Consumption and Every day life

Nima Rahmani
Marketing Management- Dr Khademi
Agenda Style
Theories of Consumption and
1 identity

MCDISNEYFICATIONS and BODY

2 SHOPPING

The Knowing Consumer?

3

The Spaces of Consumption

4

Logo or no Logo?
5
“The more wants that are satisfied, the more new ones are born”

Act of consumption is readily identifiable as a particular moment in

which the consumer is participating in a series of processes, having
taken account of branding, images, notions of self-worth, responded
to themes and signs that trigger elements of the sensory consciousn
ess and the nonconscious states, and exercised the temporary
satisfaction of a desire or felt need
 PARADOXES OF CONSUMPTION

The use or appropriation of an object is more often than not

both a moment of consumption and production, of undoing
and doing, of destruction and construction.

The fact that in terms of our individual experience consumerism

appears to have a fascinating, arguably fulfilling, personal appeal
and yet simultaneously plays some form of an ideological role in
actually controlling the character of everyday life.
 PARADOXES OF CONSUMPTION

This is a tension between homogenisation and heterogenisation,

about the commodification and therefore the flattening of
difference versus the celebration and even fetishisation of difference
in terms of consumer choice
 YOU ARE WHAT YOU BUY

Consumer: we relate acts of consumption in late capitalism to every

day life through the eyes of the consumer, looking at concrete
experiences of consumption and asking what kinds of things are
motivating our decisions to buy, such as the concept of lifestyle,
advertising and notions of consumer choice.

Commodity: Horizontal and Vertical

 YOU ARE WHAT YOU BUY
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CONSUMPTION: MARX, VEBLEN, SIMMEL

Marx
• Subtract use-value from the exchange-value= surplus value
• Commodity fetishism

Veblen:
• Conspicuous consumption
• Social emulation

Simmel:
• Urban consumption
• Blasé attitude
 YOU ARE WHAT YOU BUY
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND THE ‘MASS CULTURE INDUSTRY’

Adorno and Horkheimer:

• Instrumental reason
• Homogeneity, predictability and standardization
• False needs

Marcuse:
• Promotion of false needs it works as a mechanism of
social control
• Culture industry similarly organises our leisure
 YOU ARE WHAT YOU BUY
CULTURE AND THE CONSUMER IN ‘LATE’ CAPITALISM

• Lifestyles

• No clear separation between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of art

• Myths are produced for mass consumption

• Depthlessness

• Polysemic nature of signs and Displaced Meaning

 CONSUMPTION AND IDENTITY
MANUFACTURING CHOICE

1.Choice
2.Cultural identity

• Positional consumption
• Taste and Distinction(through Habitus and lifestyle)

The nexus between lifestyle, choice and identity as performed

through the consumption and display of particular purchasable
goods
 CONSUMPTION AND IDENTITY
CONSUMPTION, AUTHENTICITY AND IDENTITY

Consumption is opposed to authenticity

Consumption as a marker of status and position within a
loosely formed social group

To have is to be …?
By making the uncontroversial suggestion that material pos
sessions have a symbolic value within a culture, we have
begun to see how our social status and identity within a
group is formed through the consumption and display of
certain objects that have cultural significance
 McDONALDIZATION vs DISNEYIZATION

“I want it fast, I want it now, I want what’s next”

Efficiency Predictability Theming Dedifferentiation

McDONALDIZATION DISNEYIZATION

Calculability Control Merchandising

Emotional
labour
 BODYSHOPPING
THE COMMODIFICATION OF EXPERIENCE AND SENSATION

1. Consuming bodies, producing bodies:

“Production is also immediately consumption”

Vampire

Cyborg

Zombies

The McBody
 BODYSHOPPING
THE COMMODIFICATION OF EXPERIENCE AND SENSATION

2. Consumption as embodied experience :

Foucault’s practices of the self

3. Consuming sensation:

Mental pleasures of wishing, desiring and fantasy

Bodily pleasures and the ‘carnivalesque

 NATURE, INC
The ‘gaze’ and the fetishisation of nature

The ‘tourist gaze’;

