Much of what a person

does, what they value,

and how they are
defined in consumer
culture has to do with
their spending.
Elective:
Special Topics
for ABM
Q3- Lesson 1
At the end of the session, the learners are
expected to:

• define cultural consumerism

• share the impact of culture to consumerism
• analyze cultural consumerism based on a
case study presented

3
References
 Ackerman, D., MacInnis, D., & Folkes, V. (2010). Social comparisons of
possessions: when it feels good and when it feels bad. ACR North American
Advances.
 Emerald, N. D. (2014). Consumerism, Nature, and The Human Spirit. USA: Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University.
 Featherstone, Mike. 2010. Perspectives on consumer culture. Sociology 24.1: 5–22
 Gabriel, Yiannis, and Tim Lang. 2015. The unmanageable consumer: Contemporary
consumption and its fragmentations. London
 Lee, Martyn J., ed. 2010. The consumer society reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
 Sassatelli, Roberta. 2017. Consumer culture: History, theory and politics. London
 Consumer culture
 as social status
( values and activities and are centered on the consumption of goods and services)

 as signifier of social arrangement

( markets mediate a relationship among the ways of life, lived culture, social resources, and the symbolic or
material resources )

 as a constructed culture
( based on the markets, commercially produced images, texts, and objects )

 as a policy
( an economic policy that emphasizes the liberty and free choice of the consumer )

However, are the consumers actually free, or are they turning into the slaves of consumption?
Factors affecting Consumer
Culture

GLOBALIZATION
 Multinational companies operate in more than one
country and have a centralized management system.
 Transnational companies have many companies
around the world but do not have a centralized
management system.
 Factors affecting Consumer
Culture

Consumption
homogenization
Products that are manufactured,
packaged, and positioned the same
way regardless of the country in which
they are sold.
 Factors affecting Consumer
Culture

Consumption
heterogeneity
• Institutions Norms Values
• Beliefs Religion Language
• Education system Art and aesthetics
• Material culture lifestyles

SUB-CULTURE
Effects of
Consumer Culture
Mass Consumption & Purpose
• that consumption is no longer restricted to the necessities but, on the contrary, mainly concentrates on the
superfluities of life (Arendt 1958)
• consumerism divides the beneficial connection between nature and the human spirit (Berry,1995; Emerald,2004)
• gives people a purpose in life, and connects crowds using a common consumer culture (Mc Daniel,2000)

Economic Growth
• the more people spend on goods, the greater the production of those goods, employment rates increase

Human Interaction
• Marx’s “commodity of fetishism”, there is this habit of overlooking human interactions when looking at the pursuit of
consumption
• A study conducted by Ackerman, MacInnis, and Folkes in 2000 proved that consumers can become less satisfied with their products and
develop a greater desire for other products even if they have the same ones but in older versions.
Effects of
Consumer Culture
Building and/or Losing own identity
• the consumer culture encourages us not only to buy more but to seek our identity and fulfillment through what we buy, to
express our individuality through our choices of the product” (Kilbourne, 2006)
• tragedy of this culture is when people actually believe that they came up with an idea that they identify with and they think
that it’s unique and different, yet they discover that everyone is doing the same later on ( George Simmel )

Impulsiveness
• Research has shown that impulsive buyers are unreflective in their thinking and pay little attention to the consequence of
their purchase (Kacen & Lee, 2002)

Global Inequality
• The poorest half of the global population owns just €2,900 (in purchasing power parity) per adult, while the top 10 percent
owns roughly 190 times as much. The richest 10 percent today snap up 52 percent of all income. The poorest half get just
8.5 percent.
Significance of
Consumer Culture
Consumer culture theory (Arnould and Thompson, 2005) is so called
because it encourages an understanding of customer behavior as
part of a complex, intricate web of interrelated practices – a ‘culture’
of practices.

 Consumer identity projects

 Marketplace cultures
 Socio-historical patterning of
consumption
 Consumers’ interpretative strategies
Thank you,
ABM Pounds.