CONSUMER CULTURE

By: Lisbeth Wea R. Bastasa

 What is Consumer Culture?
 Consumer culture is a form of material culture facilitated by the market,
which thus created a particular relationship between the consumer and
the goods or services he or she uses or consumes.
 Can be broadly defined as a culture where social status, values, and
activities are centered on the purchase and consumption of goods and
services.
 Anchorage and Relay

 In his book “The Rhetoric of the Image”, Roland Barthes

(1978) wrote two kinds of relationship between text and
image: anchorage and relay.
 By definition, anchorage underlines the importance of text
in making sense of an image, while relay puts emphasis on a
more complementary relationship between the two.
 According to Philip Kotler (1980), there are five stages in the so called “Buyer Decision Process”

Need Information Evaluation of Purchase Post-purchase

recognition Search Alternatives Decision Behavior
 Needs Recognition- The buying process begins when a
consumer realizes that they have a need.
 Information Search- The buying process begins when the
customer starts looking for information that will help them solve
their problem.
 Evaluation Behavior- The customers may start reflecting on
what they learned or discovered.
 Purchase Decision- The customer is ready to pull the trigger
and make a purchase.
 Post-purchase Behavior- The customer has made a purchase.
Now is the time when the customer reflects on whether they made
the right decision.
 The Calvinist Principle
 Calvin is firmly behind the belief that consumption
and wealth accumulation are divine acts, he specified
that these must only be done in moderation.
 He also added that a person’s hard work justifies
his/her consumptions.
 The Marxist Perspective
 The Marxist thought, however, has positioned
consumer culture within the complex entanglements of
the capitalist economic model. If some academic
disciplines consider consciousness as the factor that
determines society. Karl Marx suggest the opposite: it
is society that determines consciousness.
 Commodity Fetishism

 A cornerstone sway capitalist societies have over

people’s material selves, at least to Marx’s viewpoint,
is what anthropology refers to as fetishism: rather
primitive belief that inanimate objects can be imbued
with god-like powers.
 Alienation
 When individuals work to afford gratifying
commodities (from vacations to luxury items), but
never for its own sake. Thus, work becomes
completely separate or “alien” from the individual, as
it contains little to no need-satisfying value. This
therefore leads to worker apathy, and eventually to
alienation from one’s labor.
END.