et al. (2003) have inferred the development of materialism and compulsive consumption from people’s experience of events (family disruption events of divorce and separation) during their adolescent years. Both studies report a direct link between adverse evaluations of family disruption events and the strength of materialistic values, which are considered coping responses because they provide temporary relief from aversive psychological feelings (Rindfleisch et al. 1997). However, Rindfleisch and colleagues find that stress from family disruptions does not necessarily mediate family dislocations.

The life course paradigm can help us better understand these findings and suggests alternate explanations. It acknowledges the importance of the timing of the events, the time (duration) of the youth’s experience of these events in his or her parent’s life course, and the relationship of these events (sequence and spacing) to other stressful events in the child’s life.

The three life course perspectives appear relevant to the study of the development of materialistic values. With respect to stress, which was the underlying theoretical basis of the previous investigations, research suggests that childhood traumas, such as loss of a parent and parental divorce, have more adverse effects when they are experienced earlier rather than later (timing) in childhood (Elder 1998; Hill et al. 2001) and have persisting (chronic) effects as much as 60 years later (Elder et al. 1996). In addition, the young person’s length (duration) of exposure to such family settings bears directly on the life course implications of stressful experiences and is compatible with the long-term trajectory emphasized in life course studies (Elder et al. 1996). Because material possessions may provide temporary relief from aversive psychological feelings such as stress (Rindfleisch et al. 1997), family disruptions may have a greater impact on the development of materialistic orientations when the young person has experienced them for a longer time (i.e., longer duration). Furthermore, parental marital events such as divorce, (re)marriage, and lengthy discord tend to weaken the child’s emotional security and self-esteem (Elder 1998; Hill et al. 2001), which is a strong predictor of materialistic attitudes (e.g., Belk 1988) and a resource for combating stressful life events (Thoits 1995). Weaker self-esteem and parent–child relationships are expected to increase the child’s vulnerability to stressful events he or she may experience later in life, further promoting the youth’s favorable orientations toward material possessions. Various findings appear to support this line of reasoning and show that childhood traumas such as parental loss intensify the effects of recent life events (Elder et al. 1996), making the order of such events relevant in the child’s life course.

Proposition 1

Family disruptions have a greater impact on the development of materialism when (a) the duration of such experiences is longer, (b) the timing of such experiences is earlier in life, and (c) they are followed by a greater number of stressful life events.

An equally compelling explanation for the development of materialistic values is suggested by socialization theory and research in the context of the normative perspective. Family disruption due to shifts in roles as a result of events in parents’ life course (e.g., divorce, increased care-giving responsibilities toward aged relatives, increased time dedicated to outside careers) results in ineffective socialization by decreasing the amount and quality of parent–child interactions (e.g., Amato and Sobolewski 2001; Conger et al. 1994). A decrease in the frequency of parent–child interactions leads to an increase in TV viewing and peer interactions (see studies cited in Moschis 1987). Because socialization theory and research has shown that young people learn the expressive aspects of consumption from TV and their peers (e.g., Moschis 1987), the greater strength of materialistic values reported by adults who experienced family disruptive events, as noted in the study of Rindfleisch et al. (1997), might be due to heavier interaction with and the greater influence of these socialization agents during their adolescent years. Thus, socialization processes (peer interactions and TV viewing) are expected to mediate the relationship between disruptive family events and materialistic attitudes.

Furthermore, the mechanistic view of human capital, which states that consumers are reactive and develop knowledge from the external environment, may explain the strength of orientations toward material possessions as a result of the person’s history (duration) of exposure to television, and peer and family interactions. Bandura’s theory of social learning in particular emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge about the symbolic meaning of products (Moschis 1987). The theory of capital development places emphasis on knowledge acquired via exposure to role models in various environments (Portes 1998). Research by O’Guinn and Shrum (1997) shows that exposure to consumption-rich portrayals through television programming is associated with an increasing prevalence of consumer beliefs (i.e., acquisition of knowledge) about affluent lifestyles in society, a finding consistent with the mechanistic view of human capital (Table 1). Similarly, peers are considered sources of human capital and provide role models for emulation (e.g., John 1999; Moschis 1987). Therefore, a person’s history of exposure to television and peers might provide better insights into the development of his or her beliefs than do measures of exposure at a given point in time during his or her adolescent years. Thus, the family disruption events of divorce and separation used in the studies of Rindfleisch et al. (1997) and Roberts et al. (2003) are likely to decrease the amount and quality of parent–child interactions and increase the child’s interaction with the mass media and peers. The influence of these socialization agents on the youth’s materialistic values also likely varies with his or her length (duration) of exposure to these agents.

