Antecedents of Mindful Consumption: An Abstract

Mindful consumption includes awareness, caring and temperance (Sheth et al. 2011; Armstrong 2012; Bahl et al. 2016; Milne et al. 2019). Like mindfulness, there are different conceptualizations of mindful consumption. Some researchers conceptualized it within the context of mindfulness (Armstrong 2012; Bahl et al. 2016; De wet 2008; Milne et al. 2019; Rosenberg 2004) whereas others expounded it without referring to mindfulness (Assadourian 2009; Giri 2004; Maind 2014; Sheth et al. 2011; Sheth 2017). Prof. Jagdish Sheth (Sheth et al. 2011) conceptualized mindful consumption in a ground-breaking article in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. Bahl and colleagues (2016) also explained mindful consumption in their seminal study on Mindful consumption. Despite such good theoretical support, there is very little research on Mindful consumption in last ten years. The reason lies in misperceptions about mindfulness, which is considered the antecedent of mindful consumption. For example, parents complain schools about roots of mindfulness and suspect mindfulness to indirectly promote Eastern religions (Gregoire 2013). To make the matters hazier, mindfulness finds its roots in different religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism. Bahl and colleagues (2016) identified these misperceptions about linkage between mindfulness and religion as challenge to achieve Mindful consumption. In this research, we aim to establish the antecedents of mindful consumption and to ascertain the linkage between mindfulness and religiousness. We conducted three studies and employed ANOVA, correlation analysis, regression analysis and structural equation modelling. The first study observed the causal effect of mindfulness on mindful consumption and the second study examined the direct and interaction effect of mindfulness and religious faith on mindful consumption. The final study validated the generalizability of the effect of mindfulness and religious faith on mindful consumption across gender, occupations, and household incomes using multi-group analysis. Results show that both mindfulness and religiousness are indeed the antecedents of mindful consumption but mindfulness and religiousness do not interact with each other. Several demographic variables do not impact these relationships. The research has important academic and practical implications.