What would it take to have a world where everyone had enough? How can we eliminate poverty, leave enough for nonhuman nature, and increase well-being? This book explores ways the reader can live their life, engage with cultural change, and engage with policy making, to build that world. We are presently on a path to environmental destruction, as our societies are driven by forces which leave many people without what they need to meet their basic needs, while also wasting vast resources on an unsatisfying consumer economy. The current system does not lead to a sense of wellbeing, even among those who are relatively materially comfortable. This book focuses on solutions for building a world of enough. It explains how we can reorient our thinking and take the steps necessary to transform our social systems. It looks at ways to reduce the insatiable desire for status and consumption that drive our economies. It focuses on emerging approaches to economics that take well-being as their goal and explores the policies that are crucial for getting there, such as reducing inequality, investing in public goods, and reducing work time. The book arms the reader with a variety of tools for building a world where everyone has enough for a good life.

Rising Consumer Materialism presents a theoretical advancement of materialism research. It identifies eight areas of a consumer's life that are inter-disciplinary and of prime importance towards promoting happy and rewarding lifestyles. This study examines the pre-planned purchase process as the primary step towards satisfactory consumption. The theoretical framework provides a stream of research possibilities that guide readers towards healthy consumption patterns. Therefore, the book offers practical solutions to problems such as loneliness and unhappiness. It advocates a new dimension of consumption activity and lifestyle choices that can help to re-socialize and improve social bonds; hitting materialism right at its core, making the consumption experience well informed and beneficial for the consumer as well as society. Together, pre-planned engaging, intrinsic experiential purchases with a view to environmentalism, religiosity, social giving, social support and nostalgia can cure the excessive emphasis on acquiring and showing off valuables that are disruptive to a consumer’s social affiliations and subjective wellbeing. Rather than utilizing material possessions as a proxy measure for success and happiness resulting in only temporary happiness, discontent, continuous brand/product switching, undesirable post purchase evaluations and shifting brand loyalties, the book establishes alternative mechanisms for achieving happiness. The integrated framework provides a comprehensive solution rather than a half-baked specific situational-based intervention and is a must read for academics, students and consumers alike.

We're bombarded by messages telling us that more, bigger, and better things are the keys to happiness-but after we pile up the stuff and pile on the hours, we end up exhausted and broke on a planet full of trash. Sarah van Gelder and her colleagues at YES! Magazine have been exploring the meaning of real happiness for eighteen years. In this much-needed volume, they marshal fascinating research, in-depth essays, and compelling personal stories that lead to a life-altering conclusion: what makes us truly happy are the depth of our relationships, the quality of our communities, the contribution.

This volume addresses how we can find happiness and well-being in the material world. It builds on previous works that find that materialism is associated with lowered well-being (materialists are less happy) and that consumerism, in all its profusion, is harmful to environmental well-being. How can we use the money and possessions in our lives in the service of well-being? Apparently not by being materialistic. Can we benefit from the many wonders of the marketplace -- in technology, convenience and aesthetics -- without falling prey to the lures and dangers of excessive material preoccupation? Can we meet our material needs in ways that nourish growth and well-being? The authors of the chapters in this volume are on-going researchers into such questions. Herein you can learn about the hedonic benefits of thrift and of spending on experiences; how possessions can be beneficial; how different types of consumers spend money; cultural variations in conceptions of the "good life;" how we might reconcile environmental and consumer well-being; and how to measure the whole of human, economic, and environmental well-being. Taken all together, this collection finds grounds for compatibility between what's good for the consumer and what's good for the environment. This volume appeals to academics, professionals, students and others interested in materialism and consumer well-being.

This book helps quench the quest of knowledge of academicians, researchers, and others interested in developing a complete and critical understanding of consumer happiness. The relentless search of happiness by humans is sought in different ways. Scientific discussion on happiness for long was considered a forte of Philosophers. Other disciplines seldom delved into this. But today not only science but neuroscience, marketing, and other varied fields have started delving into it and have developed a keen interest. The book has been conceptualized on this line of thinking and thus divided into two parts. The first part is customized towards understanding various perspectives of happiness and the relative importance of knowing the same. The first chapter of this section is on the biological perspective of happiness. The second is titled ‘Behavioural perspective’. The third chapter is an attempt to elucidate the cultural perspective of the concept of happiness. The fourth is on the role of technology in inducing happiness. Fifth and sixth are on theories of happiness and measuring happiness, respectively. Knowledge about the different perspective and theories has a wide range of benefits. It informs us about how the brain works, interprets, and reacts. This theoretical understanding helps us to move beyond the trial and error methods towards a more scientific underpinning of adoption of measures that would generate long-lasting happiness in consumers. The second part of the book is dedicated toward understanding consumer happiness from a neuroscience perspective, i.e. keeping consumer happy. This segment has ten chapters. The first is on differentiating the concept of happiness from satisfaction. The second is on sensory marketing and happiness. The third deals with the store design and shelving of products to generate happiness. Fourth and fifth chapters relate to persuading the consumers. While the fourth chapter is on developing persuasive messages and the fifth is on subliminal messaging sixth chapter is on pricing and seventh on advertising. The eighth chapter highlights the role of emotions and the ninth is on the different factors that induce happiness in consumers. The last chapter is about raising some unanswered questions and food for thought for readers. Together the contents of the book make for a complete understanding of the concept of happiness and how it is shaping the world of marketing. Addressing the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of consumer happiness in the same book makes the book comprehensive.

In Shiny Objects, a cross between In Praise of Slowness and The Tipping Point, consumer behavior expert Professor James A. Roberts takes us on a tour of America's obsession with consumerism—pointing out its symptoms, diagnosing specific problems, and offering a series of groundbreaking solutions. Roberts gives practical advice for how to correct the materialistic trends in our lives which lock us into a cycle of financial hardship and stress. Shiny Objects, a new The Paradox of Choice for the modern reader, is more than a critique of capitalism—it's also an exploration into how we can live happier, fuller, more productive lives today.

The authors assert that traditional sociological theories of human nature and society do not pay sufficient attention to the evolution of "big-brained hominoids," resulting in assumptions about humans' propensity for "groupness" that go against the record of primate evolution. When this record is analyzed in detail, and is supplemented by a review of the social structures of contemporary apes and the basic types of human societies (hunter-gathering, horticultural, agrarian, and industrial), commonplace criticisms about the de-humanizing effects of industrial society appear overdrawn, if not downright incorrect. The book concludes that the mistakes in contemporary social theory - as well as much of general social commentary - stem from a failure to analyze humans as "big-brained" apes with certain phylogenetic tendencies. This failure is usually coupled with a willingness to romanticize societies of the past, notably horticultural and agrarian systems