Understanding of consumption is central for building a sustainable society. Consumption influences growth, wealth, and enables many different experiences but is not unilaterally positive. Everybody does not have the same opportunity to consume due to a lack of resources in terms of money, knowledge, and/or time. It is neither possible to overlook the negative impact of consumption on the environment, which is currently one of society’s greatest challenges. Increased consumption, particularly during the last few decades, has resulted in growing waste with a negative impact on the environment.
Businesses, government agencies, organisations, and politicians are all interested in understanding consumption in a society where it plays a more important role. Today’s consumers are make decisions regarding food, clothes, housing, schools, health care, vehicle inspection, electricity providers, pension, travel, entertainment, etc. Thus, consumption does not only concern products, but also services and culture. Besides, consumers (and customers) are ascribed a more important role in society, which is reflected in notions and concepts such as consumer, customer, and market orientation as well as co-creation of value.
Consumption is in our research group viewed as a complex phenomenon in a consumer culture. This means that we problematise in order to consider different perspectives and to avoid distinctly narrow interpretations such as right or wrong. We believe that different perspectives, theories, and methods are necessary for understanding multi-faceted phenomenon as consumption. Interdisciplinary research that includes different disciplines’ perspectives is encouraged in our research group. In several of our studies, the consumer perspective is complemented with a societal- or production perspective where conditions for setting up systems that support more sustainable consumption is studied often based on different network theories.
The research group includes members who are involved in ongoing projects. Our group includes also associated members with an interest in sustainable consumption, but not currently involved in research projects on sustainable consumption.