Academic Article Review – Does an iPod make you happy? An exploration of the effects of iPod ownership on life satisfaction Cockrill (2012) conducted a study that explores the relationship between the independent variable of owning an iPod (versus other MP3 players) and the dependent variable - life satisfaction. This article is presented in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour (Volume 11; Issue 5). It is worth noting that Apple has captured almost seventy-eight percent market share in the MP3 player industry. This expresses the popularity and superiority of the iPod over other brands in the industry and provides justice as to why the iPod was chosen for the purpose of the study over other MP3 brands. In addition to providing utilitarian value, consumer goods also have hedonic qualities – eliciting emotions from the consumer and aspiring to the “ideal self.” This gives individuals the opportunity to use music as part of the “Extended Self” in a relatively inexpensive way when compared to clothes and cars. This article assumes a bottom-up theory which states that life satisfaction is highly influences by external situational and environmental factors and thus, does not focus on any internal traits such as optimism. Therefore, to measure the effect of iPod ownership on life satisfaction, four main hypotheses were developed that linked peer influence, design, the iPod phenomenon, and the “cool” factor of iPods to the life satisfaction of iPod and non-iPod owners. A multinational sample of 241 individuals was collected using a convenience sampling approach at a UK university. The data collection period was spread over two months with the option of completing a paper or online survey.
The survey was first pretested among eighty business students and was then officially conducted after some minor changes were made. For research purposes, quantitative data was obtained