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While personal consumption accounts for two-thirds of GDP, recent economic events have emphasized our limited ability to translate consumption patterns into policy. This book analyses the network memberships that emerge from the natural settings of our everyday lives, and the pervasive effects that these can have on our preferences and behavior as consumers. Effects of network memberships are nowhere more evident than in our interactions as consumers. Interaction models in consumption that are in pairwise contacts do not represent the complex interactions in networks and effects that are emergent from these interactions. In the proposed model, feedback from consumer activities to preferences is shown to have properties that increase their openness of effects of environments. These dynamics are shown to imply that there is more randomness than popularly recognized in both the daily lives of consumers and the generation of institutions that emerge from these interactions. The network model is then extended to give a form to effects of clustering that is emergent in networks. Effects of clustering on content overlap in the information that consumers exchange in the network are examined in a computational model. Hierarchical allocation heuristics are also implemented to study consumption and savings under differentiated consumer objectives. In applications, transfers that occur between consumption and work and relate to human capital are considered. Finally, the model of information use by networked consumers is used to indicate effects that consumption of information goods can have on economic growth and welfare.

Consumption takes place in settings or environments which have both direct and indirect effects on its dynamic path. Direct effects of environments on activities in consuming can occur through constraints that environments impose. Environment can also have indirect effects on consumption through enduring modification of internalized constructs which enter heuristics for decisions on activities. The importance of environments to consumption is increased by the definitional dependence of status on the judgements of others. This study examines microprocessing in consumer activities for status as it interacts with structure in the environments of these activities. The importance of environments in status activities provides the basis for a seperate, but related inquiry into observed differences in the form they take across societies. Conjecture on the consequences of differences in the structure of environments for consumption that typify a society is studied in the narrative statements by members of comparison societies and in the content of print advertising in these societies. Evolutionary processes which could establish observed differences in structure across societies are also considered in both their systematic and random components. I review models of random drift and stochastic resonance as candidate forms for generating observed structure in environments. Directions for the subsequent study of status through consumption are discussed.P Introduction: Status Through Consumption; Knowledge Use in Nonwork Activities for Status; Interactions of Consumer Microprocessing and Structured Environments: Activity Feedback and the Stability of Structure; Awards and Honors Systems in Structured Environments: Cross Societal Comparisons of Narrative Statements on Consuming for Status; Comparative Analyses of Consumption Appeals in the Print Advertising of the USA and France, 1955-1991 Random Process in the Generation of Structured Environments; Overview and directions for Study of Status Through Consumption

While consumers are recognized as valuing market goods and services for the activities they can construct from them in the frameworks of several disciplines, consequences of the characteristics of goods and services they use in these activities have not been well studied. In this book, knowledge-yielding and conventional goods and services are contrasted as factors in the construction of activities that consumers engage in when they are not in the workplace. Consumers are seen as deciding on non-work activities and the inputs to these activities according to their objectives, and the values and accumulated skills they hold. It is suggested that knowledge content in these activities can be efficient for consumer objectives and also have important externalities through its effect on productivity at work and economic growth. The exposition seeks to elaborate these points and contribute to multi-disciplinary dialogue on consumption. Introduction: Consuming Knowledge Dimensioning Consumption: The Use of Knowledge in Non-Work Activities The Construct of the Valuing of Knowledge and Personal Consumption Expenditure in the U.S. National Accounts 1929-1989 The Interaction of Non-Work and Work Activities: Cross-Domain Transfers of Skill and Affect Integrating Non-Work Activities into Frameworks of Economic Growth Directions for the Study of Knowledge Use in Non-Work Activities