Conspicuous Consumption

Abstract

This chapter explores the ideas of Thorstein Veblen, Marcel Mauss, and others as originally written and then applies these ideas to consumer life in the 21st century. Various principles of the serious leisure perspective are used to link conspicuous consumption in free time. Conspicuous consumption elevates significantly the importance for the consumer of the commercial side of this person’s leisure. Purchasing expensive, dazzling goods and services earns the buyer a cachet in the eyes of the other people in that person’s circle. As Veblen (1899, p. 64) put it in his day: ‘conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.’