{"id":8377,"date":"2022-09-14T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T14:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/escp.eu\/thechoice\/?p=8377"},"modified":"2023-02-17T16:49:55","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:49:55","slug":"understanding-the-flexible-consumer-lifestyle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/escp.eu\/thechoice\/tomorrow-choices\/understanding-the-flexible-consumer-lifestyle\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding the flexible consumer lifestyle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Why are many people these days abandoning secure jobs, ownership, and other traditional status markers of success and embracing change, instability, mobility? A new generation of very changeful consumers is emerging<\/mark>, with individuals who embrace precarity not only in their professional lives but also regarding nearly all other aspects: they eschew ownership and daily routines in favour of nomadism and constantly renewed experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Laetitia Mimoun<\/span>
<\/a>Professor of marketing at ESCP Business School (Paris campus)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fleura Bardhi<\/span>
Professor of marketing at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, University of London<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

What is the flexible consumer lifestyle?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Slash careers<\/a> (e.g. writer\/photographer or lawyer\/blogger) and digital nomads<\/a> are not exactly new. But the flexible consumer lifestyle is a step further<\/strong> \u2013 another step away from the established life trajectories of industrial consumer society, where stable careers and home ownership were once viewed as markers of success and identity. Instead, \u201cflexible consumers\u201d are in a chronic state of transition, never settled either professionally or physically. They skip from one freelance gig to the next, move from shared apartments to vacation rentals to co-working spaces, switch hobbies and countries at short notice \u2013 and it\u2019s a strongly affirmed choice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, no longer are such flexible working and living conditions restricted to youth, the working class or specific industries.<\/strong> Indeed, flexible consumers can most often be found in global cities, among the highly educated and knowledge, creative, and digital workers. In our joint research paper<\/a>, we set out to understand why and how a growing number of consumers purposefully embrace instability, change and adaptability in many aspects of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A study of embraced precarity<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

To explore these chronic, multiple, nonlinear life transitions, we worked on the concept of \u201climinality,\u201d which refers to an in-between social space, when individuals transition from one social position to another (becoming an adult; retiring), often through rites of passage. Except these transitions are voluntary rather than socially appointed, and occur across various domains of life rather than within a well-defined, stable institution. <\/strong>Hence the need to extend the concept as \u201cchronic consumer liminality\u201d (CCL). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flexible lifestyle, albeit chosen, is the result of major shifts in contemporary Western society, which normalise precarity and flexibility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To investigate CCL, we carried out an in-depth study, including 28 long interviews with flexible consumers in London and Paris and observing them in \u2018co-homing\u2019 settings (co-working from someone\u2019s home). Typical among their interviewees was Claudia, a 37-year-old freelance consultant who works six months a year then stashes her belongings in suitcases under her bed and sublets her room in a London flat to travel, \u2018couch surfing\u2019 or renting Airbnb places abroad. This study of such ultra-flexible workers provided a clearer picture of the conditions in which CCL developed, and of the resources and skills necessary to navigate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lifestyle for (and resulting from) precarious times<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The flexible lifestyle, albeit chosen, is the result of major shifts in contemporary Western society, which normalise precarity and flexibility. In particular, the constant mobility and change (theorised as \u2019liquidification\u2019<\/a>) of work and home has intensified in the post-industrial, knowledge society. <\/strong>The neoliberal labour market has facilitated and encouraged contingent, casual and contractual work; with flexible work involving between 20% and 30% of the working-age population in the US and EU. Home arrangements are also more flexible, as increasingly high real estate prices have put home ownership, once the typical symbol of adulthood, out of reach for many. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of these broad trends, flexibility has become highly valued, in spite of the challenges (lower income for instance) that come with it.<\/strong> Indeed, our informants seem to have become comfortable with precarity and ambivalence over time and value them because of the sense of freedom they derive from unpredictability. They seem to reject the middle-class life pathway of their parents\u2019 generation, with a stable full-time job, house and marriage, craving instead to work on their own, outside traditional structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to manage constant unpredictability?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Yet chronic liminality is challenging. How do flexible consumers manage the sudden changes in their living and working conditions? They mobilise three consumption processes:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n