HOW DECLUTTERING AND ORGANIZING ENHANCE CONSUMERS’ HAPPINESS? A MULTICULTURAL EXPLORATION THROUGH THE KONMARI METHOD
- LanguageENG
- URLhttp://db.koreascholar.com/Article/Detail/351375
p.830
How do consumed objects move through the journey from possession to dispossession? Where do consumers find happiness in this process? Prior research seems to focus on the two extreme ends: on one end, happiness can be found in consumption; on the other end, mindful consumer behaviour such as conscious dispossession has also proven to influence consumer happiness. However, little is known about how the consumed items moving through different stages from ‘possession’ to ‘dispossession,’ and how happiness is generated and influences the decisions during the practices. More importantly, consumption patterns are often heavily influenced by cultural contexts. Focusing on a decluttering approach, KonMari Method, this research aims to yield insights on object-subject relationships beyond what is currently available in the literature via the lens of multicultural comparison. The analysis of 10 English and 10 Mandarin blog narratives reveal that it is an interactive process to redefine the place of an object in one’s heart and one’s house. In line with the prior study, our results suggest that the classifying method and the object-subject relations seem to be an essential element in defining consumer happiness. However, while the KonMari steps are linear with a rigid procedure, depending on participants’ symbolic classification and how flexible it can be, they may experience a different level of challenges; hedonic, eudaimonic and spiritual well-being are differently activated during the decluttering process. Contrary to the previous belief that organizing can be daunting and tedious, the setup of the KonMari method creates an extraordinary experience that often results in a high level of happiness activated differently in the Eastern and Western cultures. In particular, Western English speaking consumers mostly experience a feeling of excitement. For Eastern Mandarin speaking consumers, the peacefulness of the experience is underlined.