shopping as a lifestyle in defining

an identity
 Phenomenon
Most people nowadays are simply judge
someone’s identity by how they look or in other
words, their appearance. Because of that, people
tend to go shopping and purchase certain
commodities to support the identity that they
want to build which result in becoming their
lifestyle.
Problem statement : the idea of shopping in
building an identity
 Identity
Identity is such a concept that hold by each
person to differentiate themselves to another.
According to Lustig and Koester (2010: 142-143),
identity is based on people’s unique
characteristics, which may differ from those of
others in their cultural and social.
 Lifestyle
Vyncke (2002) in Catalin and Adreea’s work
(2014) stated that lifestyle can be seen as a sum
of daily life patterns that each individual
deliberately and voluntarily applies through his
daily life
 the interview
I asked one of a college student that applied
consumption as his lifestyle and he agreed that
people value us from what they seen. Since he
indicate himself as a high class person, he
maintain it by updating his gadget to the higher
level and purchasing branded commodities.
Based on him, if people were already see us with
that level, once we use the not original one,
people will still consider it as the original one.
He said that it all start when he was in senior
high school. His environment are came from
middle and upper class people, since then he
got influenced by them. He started to know
branded commodities and consume it. In order
to maintain his identity, he keep consuming it
and as by the time goes it become his lifestyle
until now. He confess that he purchased every
month.
The result is, most of his friends in college are
also came from middle and upper class people
and this is in line with a theory from Celia Lury
( 2011), called positional theory, which stated
consumption could bring someone into a certain
social position.
 conclusion
based on the interview and some references, we
can conclude that shopping as a lifestyle does
affect someone’s identity. Through the act of
consumption too, someone could be accepted by
his environment.
That is true that appearance is the easiest way to
identified someone’s identity. If we have not
know them well yet, we could easily know by the
way they appear (?) ---- first impression
We can conclude that the act of shopping could
help someone in building his identity. Therefore,
in order to maintain it, people tend to keep
shopping and unconsciously it becoming their
lifestyle
The concept of identity now describe as
someone’s appearance, because it is the easiest
way to define someone’s identity without
knowing them well.
According to Todd (2012), today, it is virtually
impossible to buy any product not embedded
with certain symbols of identity acquired by the
buyer knowingly or otherwise. Because of that,
most people are like to show their identity
through the act of consumption.