Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 1

A Grid-Group (Cultural) Approach to Tourist Preferences

There are many different and conflicting explanations of why people

purchase the goods and services they do. For example, the VALS (Values

and Lifestyles) typology offers a psychographic explanations of consumer

behavior. The original VALS typology encountered difficulties and it was

replaced by a VALS2 typology. A different approach to consumer

preferences is demographic in nature. One marketing research organization,

Claritas, argues that in the United States there are 66 different kinds of

consumers, from 01 Upper-Crust types to 66 Low-Rise Living types. Each

of these kinds of consumers has different interests and makes different

consumption choices. Claritas argues that “birds of a feather flock together”

(and can be found in certain Zip codes) and buy together. The discussion of

Grid-Group theory, which follows shortly, can be looked upon as a macro-

demographic theory.

Tourism scholars and marketing scholars are also interested in

consumer preferences and have developed numerous typologies of kinds of

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tourists, two of the most well known being those elaborated by Erik Cohen

and Stanley Plog. Cohen classified tourists as falling into four categories:

Organized mass tourists (in Group Inclusive Tours)

Individual mass tourists
Explorers (who plan own itineraries)
Drifters (who are mainly backpacker types)

Cohen’s Organized Mass Tourists spend most of their time in what he called

“tourist bubbles” that provide them with first world comforts and their

experience in foreign countries is highly sanitized.

Plog’s classification is based on two opposites—Psychocentric and

Allocentric, with tourists falling into various places between these two

extremes. Thus we have:

Psychocentric (passive)
Near-Psychocentric
Mid-Centric
Near Allocentric
Allocentric (active)

These typologies are discussed in Philip Kotler, John Bowen and James

Makens’ book Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (Second Edition).

Plog’s psychocentric tourists are similar to Cohen’s organized mass tourists,

who make a decision about which tour to take and have little or no input into

the tour itself. Presumably the kind of tourist you are shapes your decisions

about travel arrangements.

Most of the theories about tourism preferences tend to be either

psychological or sociological in nature, though some scholars do mention

Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 3

cultural factors, usually in passing. What follows is a discussion of social-

anthropologist Mary Douglas’ Grid-Group theory, which argues that most

consumer preferences are not based on individual psychological factors or

sociological ones, but cultural ones. Thus, according to her theory, decisions

tourists make about where to go and how to go there and what do to when

they arrive are not based on psychological, personality, or socio-economic

factors but cultural ones.

Grid-Group Theory: Four Kinds of Tourists

In their book, Cultural Theory, Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis,

Aaron Wildavsky deal with Douglas’ theory about Grid-Group relationships.

The authors explain her typology as follows: (1990:5)

She argues that the variability of an individual’s involvement in social life

can be adequately captured by two dimensions of sociality: group and grid.

Group refers to the extent to which an individual is incorporated into

bounded units. The greater the incorporation, the more individual choice is

subject to group determination. Grid denotes the degree to which an

individual’s life is circumscribed by externally imposed prescriptions. The

more binding and extensive the scope of the prescriptions, the less of life

that is open to individual negotiation.

What Douglas called the “group” dimension refers to the degree to which an

individual’s life is shaped and sustained by membership in a group; the

boundaries and control over individuals in a particular group can be either

strong or weak. The grid dimension refers to the number of prescriptions

and rules which individuals obey.

Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 4

If we take these two dimensions —group membership (weak or

strong) and grid aspects (few rules or numerous and varied rules and

prescriptions) we find that there are four, and only four, ways of life, or

consumer cultures:

hierarchists (also called elitists),

individualists,

fatalists (Douglas calls them isolates), and

egalitarians (Douglas calls them enclavists).

The chart that follows shows how Group and Grid theory generates

the four (and only four, for all practical purposes) cultures.

GROUP
Strength of Boundaries

Weak Strong

Fatalists Elitists
Many

GRID
Rules &
Prescriptions Few
Individualists Egalitarians

Another way to represent this relationship is in the chart below, which spells

out the various relationships more directly.

