Exploring Eudaimonic Consumption Careers

Ceyda Sinag
2 days ago
5 min read

Written By Ceyda Sinağ, Post-Doc at Sabancı University, Turkiye

We know consumers may feel exhausted due to the pace of modern life, the monotony of work, or the overwhelming responsibilities they face. As a corollary, they seek out temporary escapes through extraordinary experiences. But then, as every good story has an end, they eventually return to their everyday lives.

But what if they do not return?

The article in press, "Eudaimonic Consumption Careers" by Ann-Marie Kennedy (University of Canterbury), Marian Makkar (RMIT University), and Samuelson Appau (Melbourne Business School) answers this question and explores the experience of individuals dedicating themselves to extraordinary consumption careers.

Turning passion into a career

After extraordinary consumption experiences, some consumers decide not to return to their 9-to-5 lifestyles. Instead, they go in search of deeper meaning and passion. They turn extraordinary experiences into a livelihood that provides fulfilment and self-actualization. The authors refer to such lifestyle choices as Eudaimonic Consumption Careers (ECCs) and explore the career journeys of snowsport instructors as a manifestation of ECCs.

They examine how consumers choose and manage their ECCs, and what factors drive them to leave ECCs. The answers to these questions come from more than ten years of ethnographic research. Indeed, the first author, Ann-Marie turned her lived experience as a snowsport instructor into research. Results show that an eudaimonic transition occurs when consumers seek deeper meanings from a leisure activity. Two major transformations arise. First, consumers commit to continuous learning and improvement. Second, they recognize this activity as an epistemic, goal-oriented activity. Challenges set eudaimonic careers apart from serious leisure pastimes: global travel, subsistence wages, balancing work and commitment to their eudaimonic activity, and minimizing material attachments. Consumers unable to cope with these challenges or whose motivation diminishes end their ECCs. Post-ECC, some become hobbyists again, some seek eudaimonia in other pursuits, and some abandon the pursuit of eudaimonia.

By theorizing eudaimonic consumption careers, the authors expand existing research on extraordinary consumption, consumer work, and serious leisure, as well as critical analyses of the limits of modern life. They demonstrate that ECCs are distinct from ‘purchased’ and brief extraordinary experiences and instead encompass a lifestyle that questions a consumerist ethos. Thus, the authors document a form of consumer resistance to a 9-to-5 life.

The “coolest” ethnography

Ann-Marie teaches and conducts research in areas such as social marketing and sustainability at the University of Canterbury. Yet, she tells me, "If someone asked me who I am, I would still say I'm a snowboard instructor". She even lives in a ski resort with her family, 90 minutes from Christchurch. I was curious about how Ann-Marie's career unfolded. Upon completing her PhD, Ann-Marie left her position as a senior lecturer in academia and began her snowboarding journey. She soon realised that this extraordinary experience was rich in meaning and worth exploring academically. So, she started her years-long ethnographic journey while mastering the snowboard.

Such a personal experience is a crucial part of ethnographic research, as the researcher needs to immerse themselves in the community of interest studied to gain deep cultural insights. Ann-Marie captured her data digitally, which she finds very useful for such long projects. She feels fortunate that she conducted her work during a time when digital technology makes recording notes relatively easy.

Following passion over prestige

As we know from the article, Ann-Marie ended her ECC because she lost interest and motivation. Her transition into academia unfolded over several years. She told me people advised her that if she wrote articles on the social issues that interested her, she had little chance of publishing in prestigious journals and would never become a professor. However, once she set her sights on an academic career, she followed her heart:

“When I came back, it was freeing, because I decided that I would only do articles that were good for the world, good for society. And so, I moved into marketing for behavior change, social marketing, and sustainability.”

- Ann-Marie

The power of collective expertise

Ann-Marie met her co-author, Marian, during her time as a lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology, where Marian was pursuing her PhD. They have been friends ever since and have written together over the years. Ann-Marie explains to me that Marian added novel insights in the theory-building part of the article.

At IJRM, the team received two risky revisions. Initially, the article focused on calculated hedonism and voluntary simplicity. In the first revision, reviewers identified the hedonism aspect as a new contribution, yet they concluded that the sustainability angle was not novel. Based on that feedback, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review of hedonism. Marian brought new theoretical frameworks and layered conceptual insights. On the second revision, they sought help from another scholar to bring fresh eyes to the project. Marian's friend, Samuelson played a key role in enriching and reinterpreting the data.

“It was an excellent working relationship: I knew the data inside out, my co-authors contributed theoretical expertise, and together it formed a really nice mesh of skills and perspectives.”

- Ann-Marie

In the analysis, Marian and Samuelson offered alternative theories and perspectives on the data. There were times when Marian and Samuelson interpreted the ethnographic research data differently from Ann-Marie. Sometimes, she jumps in to say, "No, the quote does not say that" to her co-authors. Overall, the study emerged from the team’s combined individual strengths.

“These days, reviewers are so busy that you often might not get very constructive feedback. Yet, our reviewers provided really constructive feedback and specific actions to take. And then we were even more fortunate that our associate editor and the editor helped us interpret those reviews, and gave us good guidance.”

- Ann-Marie

Read the paper

Interested in reading “Eudaimonic Consumption Careers” Read the full paper here.

Want to cite the paper?

Kennedy, A. M., Makkar, M., & Appau, S. (2025). Eudaimonic consumption careers. International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Meet the Author

Ann-Marie Kennedy

Professor of Marketing at the University of Canterbury

What’s your most unforgettable moment on the slopes?

In my first season in Canada, I'd never snowboarded in powder snow. My friends and I went to the big resort mountains. They skied while I snowboarded, and after reaching the slope, we arrived at a wide, flat area at the bottom. And the skiers just went through this, pushing themselves along and navigating the flat area. I couldn't do that as a snowboarder, so my board just went slower and slower, and then I started sinking into the snow. The snow was so high that it reached up to my waist. There was so much snow on top of my board that I couldn't get my hand down to undo it and get my foot out, so I couldn't get out of this flat area. One of the skiers had to come and rescue me to move the snow away.

Who is the researcher from any field you would like to sit down to lunch with? What would you say to him/her?

Morris Holbrook wrote "Feline Consumption: Ethnography, Felologies, and Unobtrusive Participation in the Life of a Cat," which was published in the European Journal of Marketing. He did an ethnography on cats. I first read it when I was a master's student, and it was one of the reasons I began to truly enjoy research. I could see the appeal—he takes on the role of a cat, which is both playful and thought-provoking. It made me think seriously about whether I didn't have to take myself completely seriously as an academic. It's a great article. I would just love to talk to him about how that ethnography came about.

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