Consumer identity

Consumer identity means the consumption patterns through which a consumer describes his, herself, or themselves.

History

A prominent feature in the social life of the modern era is a pervasive consumer culture. It is made possible by a rising middle class and the availability of a large variety of merchandise in an open market. According to Mathur, "Commercial brands and luxury commodities have come to serve as signifiers of identity in society and legitimized consumer culture that is made visible in terms of its referents: images, commodities and 'high-class' consumption as also their articulation in daily lives of people".^[1] She further adds, "By choice or by compulsion, people interpret and respond to it in different ways as they construct, deconstruct and reconstruct their social identities."^[1]

Theoretical Background

In a consumer culture people no longer consume goods and services merely for functional satisfaction. Consumption has become meaning-based; brands are often used as symbolic resources for the construction and maintenance of identity. Consumers use brands and products to express their identities.

The identity thus bestowed on consumers draws on themes that cut across the different symbolic boundaries that have consolidated in the course of modernity.^[2] Consumer research has extensively examined how interactions with products help consumers to shape their identities and selves ^[3] Product design, for instance, can elicit infatuation in object–consumer relations.^[4] Consumers may become attached and develop relationships with specific material objects, independently of these objects' brands.^[5]

A variety of commodities serves as an increasingly sophisticated identity tool-kit for the celebration of one's own identity. These do not only include unconscious somatic involvement —as tastes are embodied through habituation and imitation. The idea that everyone in consumer societies is more open to acquire the lifestyle and identity he or she desires runs the risk of painting an imaginary world made of equal opportunity and free self-realization. Instead, it is clear, even through observing advertisements which celebrate consumption as a sphere of human realization, that only a certain type of identity, a certain type of look, a particular way of being in the world and, obviously, only certain commodities are acknowledged as plainly positive, and that they all demand growing shares of economic and cultural capital.^[6]

Social Identity

People's activities and possessions are organized around their social identities—the multifaceted labels by which their 'Me' is recognized by themselves and members of society. (Identities differ from traits, such as aggressiveness or honesty, in that the latter characterizes how someone behaves within an Identity. Social identities (accountant, golfer, parent) are derived from social roles but they are not the same. Roles are consensual prescriptions, behaviors expected of those occupying a particular position in society,^[7] and in that sense they partition a society.

Social Identity Theory was developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979. The theory was originally developed to understand the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. Tajfel et al. (1971) attempted to identify the minimal conditions that would lead members of one group to discriminate in favor of the ingroup to which they belonged and against another outgroup.

Henri Tajfel's greatest contribution to psychology was social identity theory. Social identity is a person's sense of who they are based on their group membership(s).

Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.^[8]

The social roles we ascribe to ourselves are the basis of our social identities and, collectively, these identities form our global self—our overall sense of who we are. This identity-to-global self path operationalizes social identity theory's guiding premise that one's overall sense of self derives from the particular identities that one enacts and ascribes to one's self.^[9]

Consumer gender

Earlier gender identity and consumer behavior research suggests that gender identity plays an important role in consumer behavior and construction of consumer identity, varying from assisting in information processing to connecting individuals to the rest of the world to orchestrating an individual's perceptions to developing one's attitudes about appropriate social behaviors.^[10]

Regarding consumers' brand perceptions ^[11] explained that consumer brand consumption is congruent with consumer gender-image and stated that the gender-self can generate strong gender-congruency effects with regards to brand loyalty. For example, consumers prefer goods or spokespersons that match their sense of masculinity and femininity.^[12]

Consumer and Class

From basic property to define, it is the group of people that who are able to buy qualified goods and services. They are not only buy them for the basic need. It were roughly divided the consumers according to their capability of purchase from the society and history part class is marked by a set of conditions in one place and time, but the fluidity of the construction,rather than the concept, of class means that markers change, classes like gender and race .It is a persistent social construct which is fluid across time and place and, increasingly, is downplayed in contemporary social rhetoric.^[13] But considering different target of the brands and difficulty in satisfying the critical consumers, more brands prefer to demonstrate their distinct characteristic through some special aesthetic value,in Gramscian,the hegemonic ideologies of consumerism and neoliberalism give rise to the 'common sense' understanding that shopping provides opportunities to assert free choice in a society which proclaims equality and personal responsibility.^[14]

Consumer and Ethnicity

Ethnicity is thus both an automatic characteristic of racial group membership and a process of group identification in which people use ethnic labels to define themselves and others.^[15] During the process of purchase it also considerate other element that a product formerly associated with a specific ethnic group is detached from its roots and marketed to other subcultures through buy the same brand's products. Group members tend to be tightly knit, and they are likely to infer meanings that go beyond the spoken word. Also we should turn to focus on the physical part which is existing and objective without any somewhat judgment,Categorizing body shapes and comparing body measurements and ratios of different ethnic groups are imperative to determine any differences. Moreover, differently shaped consumers require differently shaped apparel to accommodate figure variations^[16] the classification of female body shapes within a specific country is, however, a challenge due to variations within and across ethnically homogeneous and heterogeneous populations.^[17]

Brands and Consumer Identity

Consumers construct themselves, their identities, through their brand choices based on congruency between brand image and self-image. Thus, the meaning and value of a brand is not just its ability to express the self, but also its role in helping consumers create and build their self-identities. Possessions can be used to satisfy psychological needs, such as actively creating one's self concept, reinforcing and expressing self-identity, and allowing one to differentiate oneself and assert one's individuality.^[18] Possessions can also serve a social purpose by reflecting social ties to one's family, community, and/or cultural groups, including brand communities ^[19]

Consumers form connections to brands that become meaningful through this process; self-brand connections measure the extent to which individuals have incorporated brands into their self concept^[20]

Fan Communities

Identity construction and formation is a key issue in the anthropological study. In an anthropological context uses of "identity" are basically ambiguous:^[21]"In one sense, the term refers to properties of uniqueness and individuality, the essential differences making a person distinct from all others, as in 'self-identity'. In another sense, it refers to qualities of sameness, in that persons may associate themselves, or be associated by others, with groups or categories on the basis of some common feature, …".

A fan community is a social unit of any size composed by people (commonly known as fans) enthusiastically devoted to something or somebody, such as a band, a sports team, a genre, a book, a movie or an entertainer above other cultural objects. "Peer fans, that is individuals with whom we connect via shared liking of these cultural objects, gather in groups making up for communities of practice around the object of fandom."^[22] A definition of fandom indicates two characteristics of these communities: "they are a collective of people (1) who share (2) an appreciation of a (pop) cultural artefacts." ^[23]

In other words, a fan community is a group of people characterized by a feeling of empathy and companionship with others who share a common interest. In our case, this common interest is the brand, in fact, fans recognize themselves through the congruency between the brand image and the self-image.

See also

Consumer culture theory
Gender advertisement
Social identity theory
Consumerism
Consumer Activism
Consumer Protection

References