The Creative Consumer:

This research focuses on consumer creativity and uses frameworks from creativity theory to understand consumer behavior. Because this is a relatively new field of inquiry, the work belongs mainly in the context of discovery. Therefore, the topic was approached in an open, exploratory manner. Instead of formal hypotheses, a set of propositions and models were developed and tested empirically in a field study. Four concepts relevant to the understanding of consumer behavior from a creativity perspective are advanced: (1) creative cognitive processing, or the degree to which consumers engage in creative processing during decision making; (2) creative product, or the degree to which a solution to a consumption problem is considered creative; (3) creative person factors, or different psychological facilitators of creativity (i.e., knowledge, motivation, innovativeness, and efficacy); and (4) solution evaluation, or the degree to which a consumer evaluates his or her solution to a consumption problem favourably. In line with previous literature, a conceptual model, as well as four propositions about these concepts and their relationships, was developed.

Marit Gundersen Engeset is an associate professor of marketing at Buskerud University College, Norway. Her research interests include consumer creativity, consumer satisfaction and evaluation.