Anti-Constellations: Exploring the Impact of Negation on Consumption

Negation is an important emergent theme in consumer research. The creation of meaning via consumption involves positive and negative choices. Consumption constellations have been used to model the complementarity of positive choices among multi-category products. Consumption anti-constellations have been proposed to represent the complementarity of negative choices across multi-category products. Anti-constellations involve two aspects of consumers' negative choices: non choice and anti choice. Findings from this exploratory study suggest that the creation of meaning via negative consumption is influenced by two sets of overlapping factors: by affordability availability and accessibility which can be linked to non choice; and by abandonment, avoidance and aversion which can be linked to anti choice. In conclusion, the importance for marketing management of understanding why' consumers reject certain products and brands is discussed.