Despite the prevalence of both chronic and transient loneliness and the detrimental consequences associated with them, as a negatively-valenced response to social exclusion, loneliness has received surprisingly little attention in the marketing literature. Based on research showing that lonely people often lack meaning in their life, we propose that ritualistic behavior that involves consumer products may reduce loneliness by increasing meaning in life. Specifically, a series of studies finds that engaging in even minimal, unfamiliar rituals reduces loneliness among lonely consumers. Support for the important role of meaningfulness comes from results showing that the effect of rituals on loneliness is mediated by meaning in life via perceived product meaningfulness, and that ritualistic behavior no longer impacts loneliness when the experience of meaningfulness can be derived incidentally.

尽管长期和短暂的孤独感普遍存在，并且伴随着它们带来的有害后果，但作为对社会排斥的负面评价，孤独感在市场营销文献中却很少受到关注。根据研究表明孤独的人在生活中常常缺乏意义，我们建议涉及消费品的仪式性行为可以通过增加生活中的意义来减少孤独感。具体而言，一系列研究发现，即使是极少的不熟悉的仪式，也会减少孤独消费者的孤独感。对有意义的重要作用的支持来自以下结果：结果表明，仪式对孤独感的影响是通过感知到的产品有意义来通过生活中的意义来介导的，