Does Happiness Still Belong to Consumption? Revisiting the Unfinished Question of Happiness in the Marketplace

Introduction

The work by Biswas-Diener and Diener in Calcutta slums, did not possibly start with the idea of challenging the established notions of happiness and the mainstream well-being research. The findings might have come as a surprise, and the authors couldn’t offer any compelling explanations, as they found contentment in sites where conventional consumer psychology would have predicted extreme deprivation (Biswas-Diener & Diener, 2001).

In the following decade, as they revisited their research in other non-Western contexts, the pattern was largely unaltered (Biswas-Diener et al., 2012), instead the teleology between consumption and happiness became more complex as these findings exposed a deep epistemic rift within consumer research and happiness studies. While from a Western perspective the findings appear paradoxical, a reader from a country in the Global South, for example, India, may not be so surprised as everyday conversations, religious discourses, and experiences routinely delink contentment from material opulence. On a more scholarly level, a recent literature review traces the evolution of consumer well-being over the last four decades refereeing to Joseph Sirgy's seminal contribution (Pradhan et al., 2025) in the field, and also mentions the importance of revisiting the happiness-consumption dyad.

Therefore, as we had the opportunity to read the recent publication – Happiness in the Marketplace: A Study of Consumption, Consumers, and Wellbeing by Dong-Jin Lee and M. Joseph Sirgy (hereafter Happiness), the first thing we noted was that it revisits a topic many may regard as resolved. This book is a valuable addition to its preceding volume on Quality of Life (Sirgy, 2002). The book does not examine the venerable claim that consumption engenders happiness, and at the same time does not risk proposing any new measure of happiness; rather, it offers a proposition that is now more unambiguous in its scope and depth, as it clearly positions the market as the fundamental structure that delivers and enables happiness. While this view can always be contested, it will always be difficult to undermine the challenge it poses. The quest for happiness in contemporary society is assumed to operate through pathways provided by consumption and the market, though consumption may not yield genuine happiness.

In this book, the Authors stick to the term ‘happiness’, given the tendency of many scholars to favour synonyms (and euphemisms) such as well-being, flourishing, resilience, and capability (Husemann & Eckhardt, 2019; Sirgy, 2021). Nonetheless, their effort can be appreciated, as one cannot disregard the most prominent term in the discourse, also within the ontological realities of macromarketing, without gravitating to any politics of meaning. However, from this point in the book, the text also refrains from attempting to ascertain any causal relationships; instead, the extant argument attempts to delineate happiness as a construct shaped by market dynamics rather than a purely psychological outcome.

The book's value lies not only in appreciating the contradictions and the paradoxes of the literature, but as a provocateur of new thoughts. For example, in the context of India or many countries from the Global South, happiness can often manifest in the absence of consumption. The very possibility that happiness can materialize and persist independently, or even in a tangential relationship to consumption, then the established paradigms within the field may turn out to be contradicting the constructs that were thought to be near universal in their scope. This persistent paradox precisely serves as the contextual and theoretical foundation for Happiness, in a way that can engage the scholars and readers with a compelling argument on the dialectic of happiness–consumption.

The work never proposes a linear relationship between these two variables, rather argues for the structural evolution of consumption as a complex praxis that subsumes happiness within itself. This assertion may appear as a radical reimagining of the dyad but if done so, traditionally concept of linearity may put the moral authority and ontological existence marketing as a praxis to question. The text engages with the concept from a strong theoretical perspective and never makes an attempt to unfold or establish a direct causal or a correlational link between consumption and happiness (Belk, 1988; Kasser, 2003; Richins & Dawson, 1992). On the contrary, it engages in what might be characterized as an intellectual revitalization as it explores subjects that, in recent years, have been relegated to the sidelines. The proposition is not that consumption yields happiness, but rather that consumption has become the cultural lexicon through which happiness is envisioned, recounted, negotiated, and moralized in late capitalist contexts. Over the last twenty years, the discourse surrounding happiness has permeated related concepts: resilience, flourishing, well-being, affective labor, and marketplace dignity (Jagadale et al., 2018).

