Understanding consumption within a residential care home : an interpretation of George’s everyday experiences of life and death

Abstract

We are witnessing perhaps the most important shift in the history of mankind – the rapid ageing of the earths population. This trend raises such issues as elderly care giving and living arrangements in old age. By virtue, the author suggests that managing service provision for elderly consumers within residential care homes is going to become an increasingly important issue as more consumers live longer and require residential care. Moreover, given the paucity of literature related to elderly consumers understandings of such institutions this research aims to illuminate and distil this issue. Based on existential-phenomenological hermeneutic interpretive methods the author reveals that elderly consumers actively consume life and death related experiences in order to create a meaningful existence within residential care homes.