Buddhist psychology: Selected insights, benefits, and research agenda for consumer psychology

Consumer psychology has been overly reliant on a small set of paradigms. As a result, the field appears less prepared than it could aspire to be for contributing new knowledge on, and relief from, our hyper-consumption era. Accordingly, I explore Buddhist psychology by drawing from its foundational framework known as the Three Marks of Existence (suffering,imperinanence, and no-self) to introduce an Eastern theory of mind and provide alternative guidance on research for consumer well-being. The THE framework offers an opportunity to re-think the priorities, nature, and processes of the comparing and judging consumer mind (e.g., expectations, preferences, satisfaction); the attaching and depending consumer mind (e.g., ownership, materialism, excessive behaviors); and the deciding, choosing, and regulating consumer mind (marketplace morality, cognitive biases, values-based choice, and free will). From these considerations I generate research questions and summarizing propositions for future research. The closing discussion synopsizes the contributions and limitations, including extra opportunities for integrating Buddhist and consumer psychologies. (C) 2016 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.