Proposition 2(a)

The longer the person lives in a disrupted family during his or her formative years, the greater the influence of television viewing on the strength of his or her materialistic values.

Proposition 2(b)

The longer the person lives in a disrupted family during his or her formative years, the greater the influence of peer interactions on the strength of his or her materialistic values.

Developmental researchers view the family as a source of human capital (Frytak et al. 2003; Portes 1998). Several studies have shown that parental divorce is associated with reductions in financial resources, lower socioeconomic status, and increased conflict over money and the use of material resources (e.g., Amato and Sobolewski 2001; Conger et al. 1994). These findings are consistent with the economic hardship theory, which is compatible with the life course perspective (e.g., Elder 1998). Reduction in financial resources due to family dislocation (e.g., divorce) adversely affects children’s accumulation of human capital, such as the educational attainment necessary for achieving higher occupational status and wealth. Prolonged aversive interactions and socioeconomic deprivation in childhood years may increase the youth’s awareness of the requirements necessary for acquiring material possessions as well as of the limitations of being in an economically-disadvantaged family, which may increase the young adult person’s desire to acquire scarce material possessions that symbolize success and status (Moschis 1987; O’Guinn and Shrum 1997). Thus, economic hardship due to the reduction of income is based on the human capital perspective and expected to be a mechanism that increases the importance of material possessions. This line of reasoning might explain the direct relationships between a person’s experience of family disruptions during adolescent years and the strength of materialistic attitudes found in the Rindfleisch et al. (1997) study. The young person’s duration in a disrupted family might make a difference as well, such that a longer duration will have a greater impact. Furthermore, because a person is likely to develop materialistic attitudes during childhood years (Moschis 1987), the timing of family disruption events is relevant in the person’s life course and should have greater influence during formative years.

Proposition 3

The longer a person lives in a disrupted family during his or her childhood and adolescent years, the stronger the materialistic values he or she is likely to hold during adulthood.

Proposition 4

The relationship between the level of reduction in the person’s standard of living and the strength of his or her materialistic attitudes will be stronger among consumers who experienced such an economic hardship earlier rather than later in childhood and adolescence.

Compulsive consumption

Psychological explanations of compulsive behaviors focus on stress and coping processes as the underlying mechanisms, using homeostatic, control, and behavioral theories as bases (Table 1). Stress disrupts psychological states (homeostasis), and coping responses reflect the need to control emotions or the environment to restore psychological balance. Behaviors that provide short-term relief from negative emotional states and restore psychological balance enhance people’s sense of control and are likely to be positively reinforced and become conditioned responses to stressful situations (Hirschman 1992). Compulsive behaviors that are often conceived of as addictions to products (e.g., alcohol, drugs, cigarettes), activities (e.g., gambling, shopping, shoplifting, overspending), and negative emotions (low self-esteem, depression, withdrawal) have been suggested as possible consequences of coping behaviors used over time to handle stress (e.g., Hirschman 1992; O’Guinn and Faber 1989). What appears to distinguish a coping behavior from a compulsive one is the level of control. Coping behavior refers to acute loss of control over one’s actions, whereas compulsive behaviors are characterized by the chronic loss of control (O’Guinn and Faber 1989). For instance, impulsiveness is considered a coping behavior in which the loss of control is temporary and the person can stop being impulsive once his or her need to alleviate stress is satisfied, whereas compulsiveness is viewed as excessive, continuous, and beyond the person’s control (Hirschman 1992). Thus, a compulsive consumer could adapt biologically, psychologically, and socially to changes brought about by what used to be coping (controllable) behaviors, and such addictions may become, for that person, a normal way of life.

Although product consumption does not necessarily reflect control strategies, the excessive consumption of certain products may reflect coping responses. Heatherton and Baumeister (1991) suggest that self-indulging consumption activities, and over-consumption of products such as alcohol, binge eating, and cigarette smoking are secondary control coping strategies because they help the person keep his or her self-awareness at a relatively low level and avoid meaningful thought about ongoing identity and the implication of various events. Such activities are most likely to be intensified when a person experiences events that threaten his or her identity (Wheaton 1990) or signify role transitions (e.g., birth of child, loss of parent, divorce, death of spouse). The latter view is consistent with one recently been proposed by role theorists, who view stress as the result of role transitions and role enactment (e.g., Elder et al. 1996).