The connection between consumption and happiness has not been sidelined to the point of being supplanted. A rich body of research indicate that experiential acquisitions are more emotionally gratifying than material ones (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003), or that diminished consumption can enhance well-being when individuals have the power to exercise agency (Hoffmann & Lee, 2016; Vollebregt et al., 2024), and that systemic disparities within marketplaces can shape emotional potential of consumers (Moisander et al., 2016). The book approaches this analysis with caution, recognizing the intellectual risk of revisiting a query that the discipline has quietly set aside. The project deserves significant appreciation for identifying the merit of engaging with a research question that is far from being resolved; moreover, it remains a crucial oversight in current literature.

As reviewers, we take a perspective of Macromarketing scholars who are conscious of their Global South situatedness in both geographical and epistemic senses. While this positionality may influence the interpretation, we remain aware that this position also provides us with the benefit of immersiveness into the emic realities as well as into the multiple dyads of consumer research. We remain sufficiently close to appreciate the appeal of the happiness–consumption dyad, yet remain alert to the limitations of its scope.

Reopening an Abandoned Question?

Between the mid-1980s and early 2000s, research into the links between consumption and happiness flourished. Materialism was treated as a psychological driver of life satisfaction (Richins & Dawson, 1992), possessions were theorized as extensions of self (Belk, 1988), and the emotional returns of acquisition were framed as compensatory responses to existential insecurity (Kasser, 2003). Even at this phase, the findings were never uniform nor conclusive, but they shared a broad assumption: consumption was at least an intelligible site from which to study happiness.

Over the last fifteen years, that center of gravity has disintegrated. Research has not disproven the link but has dispersed it, as it can be argued below (citations are indicative): ➢

Experiential consumption is a more reliable predictor of well-being (Kumar & Gilovich, 2016; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).

Why the Book Makes us Think

The book does not serve as a manual, a measurement handbook, or a meta-analytic study. The text appears to be driving the discourse away from the earlier-established notion of a linear relationship between consumption and happiness, and offers a nuanced understanding of the layered, complex character of happiness. Happiness is reconceptualised not as a residue of (over)consumption, but as a cultural manifesto that originates in markets. As a result, the focus shifts from outcomes to the very conditions that render those specific emotional states congruent with happiness.

The authors posit that markets do not merely function as a techno-economic device for distributing goods; it rather forms the ecosystems in which the very idea of happiness originates. Hence, the relevant inquiry transitions from mere acquisitional to consequential happiness. In the context of macromarketing, happiness should be seen as an institutional prerequisite enabled by the Laytonian systems and their antecedents. As a result, if marketing has partially established its ethical standing on the promise of happiness, then reinforcing the concept and deeper contextualization with a foundational theory would help the discipline progress further. In this spirit, we offer the following four aspects that may provoke future reflections on happiness and the marketplace, and foster meaningful research.

Marketplace Experience and Happiness: A Note on Future Research

While Happiness is primarily framed as a theoretical discourse, it does not entirely give up on the domain of quantification as spread throughout its chapters, are mentions and descriptions of instruments designed to provide a tangible grasp of the argument e.g., modified iterations of material value scales (Richins & Dawson, 1992), emotional assessment tools (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Richins, 1997), and well-being frameworks that carry forward the legacy of psychological traditions (Diener et al., 1985). While these instruments are systematically organized for the readers interested in this domain, yet they never seem to over emphasize the demand on quantification of happiness. The Authors have tried to remain neutral and refrain from being conclusive in this instant. What is particularly distinctive in this effort, is the significance attached to the consequence of a more experiential consumer citizenship (Chapter 15) at a time when the idea of emotional citizenship is gaining currency (Isbell, 2012).

Its ambition is to elucidate how individuals experience their engagement with market activities. In sum, this fundamental idea resonates with Macromarketing's emphasis on market access and dignity (Barnhart & Peñaloza, 2013), and, in spirit, foregrounds a strong argument in favor of a deeper phenomenological explanation than mere quantification.

