Culture and consumer behaviour
A society’s culture includes its values, ethics and the material objects produced by its people.
It is the accumulation of shared meanings and traditions among members of a society. A
culture can be described in terms of ecology (the way people adapt to their habitat), its
social structure and its ideology (including people’s moral and aesthetic principles). This
chapter describes some aspects of culture and focuses on how cultural meanings are
created
and transmitted across members of a society.
Members of a culture share system of beliefs and practices, including values. The process of
learning the values of one’s culture is called enculturation. Each culture can be described by
a set of core values. Values can be identified by several methods, though it is often difficult
to apply these results directly to marketing campaigns due to their generality.
Myths are stories containing symbolic elements that express the shared ideals of a culture.
Many myths involve some binary opposition, where values are defined in terms of what they
are and what they are not (e.g. nature versus technology). Modern myths are transmitted
through advertising, films and other media.
A ritual is a set of multiple, symbolic behaviours which occur in a fixed sequence and tend to
be repeated periodically. Rituals are related to many consumption activities which occur in
popular culture. These include holiday observances, gift-giving and grooming.
A rite of passage is a special kind of ritual which involves the transition from one role to
another. These passages typically entail the need to acquire products and services, called
ritual artefacts, to facilitate the transition. Modern rites of passage include graduations,
initiation ceremonies, weddings and funerals.
Consumer activities can be divided into sacred and profane domains. Sacred phenomena
are
‘set apart’ from everyday activities or products. People, events or objects can become
sacralised. Objectification occurs when sacred qualities are ascribed to products or items
become part of the everyday, as when ‘one-of-a-kind’ works of art are reproduced in large
quantities. Desacralisation occurs when objects that previously were considered sacred
become commercialised and integrated into popular culture.
Collecting is one of the most common ways of experiencing sacred consumption in daily life.
It is simultaneously one of the domains where consumption and passions are most heavily
intertwined.
The importance of consumption for understanding social interactions is now so big that we
have begun to talk about our own societies as consumer societies, indicating that
consumption might well be the single most important social activity.
Myths are stories that express a culture’s values, and in modern times marketing messages convey thesevalues to members of the culture.Myths are stories with symbolic elements that express the shared ideals of a culture. Many myths involvea binary opposition, defining values in terms of what they are and what they are not (e.g., nature versustechnology). Advertising, movies, and other media transmit modern myths.Many of our consumption activities—including holiday observances, grooming, and gift-giving—relate torituals.A ritual is a set of multiple, symbolic behaviors that occur in a fixed sequence and that we repeatperiodically. Ritual is related to many consumption activities that occur in popular culture. These includeholiday observances, gift-giving, and grooming. A rite of passage is a special kind of ritual that marks thetransition from one role to another. These passages typically entail the need to acquire ritual artifacts tofacilitate the transition. Modern rites of passage include graduations, fraternity initiations, weddings,
Abstract
In daily living, people participate regularly in a variety of ritualized activities at home, work, and play, both as individuals and as members of some larger community. The average person also relies on various ritual events to mark such significant life passages as graduation, marriage, and death. Despite these pervasive and meaningful ritual experiences, consumer research has largely failed to recognize this extensive behavioral domain. The present article introduces and elaborates the ritual construct as a vehicle for interpreting consumer behavior and presents the results of two exploratory studies that investigate the artifactual and psychosocial contents of young adults' personal grooming rituals.
Journal Information
Founded in 1974, the Journal of Consumer Research publishes scholarly research that describes and explains consumer behavior. Empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles spanning fields such as psychology, marketing, sociology, economics, and anthropology are featured in this interdisciplinary journal. The primary thrust of JCR is academic, rather than managerial, with topics ranging from micro-level processes (e.g., brand choice) to more macro-level issues (e.g., the development of materialistic values).
Publisher Information
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.
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