This study investigates the purchase and consumption of a house. An interpretive methodology was used, which resulted in multiple indepth interviews with fourteen informants and ten months of participant observation with Appalachian Mountain Housing building two houses for needy consumers.

Chapters two to four describe the major emergent themes from the study. Specifically, chapter two looks at the house as a constraint on consumption. The purchase of a house channels a large portion of the consumers’ resources into payment of the mortgage and purchase of complementary items, and constrains future consumption. Chapter three examines the transformation of a house into a home, and describes four ways by which the informants for this study made this transformation. Chapter four provides an interpretation of the emergent themes discussed in chapters two and three, and suggests the home is a continuously evolving entity. The home changes both physically and symbolically to reflect changes in the lives of the informants.

Chapters five and six connect the findings of this study to the existing literature on consumer acquisitiveness. Specifically, chapter five discusses materialism in the context of the purchase of a house, and concludes that the experiences of the informants for this study are substantially different from the existing theories of materialism. This may be due to nonmaterialistic informants, but it may also reflect inadequate theories of materialism. The ideological assumptions of current theories of materialism are examined, and the study concludes an ideological bias exists. Some of the results are then reinterpreted using political ideology as a guide. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact of children on materialistic consumption.

Chapter six expands on McCracken’s (1988a) theory of Diderot unities and the Diderot effect to better understand the findings of this study. McCracken’‘s theory is expanded by integrating 1) sources of the correspondence between possessions and certain cultural categories; 2) meaning extraction and creation; 3) the extended self; and 4) materialism. The results of previous chapters of this study are then reinterpreted in light of the integrated model.

The study concludes with a summary of the findings, and a discussion of the contribution of the study, as well as limitations and future directions for subsequent research.