The time of consumers: A review of researches and perspectives

This article provides a synthesis of the research on consumer time. Based on a systematic review of studies from the past 25？years, it offers an original interpretative framework by grouping consumer time into two categories. In the first, the studies on ‘resource time’ reveal that time is perceived differently according to situational and individual antecedents. In the second, the research on ‘personality trait time’ presents time from a global (where time is perceived as a whole), comparative (comparing several time zones) or selective (positioned in a precise time zone) perspective, which is characterised according to the depth to which the time variable is anchored in an individual’s personality. Although this categorisation sheds light on the concept of consumer time, it was not possible to establish a unified theoretical anchoring. This research argues in favour of decompartmentalising the different approaches and methodologies