Vivienne Chen

 

A recently accepted paper by Prof. Vivienne Chen in the Journal of Consumer Research compares possession (traditional consumption with ownership) to access (temporal consumption without ownership).  She tried to establish a multi-level consumer perspective for companies. This perspective will help improve the understanding of what drives consumers to desire ownership and possession, and what prevents consumers from desiring ownership. In the latter case, consumers would prefer to stay in temporal "access" relationships with products and services. This approach is particularly valuable under uncertain market circumstances.