Value-in-disposition: Exploring how consumers derive value from disposition of possessions

Abstract

This study explores value-in-disposition: the reflective ways consumers use disposition process and prospects to enhance the value obtained from their possessions. Data from in-depth interviews and student essays highlight disposition as a process of revaluation of possessions and emphasize the significance of transferable value. The study elucidates the ways disposition conduits turn possessions into gifts, sacrifices, or commodities through which consumers transfer and create value by forming new relations and maintaining and strengthening their social connections. A darker side of disposition also emerges. In controlling the flow of their possessions, consumers reproduce a social order that favors and accentuates their own position. Finally, the study identifies various value enhancement and protection strategies through which consumers deal with nontransferable value and negotiate disposition. In doing so, it shows that the disposition process can trigger attachment to objects.