자율적 소비의 조건 : 소비생활수기에 대한 텍스트분석을 중심으로

Abstract

Autonomous consumption is one of the preconditions of consumer sovereignty in the liberalist market model. But it is no more than a desirable moral of consumer behavior. This study is designed to make the concept of the consumer autonomy clear and to explore its practical implications by searching for requirements of autonomous consumption via textual analysis of 264 autographies regarding consumption experiences in the life world by consumers in their twenties. According to the results of the analysis, autonomous consumption necessarily requires three preconditions: the originality of the wish, the reasonability of goods required for the wish, and the authenticity of the consumption process. First, the originality of the wish means consumers' wishes must originate from consumers' real selves and their own life situations. Second, the reasonability of goods for the wish means goods must be right and suitable to one's wishes. Third, the authenticity of the consumption process means the practice of techniques that make one's wishes original and guide the reasonability of one's choice of goods. It takes a series of techniques for the self-examination of one's wishes, building up one's own accurate preference reasoning and discreet decisions in the moment of choice, and so on. Consumers' capabilities of paying, consumption values, social and private self-identities are central motivators that make consumers endure this patience-requiring consumption process. It is possible that a consumer decision making process can be autonomic to these preconditions as a decision is made under the structurally incessant consumption-oriented environment of modern consumer society. These three preconditions are on-going during real practice only by the consumers themselves as positive actors. Therefore, consumer autonomy can be defined as a self-reflexive ability that subjects consistency between the self-oriented consumption evaluation and the decision in favor of the universal domination of popular consumption logics driven by the market. Autonomous consumer is the subject freed from paradoxical consumption ideology of a consumer society. Consumer autonomy reflects the consumer's rational aspect. That means that the positive nature of consumers as self-conscious actors, that not only evaluate their consumption evolved from the meanings of their own genuine lives, but also control and direct their practices in the course of realizing their wishes, are related to the use of goods. Therefore, consumer autonomy is the essential requirement for the authority of consumers in modern society.