The concept of mindful consumption has a deeper meaning than simply consuming the amount of goods and services necessary for an individual’s life. According to Sheth et al. (2011), mindful consumption has both tangible — the behavior, and intangible — mindset — facets. Therefore, consuming the goods and services mindfully appears to be a challenge since one has to be both caring in behavior and temperate in mind. In addition, the extra difficulty of mindful consumption comes from the necessity to be caring about nature and the community. It is not sufficient to consume moderately on a personal level if an individual does not care about common well-being.
As much as I would like to call myself a mindful consumer, I have to be honest — I do not fit a strict standard of a genuinely mindful consumer. For example, I tend to buy more clothes than I wear, thus failing to resist an urge for what Sheth et al. (2011, p. 28) called acquisitive consumption. I had also made repetitive purchases before, for instance — replacing my perfectly functional smartphone with a newer model without a technical necessity. Therefore, I would classify myself as a relatively caring but not temperate enough consumer.
Overall, mindful consumption can be viewed as a psychological and even philosophical rather than an economic concept. I find it fitting that Gupta and Verma (2020) drew a connection between mindful consumption and mindfulness — a meditative practice that focuses on improving awareness. Becoming a mindful consumer is not easy — one has to embrace the idea and adopt it through practice fully. In that regard, mindful consumerist behavior must come from the prepared consciousness. A simple attempt to jump on the trend and pose as a mindful consumer because it is fashionable will not yield any results.
Reference List
Sheth, J.N., Sethia, N., and Srinivas, S. (2011) ‘Mindful consumption: a customer-centric approach to sustainability’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(1), pp. 21–39.
Gupta, S. and Verma, H.V. (2020) ‘Mindfulness, mindful consumption, and life satisfaction: an experiment with higher education students’, Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, 12(3), pp. 456–474.