What is hedonism? And how is it related to art consumption?

In a perspective that gives more value to the consumer we will be discussing one of the most important human responses to the consumption of an artistic product. We will be presenting the hedonism as a behavioral response to the consumption of art.

The hedonic consumption is a behavioral response, it was introduced by Holbrook & Hirshman in 1982 as an emotional response due to the consumption of artistic products (music, theatre, movie, etc.) nowadays, some industries in different fields (others than art and culture), use some tools to generate those hedonic responses for a better consumption experience and to keep their customers.

The definition of hedonism is «those facets of consumer behavior that relate to the multisensory, fantasy, and emotive aspects of one's experience with products» (Holbrook & Hirshmann,1982) To explain more, the consumption of artistic products activate the person’s senses of sight, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching (that’s what we mean by multisensory), activate his fantasies  by generating some historic images or fantastic images and make him travel through space and time, and finally produce emotions; like emotions of happiness, fear, sadness, pleasure, etc. If one person had experienced at least one of these three emotions after consuming an artistic product, we can say that he had a hedonic experience.

As a hole, the artistic product generates hedonism, but some details can help consumers to increase this behavioral response. We can talk about the product in itself and the subject treated, also the aesthetic part of the product (scene decoration, quality of sound, scene lights, colors and shapes, etc.).