The times of their lives: Phenomenological and metaphorical characteristics of consumer timestyles

Timestyles are the customary ways in which people perceive and use time. We propose that individuals' timestyles can be categorized in terms of social, temporal, planning, and polychronic orientations. We examine timestyle in a phenomenological investigation of a sample of American women and identify five emergent symbolic metaphors for time ( pressure cooker, map, mirror, river, and feast) that holistically encapsulate informants' multidimensional timestyles. We discuss the theoretical and substantive implications of our findings for understanding the role of timestyles in consumer behavior and in the ongoing conflicts that consumers experience in deciding what they should do with their discretionary time.