Pets As Extended Self in the Context of Pet Food Consumption

In this paper, the construct of extended self is connected to pets and especially to pet food consumption. Literature review showed that the construct of extended self relating to pets consists of three opposing aspect pairs: personal and social, symbolic and functional as well as attachment and control. Our empirical data was quantitative by its nature. As a result, our data suggests that those consumers who regarded their pets as their self extensions differ from other respondents and consume pet food differently than the others. Furthermore, most of the theoretically found aspects could be connected to pet food consumption patterns. For long, one of the basic assumptions of consumer behaviour has been that consumers’ possessions have meanings beyond their utilitarian benefit (e.g. Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Wallendorf, Belk and Heisley 1988). Accordingly, it has been claimed that we define, learn and remind ourselves through consumption objects. In this way, consumption objects become consumers’ extended self. (Belk 1988.) Belk in his seminal work (1988) provides evidence from several disciplines for the existence of the construct of extended self, its functions, processes related to it and different categories of possessions it could be applied to. One of the possessions categories in which the construct of extended self has been applied to is pets. When seeing pets as extended self, consumers adopt pets’ traits, behaviours, and appearance and project their own personality onto the pet (Beck and Katcher 1983, 253; Savishinsky 1986, 120-121). There is also plenty of evidence in the research of human-animal – bond stemming from various disciplines concerning pets as self extensions or parts of consumers’ self (e.g. Beck and Katcher 1983; Savishinsky 1986). In spite of the large attention and discussion for and against (Cohen 1989) the construct of extended self has gained, it still seems to remain ambiguous. Moreover, the construct of extended self has not been connected to consumption and buying behaviour. It is noticed that consumers’ possessions reflect consumers’ self, but how does this show in consumers’ consumption behaviour? Especially, the connections between seeing the pet as extended self and buying products to it, is yet to be studied (cf. Aylesworth, Chapman and Dobscha 1999). In this paper, we aim to grasp the ambiguous construct of extended self as it is seen related to pets. More specifically we are to study pet food consumption of those consumers who see their pets as their extended self. Food consumption is chosen to our study context because it is something that both pets and humans have in common. In this study pet food consumption refers to both buying pet food and feeding the pet. We set following objectives to our study. First, we offer a literature review concerning pets as extended self in order to clarify different aspects of the extended self construct. Literature review is based on both consumer behaviour research as well as on studies related to human-animal bond from other disciplines. Second, we set three empirical objectives: characterising the extended self group, comparing pet food consumption between the extended self group and the others, and connecting empirical results with the theoretical aspects of the construct of extended self. The study is exploratory in a sense that it approaches the phenomenon quantita