On Carrying Identity Home in Paper Bags | Existential Consumerism Explained

Dear Reader,

At 11:42 on a Saturday morning, a woman stands in the fragrance section of a department store holding two nearly identical glass bottles at chest height, alternating between them with ceremonial seriousness.

She smells one wrist, then the other. She closes her eyes briefly, as though awaiting moral instruction.

A sales associate hovers nearby, whispering olfactory notes in the language of personality traits rather than scent chemistry.

“This one feels more you,” he says.

She nods, visibly relieved, as if something ontological has just been clarified. No money has yet changed hands, but identity work is already underway.

Retail spaces are often described as economic environments, yet they function just as vividly as psychological theatres. People do not simply enter to buy goods. 

They arrive carrying uncertainty about who they are, who they are becoming, and whether the version of self they are assembling feels coherent enough to inhabit.

This is the terrain of existential consumerism, consumption motivated not only by need or pleasure but also by the desire to stabilise the self in an age in which identity feels constantly under construction.

The self, now permanently in beta:

The self is no longer given; it must be created and curated carefully.

Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself”.

Consumer culture has operationalised this philosophy with remarkable efficiency.

If the self must be made, markets will supply the materials.

Aesthetic systems now exist for every existential viewpoint: minimalist restraint, luxury maximalism, ethical consumption, biohacked wellness, digital nomadism.

Each arrives with purchasable artefacts that make identity feel tangible rather than abstract.

Shopping becomes less about acquisition and more about ontological reassurance.

Yet existential philosophy also carries a warning. 

Martin Heidegger wrote about the danger of dissolving into “the They”, the anonymous collective that dictates norms and behaviours, allowing individuals to avoid confronting authentic existence.

Consumer culture offers an escape route into this condition.

Rather than confronting who one is, one buys what people like oneself are expected to own. Authenticity becomes socially pre-coded. You do not discover your identity; you select it from curated shelves.

Sartre might have called this bad faith, but retail calls it lifestyle alignment.

Mortality enters the shopping basket:

If identity anxiety explains one half of existential consumerism, mortality anxiety explains the other.

Terror Management Theory proposes that awareness of death generates deep existential fear. Individuals cope by attaching themselves to symbols that confer meaning, status or continuity.

Consumer goods take on symbolic weight in this context.

In one well-known study, participants were asked to write about their own death before reviewing products. They subsequently showed a stronger preference for luxury brands and a greater willingness to pay premium prices than those writing about neutral topics.

The purchases did not reduce fear of death itself, but they definitely reduced the sense of being small or temporary.

Objects here became symbolic comforts.

Owning a watch does not stop time, but it makes its passing feel more meaningful.

Commodities and the illusion of meaning:

Long before behavioural labs measured these effects, Karl Marx observed that capitalist societies imbue objects with emotional and social value detached from the labour that produced them. 

Meaning migrates from human connection to material possession.

Jean Baudrillard extended this idea, arguing that goods function primarily as signs within a symbolic language system.

“Consumption,” he wrote, “is an active mode of relation.”

We buy objects not only for what they do but for what they say.

A handbag communicates status fluency. A sustainable brand communicates ethical literacy. A limited sneaker drop communicates cultural proximity.

Identity becomes semiotic, where we are narrated through what we own.

Viewed through this lens, contemporary consumer behaviour starts to make unusual sense.

Luxury goods signal significance as much as success.

Experiences, travel, retreats, and expensive dining are valued because they produce memories rather than possessions, stories rather than storage.

Consumers move fluidly between lifestyles, using purchases to test different selves.

And then there is minimalism, perhaps the most elegant paradox of all.

The minimalism paradox:

Minimalism presents itself as an escape from consumerism while operating within it.

Owning less becomes a way of expressing more.

Scarcity begins to signal status, where an empty room suggests control and intention rather than lack.

Silence becomes aesthetic when neutral colours, sparse shelves, and a curated absence signal clarity rather than deprivation.

Anti-consumption becomes consumption rebranded as virtue.

People buy fewer objects, but each carries a heavier identity weight.

The market, characteristically adaptable, now sells restraint as effectively as it once sold excess.

The contradiction no brand resolves:

Existential consumerism works, but only for a short while.

Purchases can lift mood, punctuate time and create a sense of progress. They help individuals feel momentarily balanced.

But the anxieties driving those purchases operate at a deeper level.

Objects can suggest permanence without granting it. They can signal identity without fully stabilising it, which is why consumption becomes cyclical rather than curative.

The self drifts, the market supplies, and the drift resumes.

Not because consumers are stupid, but because merchandise cannot conclusively resolve existential questions.

Spend enough time in a contemporary shopping complex, and it starts to look a lot like a distributed system for emotional management.

Luxury floors promise legacy, wellness stores promise renewal, technology promises futurity, and sustainable brands promise moral alignment.

Each retail category addresses a different existential vulnerability.

Consumers move through them, assembling a provisional sense of coherence, purchasing small assurances that life is proceeding intelligibly.

An unfinished ending:

It would be tidy to conclude by saying that consumers will outgrow existential buying, meaning they will return to community, craft, or contemplation.

But the trajectory points elsewhere.

Existential consumerism is far from fading; in fact, it is evolving.

Artificial intelligence is already curating identity alongside products. Virtual goods carry symbolic weight without physical form. 

Digital avatars are styled with the same existential seriousness as real bodies.

The next frontier of consumption may not be about owning things at all, but owning versions of oneself.

Which leaves a lingering question.

If identity becomes infinitely editable, what exactly are consumers trying to stabilise through purchase?

And will any object, physical or virtual, ever be enough?

Cheers!

Akanksha