Consumer Wisdom for Personal Well-Being and the Greater Good:
Abstract: Historically, wisdom has been considered a leading character strength for guiding personal well-being and the greater good. It has also been routinely considered domain-specific. Hence, consumer researchers should not just borrow conceptualizations or measures of general wisdom from the social sciences or measures of specific wisdom from nonconsumption contexts. Drawing from recent exploratory research on consumer wisdom by Luchs and Mick (Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2018, 28(3), 365-392), we use survey data to test and refine their multidimensional framework as we develop a Consumer Wisdom Scale (CWS). Across five studies, we demonstrate the discriminant, nomological, predictive, and incremental validity of our CWS. We show that it explains unique variance across a variety of indicators of well-being (e.g., satisfaction with life) in comparison to other measures previously associated with well-being (e.g., relationship support). Further, we show that our CWS, versus a general wisdom measure, is more associated with select behaviors relevant to personal well-being and the greater good (e.g., exercise, healthy eating, and financial savings). Closing discussion summarizes our findings and limitations, and suggests future research.