Consumer Consciousness

How do people experience products, brands, and digital environments through their senses and awareness?

Drawing on philosophy, psychology, marketing, and neuroscience, Consumer Consciousness examines how our engagement with everyday consumption and digital experiences can be enhanced or disrupted by technology. Conscious awareness through touch, sight, sound, and even virtual experiences shape our perception, decision-making, and well-being.

Central to this argument is the concept up the conscioumer : an ethically aware, reflective, and engaged individual, whose market choices align with personal, societal, and environmental values. Olivia Petit and Carlos Velasco highlight the role of unconscious mechanisms by tracing the historical and philosophical evolution of the consumer, advocating for a renewed focus on conscious experience as a tool for empowerment. Multisensory marketing, sensory ecosystems, and immersive technologies are shown not only to influence perception, but also to expand the possibilities of reflective and meaningful engagement.

Emerging technologies such as Artificial intelligence, IoT, XR, and robotics, are reshaping consumer consciousness, creating hybrid human-technology assemblages which challenge traditional notions of agency. The ethical stakes of these developments are high: Petit and Velasco make the case for responsible design, meta-cognitive capacities, and societal frameworks that foster well-being and sustainability. More than a theoretical exploration, Consumer Consciousness offers a practical and philosophical guide to understanding and cultivating conscious consumption.

Olivia Petit is an Associate Professor at KEDGE Business School. She earned her PhD at Aix-Marseille University, France, and her thesis received the Nestlé Foundation and EMAC McKinsey Marketing Dissertation Awards. HHer research focuses on consumer neuroscience, sensory and digital marketing. She investigates consumer embodiment in avatars and its impact on wellbeing, in research supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through the METAVETRE project (ANR-23-CE26-0015).

Carlos Velasco is a Professor at BI Norwegian Business School and co-founder of the Centre for Multisensory Marketing. Carlos received his D.Phil. in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, after which he worked in a number of postdoctoral and consulting projects in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. His work is situated at the intersection between Psychology, Marketing, and Human-Computer Interaction. For more information, visit https://carlosvelasco.info/