While this Chapter represents a climax of sorts, it inspires future efforts to construct a comprehensive index that connects consumer happiness to the marketplace. This is where the index can transcend individual emotion and consider contextual factors beyond income, caste/class distinctions, and cultural capital, including marketplace accessibility. In the absence of integrated controls, the scale risks under- or over-representing inequality, a susceptibility that becomes more apparent in the context of the World Happiness Report. Despite its annual media prominence, the current index relies heavily on limited national samples and GDP-factored assessments to equate diverse cultural landscapes. This inquiry can be particularly significant in a nation like India, where happiness often emerges in contexts that may be materially sparse yet relationally rich (Biswas-Diener et al., 2012; Biswas-Diener & Diener, 2001), even as consumer culture increasingly dictates the contours of emotional aspiration. While it would necessitate calibration across various regions, attentiveness to structural determinants, and rigorous discriminant validation, its significance would lie in the challenge it poses to conventional epistemological frameworks.

While Happiness provides the much-needed motivation to revisit the question ‘what it takes to be happy in a marketplace’, the book hesitates in its handling of non-Western epistemic landscapes. Earlier evidence from India suggests that emotional lives can be configured entirely outside of consumer systems. The text nods to cultural variation, but its center of gravity remains market-first. For scholars in the Global South, the book raises more questions than answers that are not contradictory, but align almost perfectly with their emic understandings.

As marketing continues to defend its relevance by appealing to the improved quality of life, and happiness remains no longer contingent only upon consumption, the discipline may itself face an existential question. On the other hand, if it does hold true, do we have an overarching theory to explain happiness under conditions of algorithmic persuasion, surveillance infrastructures, and platform-shaped desire (Airoldi & Rokka, 2022; Flisfeder, 2022). The book does a great service to the discipline by opening pathways to conclusions, but it does so by provoking new questions that the field conveniently abandoned.

Conclusion

Our interpretative attempt is influenced by our positionality as students of macromarketing operating in and from the Global South. We acknowledge both the intensity of desire driven by market forces and the enduring nature of contentment independent of consumption. In this context, one may find oneself reflecting upon Schopenhauer (1818/1969), whose engagement with the Upanishads and Buddhist thoughts led him to the idea that happiness is not the inherent condition of human existence but rather a fleeting escape from suffering. This perspective offers an alternative reading of the book's central claim: rather than understanding the marketplace as the moral center of institutionalised happiness—that is, the institutional site through which societies define, legitimate, and distribute the conditions of a ‘happy’ life—Schopenhauer might remind us that such institutionalization is itself a cultural artefact, not a metaphysical given. Under these circumstances, we are still left with the most important question: what does it now take to call a life ‘happy’ in a market-saturated world?

If this premise is accepted, an inquiry into happiness surely justifies a repositioning. While the marketplace may not guarantee happiness, it offers a range of strategies to alleviate suffering. Viewed through this lens, the book's contribution lies in its philosophical challenge to consider whether marketing research has given up on the question of happiness because it is resolved, or because it is unsettling. The contribution of Happiness lies in reframing the happiness–consumption nexus as an ontological question rather than a causal one. Here, happiness is treated not as a measurable or quantifiable outcome, but as a conceptual artefact structured by market systems. This aligns squarely with macromarketing's normative concern for systemic analysis (Hunt, 2011; Mick et al., 2012; Moisander et al., 2016; Nason, 1989) and the moral frameworks of the market.

The fundamental proposition of the book that happiness is pivotal is not due to making the argument that the market is its genesis, but because markets have been central in its conceptualization. This conjecture can serve as a critical resource for subsequent discussion on this topic. Happiness earns this appreciation not by settling all doubts in this discourse on happiness and consumption, but by advocating a revisit to it. It is a text that opens pathways rather than reaching conclusions, and for researchers in the field of macromarketing, its foremost contribution may reside in what it compels one to acknowledge, namely, the marketplace as the moral center of institutionalised happiness—by which we mean the primary institutional arena through which contemporary societies negotiate, authorize, and reproduce the very meaning of happiness. If consumer research has abandoned the happiness inquiry due to depletion of ideas, this Book illustrates that the current state of inquiry remains, both intellectually and normatively, inadequate.