Toward a theory of consumer choice as sociohistorically shaped practical experience: The fits-like-a-glove (FLAG) framework

This article presents an ethnographic investigation into choice for postsecondary education. Findings from the investigation highlight choice experience during which the consumer finds the object of choice to be a perfect fit or to fit like a glove. The article seeks to expand consumer research's repertoire of choice models to grasp more effectively such choices. Practice theory, which emphasizes the sociohistorical and embodied qualities of everyday experience, is used to develop the Fits-Like-a-Glove (FLAG) framework of choice. Overall, the data suggest that FLAG choice entails an embodied, holistic experience of perfect fit arising during a consumer's in situ encounter with an object of choice. FLAG choice is explained by highlighting the sociohistorical shaping of this encounter. By comparing and contrasting it with dominant models of choice in consumer research, the implications of the FLAG framework of choice are brought into relief.