Unlike psychologists, who favor intra-psychic explanations, sociologists view life events as markers of transitions into roles that are sources of stress and affect socialization processes. The social view of stress helps integrate the normative and stress perspectives (Elder et al. 1996; Pearlin and Skaff 1996; Wheaton 1990). The assumption of a new role may create role strains (known as “chronic stress”) that are continuous and persistent due to possible role overload (as in occupational roles), interpersonal conflict within roles (e.g., parent–child, husband–wife), or inter-role conflict (e.g., incompatible demands of work and family) (George 1989). Thus, the spacing between role transitions matters, as does the timing of the experience of the new role, because the life course consists of a set of interlocking roles (e.g., graduation, employment, marriage, parenthood). A transition event that deviates from the expected progression, such as the birth of a child to an unwed teenage girl, affects the expected timing of the person’s experience of transitions to other roles, and deviations from normatively-governed transitions produce additional sources of chronic stress (Elder et al. 1996, 2003). The child’s experience of a single-parent family composition is likely to be a source of persistent (chronic) stress because it will affect the young person’s timing of transition into other roles such as “student” and “worker.” Coping with such continuous and persistent strains due to the close spacing and unscheduled timing of transition events may elevate the use of coping responses over longer time periods, increasing the risk of their development into compulsive behaviors.

Proposition 5

Among consumers who experience family disruptions during their adolescent years, those most likely to display compulsive consumption habits during adulthood are those who have experienced (a) a larger number of transition events within a relatively short time and (b) a larger number of transitions earlier or later than expected.

Family disruption events of divorce, separation, or lengthy discord do not only result in the child’s experience of chronic stress but also interfere with socialization processes. Such interference may lead to impairment and delay in human capital development (Frytak et al. 2003). Deficit in human capital, in turn, may promote impulsive choices that are precursors to addictive behaviors. Uhlenberg and Mueller (2003) report that inadequate parental supervision (i.e., ineffective socialization) in broken homes results in the ineffective inhibition of impulsive and antisocial behaviors by the children of these homes. Pechman et al. (2005) present results of studies which show that impaired or delayed development in human capital are likely to increase impulsive choices in response to stressful events and lead to the development of addictive behaviors. This view of consequences of stress on socialization and human development helps integrate the three life course perspectives. It might be that the development of impulsive and antisocial behaviors is the consequence of impaired human capital due to ineffective socialization (as a result of family disruptions). Thus, the child’s length of experience of stress associated with these family disruption events is expected to increase his or her risk of making the transition from an impulsive to a compulsive consumer.

Proposition 6

The length of time an adult consumer lived in a disruptive family during his or her formative years increases his or her likelihood (“risk”) of becoming a compulsive consumer.

Furthermore, a particular family structure mechanism, be it stress from disruption in family routines or changes in the amount and quality of parental supervision (i.e., socialization), is believed to have “stronger effects at some stages of childhood than others because of differences in children’s developmental needs or susceptibility to problem behavior” (Hill et al. 2001, p. 272). Organismic models of human capital (Table 1) suggest that psychological development and susceptibility are matters of cognitive development indexed by the person’s age (John 1999; Moschis 1987). The attributes and skills that define human capital, such as adaptivity or behavioral plasticity, include “one’s ability to cope with stressful events” (Baltes and Baltes 1990, p.6). Because these skills are likely to develop with age during a person’s formative years, children at earlier states of psychological development are expected to be more vulnerable to the stressful events of family disruption, which might increase the person’s risk of developing compulsive behaviors. Some research appears to support this contention (Pechman et al. 2005), showing that the earlier youths initiate potentially addictive behaviors (e.g., use of alcohol and cigarettes), the greater the risk of addiction.

Proposition 7

The earlier in childhood a person experiences family disruptions, the greater his or her likelihood of exhibiting compulsive behaviors in adulthood.

Many types of coping responses employed during stressful times that are at risk of becoming compulsive can have undesirable consequences on consumers and their families. The origins of these responses and reasons consumers differ in the types of coping they use can be traced to early life experiences and social structure, including family resources and strategies (e.g., Conger et al. 1994; Elder and Caspi 1988). Ineffective parenting may be the result of several factors, including divorce or lengthy marital discord and economic hardship (e.g., Elder and Caspi 1988; Hill et al. 2001). The young person’s length (duration) of exposure to such family settings bears directly on the life course implications of stressful experiences (Elder et al. 1996). Disrupted family settings and ineffective parenting alienate the young person, causing his or her gravitation toward non-familial socialization agents (i.e., peers), which are sources of influence on the initiation of several undesirable consumption activities (e.g., cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, gambling, shoplifting) (for studies, see Moschis 1987). Peers provide “arenas of comfort” or safe havens where adolescents can relax and rejuvenate from the pressures and stress of family and school (e.g., Gecas 2003). The self-agency developed and fostered in peer groups may be directed toward constructive or destructive ends (Gecas 2003). An early onset of such age-inappropriate behaviors is expressed as a continuous, time-dependent process, which places the youth at risk of a cumulative process characterized by a sequence of adverse (stressful) events across the life course (Elder 1998). The initiation of (or experimentation with) such activities increases their likelihood of becoming coping responses during stressful times and subsequently developing into compulsive behaviors, because cumulative life-event stress represents a strong predictor of compulsive disorders, such as binge eating among children and adolescents (e.g., Johnson and Bradlyn 1988).

