| The concept of "Quality of Life" (QOL) has evolved into a criterion in planning, conducting and evaluating various public and social policies and it has also become a common subject for research in several social sciences. In the field of marketing, substantial research efforts have been spent attempting to identify the implication of marketing activities to individual QOL. However, several conceptual and empirical limitations in past marketing studies have misdirected those research efforts. After identifying the common themes found in historical development of QOL research in social science fields, the current study attempts to: (1) provide a sound, theory based conceptualization of QOL, (2) categorize various approaches to studies of QOL, and (3) provide an explanatory framework based on this research to guide future studies of the relationship between marketing and individual QOL. In addition, focusing on potential empirical applications of the developed framework, the study adopts and contrasts the concept of consumer alienation to the concept of consumer satisfaction. The study's findings suggest that consumer alienation is a significant factor in explaining individual QOL and that it reflects the different aspects of consumers' evaluative responses toward consumption environments. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that there is a mediated relationship between consumer evaluative responses and individual QOL perceptions rather than the direct and automatic relationship previously assumed. These results imply the potential contributions of the sociological and integrative perspectives which provide the conceptual guidelines for the explanatory model proposed in this study. |
