The Quest for Authenticity in Consumption: Consumers’ Purposive Choice of Authentic Cues to Shape Experienced Outcomes

Drawing from image-elicited depth interviews, we investigate whether consumers pursue the consumption of authentic objects with specific personal goals in mind. We find that consumers are motivated to focus on those particular cues in objects that for them convey authenticity (what is genuine, real, and/or true) and that this decision-making process is driven by a desire to draw different identity benefits (control, connection, virtue) from authentic objects. Our interpretive analysis elab-orates contributions to theorizing related to consumer agency in seeking authentic consumption experience. We provide cultural explanations for the desire to assert the authentic self in these particular ways. The nature of authenticity in consumption is contested.Researchers explain authenticity as original and staged (MacCannell 1973), fabricated (Belk and Costa 1998), iconic, indexical, and hypothetical (Grayson and Martinec 2004), self-referential hyperauthenticity (Rose and Wood 2005), symbolic (Culler 1981), existential (Wang 1999), literal or objective (Beverland, Lindgreen, and Vink 2008), legitimate (Kates