ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 A Friend And/Or a Foe?: Exploring Activeness of Objects in Consumption Olga Kravets, Bilkent University, Turkey Berna Tari, Bilkent University, Turkey The issue of consumer-object relation has received considerable attention in consumer research. This paper explores peoples’ perception of an object as an active entity in consumption; specifically, the focus here is on how objects’ activeness is realized in everyday consumption practices. Twenty three interviews were conducted with consumers regarding their experiences with active objects in their lives. Two emergent themes–objects as companions and objects as consumers–are discussed to illuminate different dimensions of objects’ activeness in consumption. We hope to contribute to an understanding of object-relations that arise from objects’ functionality, and broadly from the work aspect of consumption (Latour 1992). [to cite]: Olga Kravets and Berna Tari (2008) ,"A Friend And/Or a Foe?: Exploring Activeness of Objects in Consumption", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 35, eds. Angela Y. Lee and Dilip Soman, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 771-772. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/13568/volumes/v35/NA-35 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.