Group Boundaries: Grid Aspects: Kinds and Way of Life:

Strong or Weak Number of Prescriptions Consumer Cultures
Strong Numerous and Varied Elitist

Weak Numerous and Varied Fatalist (Isolates)

Strong Few or Minimal Egalitarian (Enclavists)
Weak Few or Minimal Individualist
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The authors describe how the grid-group typology generates the four ways of

life: (1990:6-7)

Strong group boundaries coupled with minimal prescriptions produce social

relations that are egalitarian…When an individual’s social environment is

characterized by strong group boundaries and binding prescriptions, the

resulting social relations are hierarchical…Individuals who are bound by

neither group incorporation nor prescribed roles inhabit an individualistic

social context. In such an environment all boundaries are provisional and

subject to negotiation…People who find themselves subject to binding

prescriptions and are excluded from group membership exemplify the

fatalistic way of life. Fatalists are controlled from without.

So there are four consumer cultures or lifestyles and each of them, as Douglas

argues, is in conflict with all of the others, yet they all need one another.

Hierachists believe in the utility of stratification, but they are imbued with a

sense of responsibility toward those below them; individualists are essentially

interested in themselves and want the government to do little, except to

protect their freedom to compete with others; egalitarians argue that we all

have the same basic needs and tend to play down differences between people;

and fatalists find themselves ordered around by others and pin their hopes on

chance and luck to escape from their situation.

Elitists need stratification in order to maintain their position at the top

of the ladder, so they need fatalists; egalitarians fight stratification and want

to raise everyone up, especially the fatalists. And individualists need a stable

society, run by elitists and themselves, in order to function. The two main
Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 6

cultures in any society are the hierarchists and individualists, with egalitarians

functioning as critics of the inequities in the society.

These four cultures play an important role in the lives of the members

of each culture, even though people generally aren’t aware that they are a

member of one of these cultures. That is, the cultures are covert, latent, or

hidden, for all practical purposes, though they shape our behavior to a

considerable extent. Wildavsky and his colleagues suggest that social

scientists must, of necessity, spend a great deal of energy looking for latent

or hidden aspects of social phenomena.

Marx argued that mystification is essential to the capitalist economic

system while, on the other hand, Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky suggest that

mystification is an all pervasive phenomenon that informs every aspect of

life. Social scientists, they assert, should look for mystification everywhere,

and explain its existence and how it functions wherever they find it.

Mary Douglas “In Defence of Shopping”

In an article titled “In Defence of Shopping,” Mary Douglas describes

these cultures as lifestyles. There are, she suggests, four consumer cultures or

lifestyles and it is a person’s membership in one of these four consumer

cultures or lifestyles—each of which is antagonistic or in conflict with the

three others—that ultimately explains that person’s consumer choices. This

means that consumption decisions are not based on individual psychology

Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 7

and personality characteristics, but on unrecognized consumer-cultural

imperatives.

Even though members of a particular culture or people leading one of

the four lifestyles may not be able to articulate their beliefs and values in

great detail and are not aware of the fact that they belong to one of the four

cultures, they can recognize that their values and beliefs aren’t those of

members of the other consumer cultures. This has important implications, for

it means that consumption is primarily based on cultural alignments and

hostilities and not on individual wants or desires. Individual taste, we may

say, is based on membership in one of the four consumer cultures.

Douglas relates consumption to these four cultures as follows: (“In

Defense of Shopping,” in Pasi Falk and Colin Campbell, editors, The

Shopping Experience: (1997: 19)

None of these four lifestyles (individualist, hierarchical, enclavist

[egalitarian], isolated [fatalist]) is new to students of consumer behavior.

What may be new and unacceptable is the point that that these are the only

four distinctive lifestyles to be taken into account, and the other point, that

each is set up in competition with the others. Mutual hostility is the force

that accounts for their stability. These four distinct lifestyles persist

because they rest of incompatible organizational principles. Each culture is

a way of organizing; each is predatory on the others for time and space and

resources. It is hard for them to co-exist peacefully, and yet they must, for

the survival of each is the guarantee of the survival of the others. Hostility

keeps them going.

Douglas’s theory attacks theories of consumption based on individualist

psychology. She argues that when it comes to consumption, and thus, for our
Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 8

purposes, when it comes to making decisions about places to visit and buying

tours and making other travel arrangements, “cultural alignment is the

strongest predictor of preferences in a wide variety of fields.” (1997:23).

[My italics]

Douglas concludes, then, that shopping is not the expression of

individual wants or personality characteristics or sociological ones, either. It

is cultural bias—that is, membership in one of the four consumer cultures--

that is all-important. As she writes in the conclusion to her essay (1997:30):

The idea of consumer sovereignty in economic theory will be honoured in

market research because it will be abundantly clear that the shopper sets

the trends, and that new technology and new prices are adjuncts to

achieving the shopper’s goal. The shopper is not expecting to develop a

personal identity by choice of commodities; that would be too difficult.