Proposition 8

Potentially harmful compulsive behaviors are most likely to be displayed by those consumers with (a) the longest experience of family disruptions during their formative years and (b) the earliest age of initiation of potentially harmful consumption activities.

Implications and directions for further research

The remarkable growth in longitudinal studies and the emergence of new methodologies for the collection and analysis of life history data during the last two decades of the twentieth century helped advance the life course approach to become one of the leading theoretical frameworks in social sciences (Elder et al. 2003). Although this multidisciplinary integrative framework for studying behavior has been largely ignored by marketing researchers, it should be of interest to marketers, consumer researchers, and public policymakers because it has the potential to help them address areas and issues of interest in an innovative way.

Marketing practice

The use of the life course paradigm in marketing requires a change in how researchers and practitioners look at market behavior. A person’s consumption activity must be viewed not just as a behavior at a given point in time but as a part of the person’s consumption history, so that the analysis is directed toward causal pathways of consumption activities and their determinants across the entire life span. The life course approach has the potential to contribute to the practice of marketing in at least three ways. First, it could provide guidance to marketers who already use life events associated with role transitions as targeting criteria regarding the development, stability, and changes of consumption habits; it also could suggest the types of events that create needs and demand for specific products and services. This potential contribution is based on Andreasen’s (1984) landmark study and is reflected in a suggestion made by Kotler (1992, p. 75): “A company can consider critical events that can mark life’s passage to see whether they are accompanied by certain needs that can be met by product or service bundles.” Marketers already use very crude criteria that define life-cycle changes, which are related to changes in household spending on a variety of products and services (Wilkes 1995), but there is room for considering several other life events and transitions that create consumption needs (Mergenhagen 1995).

Second, the life course perspective blends rather well with marketers’ increasing awareness of the importance of previous consumer experiences and future expectations in understanding market behavior. A new marketing orientation, commonly known as “generational marketing,” considers the importance of cohort effects and recognizes the importance of targeting consumers at a given stage in life on the basis not of present circumstances but of earlier life experiences (Noble and Schewe 2003). The study of cohort (generational) effects falls in line with the theories and methods used to study time- and context-dependent influences in the life course paradigm.

Public policy

The life course approach should also be of interest to public policy makers who want to identify consumer groups at risk of (1) developing socially undesirable consumer behaviors and (2) becoming vulnerable to persuasive communications and fraudulent activities. Such information could be used to design legislation and community education-assistance and outreach programs through local social agencies. Several contemporary issues of interest to policymakers, such as the role of mass media in the development of antisocial behaviors––cigarette smoking and alcohol abuse in particular (Pechman et al. 2005)––could be studied using the life course approach. For example, smoking initiation can be considered a duration-dependent behavior during adolescence, a period during which nearly all smokers develop this habit (i.e., are “at risk”) (Pechman et al. 2005), and exposure to cigarette ads, antismoking warnings, and adolescent experience of family disruptions could serve as covariates. The research presented here suggests that family disruptions during adolescent years (i.e., divorce, absence of parents, economic losses) may lead to ineffective parenting (socialization), increasing the risk that children develop problem behavior, such as shoplifting, gambling, drunk driving (e.g., Elder et al. 1996; Moschis 1987), or negative health behaviors such as smoking (Moen et al. 1992).

Finally, policymakers should be interested in understanding the stressful life events that make consumers most vulnerable to persuasive and fraudulent activities. Some of the most common cases of elderly fraud are believed to take place during highly stressful times in that elder’s life, as the death of a spouse. Other researchers attribute older people’s vulnerability to unethical marketing practices to age-related cognitive deficits which are duration-dependent (Friedman 1992). Evidence also suggests that certain cognitive skills do not change and even improve in later life for some people due to their earlier-in-life experiences (Salthouse 1991). Those experiences over a person’s life course that explain differences in cognitive skills (and hence, susceptibility) would be a fruitful area for further research using the life course approach.

In summary, the life course paradigm is an emerging framework in social sciences that has been largely ignored by marketing researchers. The information presented here suggests that the life course approach could make significant contributions to marketing. By presenting illustrations of how this approach could be used to study market behavior, this paper may provide the impetus for adopting such a research orientation and offers a blueprint for future studies.