**7. Conclusion**

Consumer culture does not consist solely of a specific type of material culture and does not only express systems of relationships to material values. It represents a world of symbols and signs that transforms material goods into their immaterial meanings, including the creation of identities, sources of self-reflection, and modifications of social roles, including the definition and redefinition of social relationships. Consumer culture is subject to changes of varying intensity, depth, and duration. The most significant transformations of recent decades would include not only the democratization of consumerism, but also the expansion of consumption opportunities and the unprecedented abundance of consumer choices. Consumer

culture is characterized by its ambivalent nature. In the spirit of rational choice theory, the proliferation of choices is a positive and universally useful phenomenon, which also promotes a desired emancipation of individual freedoms. However, from the perspective of behavioral economists and many sociologists and social psychologists, this phenomenon is problematic and highly ambiguous, as it generates social and psychological risks that are unseen and difficult to predict. What was originally a rational and generally accepted requirement for the constant expansion of the space of choice has become an irrational desire with considerable potential to harm all those concerned. In this context, the "more is better" principle is a significant complication for consumers, where it is increasingly difficult to operate without experiencing cognitive dissonance, self-blame, regret, and feelings of self-defeat. Moreover, empirical research during the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance to consumers of feelings of safety and security, which will likely be a central theme of the shopping experience in the post-COVID era [22]. At the same time, there are many overlooked arguments to support the claim that the limitation of consumer choice during the COVID-19 crisis occurred only partially and only in the conventional shopping environment. And yet the freedom of consumer choice for certain types of products was maintained and even enhanced in the virtual shopping environment. The psychological discomfort associated with choice in an environment of many opportunities was therefore not eliminated and may have contributed to the overall psychological discomfort and mental distress during the lockdown. However, during the COVID-19 era opportunity cost was decreasing, particularly for paid forms of entertainment and leisure activities involving social contact (concerts, sports matches, etc.).

At present, we have an opportunity to observe many social initiatives, the dematerialization movement, and numerous spontaneous civic manifestations whose appeals have intensified precisely at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in recent weeks in the context of the war in Ukraine, rising inflation, and the scarcity of some strategic raw materials. These call for changes in the politics of lifestyles in the spirit of the principle of "less is more", a transformation of value orientations appealing to ecological and environmental responsibility, solidarity, and accountability, voluntary frugality, life minimalism or alternative hedonism as a return to the roots of the philosophical agenda of Epicureanism, in which hedonism was defined by "modest materialism and tranquility". The rule should be to live a rich life by modest means. In these transformations of life attitudes and value worlds, it is not only the actual patterns of consumption behavior and the motivations for consumption decisions that are fundamentally changing for individuals and groups, but also the deeper layers of their identities, which will seek new sources of affirmation in the environment of consumer culture markets. The question then remains as to what form these sources of identities will take and in what direction they will be further developed in terms of the interactions of markets and consumers, such that markets may retain the direction of "more is better" or all the preconditions of economic prosperity and growth as the condicio sine qua non of their existence, while at the same time offering sufficiently credible sources of social identities to newly emerging alternatives to (counter-) consumerism, intertwined in many ways with its radical reduction and rejection. Thus, it is not only consumers in decisionmaking and choice implementation situations that find themselves in an ambivalent situation, but also the markets themselves, as well as the accompanying systems of marketing support for consumer culture that respond to current and future lifestyle politics.