Shopping is agonistic, a struggle to define not what one is but what one is

not. [my italics] When we include not one cultural bias, but four, and when

we allow that each is bringing critiques against the others, and when we see

that the shopper is adopting postures of cultural defiance, then it all makes

sense.

This statement, that shopping is agonistic (or antagonistic) and represents an

attempt to define not what one is but what one is not, calls to mind Ferdinand

de Saussure’s linguistic theories, and, in particular, his statement that

“concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but

negatively, by their relations with the other terms of the system.” (1966:117).

Let me modify what Saussure said and suggest that “the most precise

characteristic” of consumer cultures and of lifestyles “is in being what the

others are not.”

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Are Tourists Free to Tour as They Please?

Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky consider an interesting question

related to this matter of preferences, which is—are people free. They write:

(1990:13)

Placing people in categories seems to many observers to do violence to the

individual. For, they ask, if ways of life act as programs telling people

what to prefer and how to behave, aren’t individuals little better than

automatons, robots, ciphers, mere windup toys moved by unseen hands?

Solving the problem of preference formation seems to come at the expense

of individual choice.

Plural ways of life, we respond, give individuals a chance for

extensive, if finite choice. The existence of competing ways of organizing

gives individuals knowledge of other possibilities, and the opportunity to

observe how people who live according to these other ways are doing.

What complicates this Grid-Group typology is that people (except for

fatalists) can move from one lifestyle or consumer culture to another;

sometimes they are forced to do so—for example, when individualists who

are making a very high salary are fired because their company is purchased

by another company, or are injured and unable to work. They may end up,

then, in the egalitarian camp or even in the fatalist one.

Wildavsky and his colleagues argue that there are “organizational

imperatives created by the interaction of the grid and group dimensions that

compel people to behave in ways that maintain their way of life.” (1990:262)

This is because we are social animals and our behavior is profoundly affected
Arthur Asa Berger A Cultural Approach to Understanding Tourist Preferences 10

by (though not always strictly determined by) the consumer cultures to which

we belong and the rules and prescriptions of that consumer culture.

There may be many different reasons that can be given to explain a

person’s consumption preferences—for consumer products and services

involved with travel and tourism or for politicians--but they all stem from

two fundamental factors: first, the groups to which people belong and second,

the number and kinds of rules and prescriptions to which they adhere. Thus,

when people decide to travel, their decisions—if Douglas and other Grid-

Group theorists are correct—are based upon their lifestyles and the consumer

culture to which they belong, and, in addition, a desire to avoid tourists from

other consumer cultures.

In the eighteenth century the Puritan minister and philosopher,

Jonathan Edwards, dealt with a problem that is relevant to our concern with

tourism and the choice tourists make about their travels. Edwards tried to

reconcile the notion that God is all-powerful with human freedom and came

up with an ingenious solution. He distinguished between two realms: choice

and action. Simplifying to the extreme, we can say that Edwards argued that

humans can act as they please, thus preserving freedom, but not choose as

they please, thus preserving an all-powerful God.

What Grid-Group theory suggests is that while individuals can book

tours and cruises and make other choices relevant to their travel interests and

concerns, their choices have, in a sense, already been made for them—not by

God but by the consumer culture or lifestyle to which they belong. To

modify Edwards, tourists can act as they please but cannot please as they

please.
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What Grid-Group theory suggests, then, is that there are four kinds of

tourists: hierachists (or elitists), individualists, egalitarians (or enclavists),

and fatalists (or isolates) and membership in one or the other of these

consumer cultures is what ultimately shapes decisions tourists make, as

Douglas argues, “cultural alignment is the strongest predictor of preferences

in a wide variety of fields.” Understanding how members of each consumer

culture make the particular decisions they make is the next step that has to be

taken in understanding the role of lifestyles in tourism studies.

Berger, Arthur Asa. 2005.

Shop ‘Til You Drop: Consumer Behavior and American Culture.

Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield

Douglas, Mary. “In Defence of Shopping,” in Falk and Campbell, The

Shopping Experience. 1997. London: Sage.

Thompson, Michael, Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky. 1990.

Cultural Theory.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Note: This essay draws upon some material in my book Shop ‘Til You Drop

but it has been greatly modified to deal with consumer preferences and

tourism.
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