• Romantic Gaze
• Collective Gaze

Fetishisation
• Spectacular consumption

• The nature of semiosis

• Authenticity and simulation

 NATURE, INC
SeaWorld™ and themed nature

• The virtualisation of nature

• Authenticity and simulation

• On safari: wild nature as

spectacle
 THE KNOWING CONSUMER?
Sucker vs Savvy

Sucker: consumption as
manipulation

Retail psychology – manipulating

the consumer

Clever or sneaky?
 THE KNOWING CONSUMER?
Sucker vs Savvy

Savvy:
• Consumption can be creative

• Anonymous creativity

• Strategy vs Tactics

The art of appropriation

‘The art of being in-between’: consuming youth

 MALLRATS AND CAR BOOTS
THE SPACES OF CONSUMPTION

It’s not just what we do, but where we do it

Space of consumption:“cathedral of modern commerce”

Medieval 1822 1852 1922

medieval Department
Arcades Shopping Malls
marketplace Stores

small shops with a central glass-

Shopping and plate glass covered atrium, decontextualised
festivals, fun and windows and but on numerous structures
revelry glass-covered floors with a vast
streets protected range of goods
from the weather.
 MALLRATS AND CAR BOOTS
THE SPACES OF CONSUMPTION

• Looking rather than speaking

• Window-shopping

• Evoke the sense of luxury along with the simple display of the commodities for
purchase

• An activity of leisure and pleasure

 MALLRATS AND CAR BOOTS
THE SPACES OF CONSUMPTION

• Women

• Placeless spaces: The mall as ‘non-place’

• SPACES OF FAKE, FANTASY AND CONTROL

 LOGO OR NO LOGO?
THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF BRANDING

“Think of the brand as the core meaning of the modern corporation,

and of the advertisement as one vehicle used to convey that
meaning to the world”

Logo as the extension of advertising, a symbol rather than a vehicle

Brand personification persuades, influences, even seduces.

 LOGO OR NO LOGO?
History of advertising

1870-1910 1910-1930 1930s-now 1945-1965

Rational Irrational Behavioral Personalization

Suggestion Emotional
Price Interest in
forces
convenience
Pictures
Subconscious
Function
Desire for
Attention- Glamour
gathering Symbols

Craftsmanship stimuli
Fascination
Qualities of the with
Human object technology
Durability sympathy
 LOGO OR NO LOGO?
Branding

1970s explosion of branding

1990s Branding was applicable to services as well

Shift from broad-brush demographics to more individually

focused psychographics
 LOGO OR NO LOGO?
Branding

The brand image: the building of brand awareness arose by

cultivating associations between the brand (Uncle Ben’s, Aunt
Jemima) and intangible values (homeliness, friendliness).

“What kind of Things define me as a person?”

Brand loyalty is the cultivation of emotional attachments

A double articulation, of sign (signal, image) and affect (emotional
content, reaction), the most valuable brands evoke strong feelings
as a coordinated assemblage.
 LOGO OR NO LOGO?
The logo: icon and iconicity

The icon is a simple sign, logo or visual depiction that represents a

whole story, an experience or even a whole way of seeing.

logo’s recognition similarly depends on the

1. Increasing speed of perception,
2. Its ability to be mobilised into different media
and hence achieve ubiquity

LOGOPHILIA: PASSIONATE CONSUMERS

 LOGO OR NO LOGO?
Politics

• Post-Fordism, lifestyle and the ‘brand’

• The clash of first and third worlds

 WHERE DO WE WANT TO GO TODAY?
THE POSTMODERN CONSUMER

CONSUMPTION AND EVERYDAY LIFE: MODERN

OR POSTMODERN?

ETHICAL CONSUMPTION

THE WASTE, THE EXCESS

 Thank you
Insert the title of your subtitle Here