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This article unpacks time as a cultural consumption resource and introduces the concept of consumer timework. Consumer timework refers to marketplace stakeholders' negotiation of competing interpretations of how the past and the future relate using a wide range of consumption objects and activities. Building on the theory of temporalization, we argue that social tensions, conflicts, and breaks drive the past and the future apart in multiple incompatible ways that individuals and societies must contend. We theorize four fundamental dynamics of consumer timework in which market stakeholders engage: integrative, disintegrative, subjugatory, and emancipatory. Integrative and disintegrative consumer timework respectively harmonize and rupture the multiple temporal orientations (past, present, and future) to create shared communities or counter-communities of time through consumption. Subjugatory and emancipatory consumer timework respectively enforce and disrupt temporal hierarchies of power through consumption. We delineate these temporal dynamics using examples from extant consumer research. We conclude by establishing a future research agenda on consumer timework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on previous research that has led to the development of a psychometric scale designed for capturing individual time orientations over a 15-year period. The time styles scale was initially developed in France. Cross-cultural replications of the scale were undertaken in several countries (Germany, Hong Kong, Tunisia, Vietnam), with particular emphasis on the influence of language on psychometric measurement. We demonstrate the nomological validity of the scale by reviewing research that has assessed its ability to predict values, individual activity planning, attitudes towards waiting time, as well as buying and consumption behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]