The Social Congruency Framework: Mapping Different Types of Social Consumption Experiences

It is often said that much of consumption is “social” in nature, but what does this mean? This article proposes the social congruency framework for differentiating between different types of social consumption experiences—characterizing a consumption experience with respect to congruency with a social partner on up to three dimensions: what, where, and when. Utilizing this social congruency framework, we propose four different social consumption experiences: solo consumption with a social referent, asynchronous social consumption, synchronous social consumption, and shared consumption. We then leverage this framework to differentiate between different types of social consumption experiences and to explicate why this differentiation between different types of social consumption experiences matters in terms of how it can facilitate future research examining the nature of congruency within experiences as well as the antecedents and consequences across social consumption experiences.