The consumption of togetherness: Nongkrong and the relational ontology of consumer being in Indonesia

This paper proposes Nongkrong, the culturally embedded Indonesian practice of informal social gatherings, as a decolonial methodology for understanding consumer behavior. Grounded in everyday social interaction, Nongkrong offers a space for trust-based conversations in which people talk about what they buy, use, and desire, and in which meanings around brands and products are shared and negotiated. Conventional formats such as the structured focus group often rely on clear researcher-participant boundaries and purpose-built settings; Nongkrong instead works through relationality, fluidity, and mutual exchange. As a decolonial approach, it centers a culturally embedded practice within Indonesia and takes seriously the consumption experiences, language, and social rhythms of participants. The paper argues that such local practices can be recognized as legitimate settings for consumer inquiry that complement, rather than replace, established methods. Nongkrong is developed here as a proof of concept, illustrated through a single extended session with five young adults in East Java whose conversation was reconstructed from fieldnotes rather than recorded. The session shows that the conditions Nongkrong requires can be met in one favorable case; it does not establish the method's effectiveness or its transferability across Indonesia. The paper sets out the ethical and analytic conditions for research-informed Nongkrong, its limitations, and an agenda for further development and testing.