The Consumer Explained through the Extended-Self

Abstract

The concept of extended-self gains group very fast and grow to be a subject of research for many studies. Although we shall never put an equal sign between possessions and the inner self, it is true that the self will always look for something alike. But, with the new era of social media and digital possessions, the new ‘me’ is extended online and we might represent us in a larger manner. Our research aim was to see the items of extension in different situations and on a distinct timeline; in other words, was to obtain a ‘windows in time’ of the consumer and its extended-self. Our findings allowed us to make conceptual maps of the items integrated into the self, and helped our exploratory research generate enough hypotheses and give great insight for other researchers which will want to follow the same subject.

Keywords

• extended-self
• possessions
• conceptual maps