Relationship of Mindfulness, Mindful Consumption and Life Satisfaction: An Abstract

Mindfulness is paying attention non-judgmentally and in non-reactive manner to the present moment (Kabat-Zinn 2003). It keeps us sensitive to the present context and prevents us from getting overwhelmed by rules and routines (Langer 2014). Past research, in separate strands, showed that mindfulness leads to life satisfaction (Bajaj and Pande 2016) and mindful consumption (Gupta and Verma 2019) but these two strands remain disconnected due to the missing linkage between mindful consumption and life satisfaction. This missing link is the reason for limited research on mindfulness in consumer context despite ground-breaking research by renowned academician Prof. Jagdish Sheth (Sheth et al. 2011) and seminal investigation by noted practitioner Dr. Shalini Bahl (Bahl et al. 2016). We attempt to join these separate research strands by analyzing multiple models generated from an experimental study. We establish the relationship between mindful consumption and life satisfaction by using difference-in-differences research design and intervention of guided short meditation (Kabat-Zinn 1982) after a regular class. Previously established scales for mindfulness (Brown and Ryan 2003), mindful consumption (Gupta and Verma 2019), and life satisfaction (Diener et al. 1985) were used for pre and post intervention measurements. We examined correlation, moderation, and moderated mediation relationships by employing models 2, 76, and 59 (Hayes 2018) using Process plugin. The multi-model comparison shows that mindful consumption mediates the influence of mindfulness on life satisfaction. Post-hoc analysis shows that this mediation effect is not due to demographic variables. This research also shows that mindfulness, mindful consumption, and life satisfaction could change significantly within a short period of two months. There are academic, practical, and policy implications for establishing this linkage between mindful consumption and life satisfaction. This research opens important avenues for future research in the areas of mindfulness, mindful consumption, and life satisfaction. Sample size and attrition were the limitations of this study.