Chapter 2 A consumer society

Consumer society We live in a consumer society, where more and more of our personal identities and the relationships between people are mediated through consumption. Consumer society is thus characterised by a consumer culture.

Consumer culture The core of consumer culture is that consumption goes far beyond solving practical and utilitarian problems. Consumer society has become a reality when consumption becomes more a matter of cultural meaning and less a matter of utility. Consumption is first and foremost a way of creating meaningful lives in the context of personal identity and social relationships. Consumption branding and marketing have become some of the prime reflectors of current cultural values, norms and social roles. Economy and cultures of consumption are thus closely intertwined.

The meaning of things Figure 2.1 The movement of meaning Source: Adapted from Grant McCracken, ‘Culture and consumption: A theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods’, Journal of Consumer Research 13 (1) 1986: 72. Copyright © 1986, Oxford University Press by permission of Oxford University Press.

The meaning of things (Continued) One of the fundamental premises of consumer behaviour is that people often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean. This principle does not imply that a product’s primary function is unimportant, but rather that the roles products play and the meaning that they have in our lives go well beyond the tasks they perform. The deeper meanings of a product may help it to stand out from other, similar goods and services – all things being equal, a person will choose the brand that has an image consistent with their underlying ideas.

Cultural categories Meanings that are imparted to products reflect underlying cultural categories, which correspond to the basic ways in which we characterise the world. Our culture makes distinctions between different times of the day, such as between leisure and work hours, as well as other differences, such as between genders, occasions and groups of people and so on. Meanings of consumer goods and their designs are not universal, but relative to given social and historical contexts or, to put it simply, are bound to particular times and particular places.

Materialism Materialism may be considered a more general value underlying other consumer values, thus reassuring us that an obvious way of realising one’s values is through consumption. Materialism refers to the importance people attach to worldly possessions. Westerners in general (and Americans in particular) are often stereotyped as being members of a highly materialistic society where people often gauge their worth and that of others in terms of how much they own.

A branded world We increasingly live in an experience economy that provides not only goods and services but complete staged events or experiences, for the consumers. Experience economy can be linked to postmodernism, which involves processes of social change in an era where the ‘grand truths’ of modernism, such as scientific knowledge or the progressiveness of economic growth, are no longer taken for granted. Postmodernism includes social processes such as fragmentation, de-differentiation, hyperreality, chronology, pastiche and parody and anti-foundationalism.

Experience economy The contemporary economy can be characterised as an experience economy. The competition among different market offers has driven producers to distinguish otherwise rather identical products, first through the services attached to acquiring the product but today, increasingly, through differentiating the experience that comes along with consuming the product.

Postmodernism Postmodernism is among one of the most widely discussed and disputed terms in consumer research in the past decade and a half. Postmodernists argue that we live in a period where the modern order, with its shared beliefs in certain central values of modernism and industrialism, is breaking up.

Global consumer culture It is appropriate to consider the process of globalisation as one of the most central in understanding the development of consumer society. But it is also important to bear in mind that globalisation should almost always be considered as glocalisation, due to the complex interactions between the global and the local that follows from it.

Figure 2.3 The ongoing reflexive process of intercultural learning Source: Aliakbar Jafari and Christina Goulding, ‘Globalization, reflexivity, and the project of the self: a virtual intercultural learning process’, Consumption, Markets and Culture, 16 (1) 2013, p. 84.

The politics of consumption The increasing political and moral significance of consumption has given birth to the ethical consumer, who ‘votes with their shopping basket’ in an attempt to influence companies to care for the natural as well as the human environment, adding issues such as human rights to the set of dimensions that influence purchases.

The politics of consumption (Continued) Table 2.1 Political consumption activities among food consumers in four European countries (percentage of population) (all results: p = < 0.0001) Source: Adapted from Bente Halkier et al., ‘Trusting, complex, quality conscious or unprotected? Constructing the food consumer in different European national contexts’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 7(3), 2007: 379–402.

The politics of consumption (Continued) Followers of the ethical perspective believe that the same universal messages will be appreciated by people in many cultures. Believers in an emic perspective argue that individual cultures are too unique to permit such standardisation; marketers instead must adapt their approaches to be consistent with local values and practices. Attempts at global marketing have met with mixed success: in many cases this approach is more likely to work if the messages appeal to basic values and/or if the target markets consist of consumers who are more internationally rather than locally orientated.

Corporate social responsibility Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly prominent in companies’ provision of and stakeholders’ approaches to buying goods and services. CSR addresses two kinds of commercial responsibility: Commercial responsibilities (that is running their businesses successfully). Social responsibilities (that is their role in society and the community).

The ‘sharing economy’ This practice of sharing what one already bought but cannot use, or cannot use fully or all the time, is spreading rapidly both globally and to different types of consumption. It’s not just convenience that explains the rise of the sharing economy, but also changes in attitudes towards ownership, especially among younger consumers. This is consistent with discussions about the weak relationship researchers find between owning more ‘stuff’ and happiness.