Theory and Research in Contemporary Consumer Behaviour Essay Example for Free

Theory and Research in Contemporary Consumer Behaviour Essay Abstract Over the past century, each new generation has entered a new consumer world where the forms and avenues for consumption have multiplied exponentially. The twenty first century saw rapid and dramatic changes in the realms of private and public life that became subject to commodification and marketing. Although the culture of consumption has been written about extensively, the breadth and complexity of consumption within contemporary industrialized societies has not yet seen much attention, particularly among anthropologists. In looking at the consumer lives of Hip Hop subculture, this work aims not only to explore and illustrate the ways in which contemporary commodity consumption is internally differentiated, but also to highlight â€Å"an aspect of contemporary consumption that often has been overlooked: its role as a medium through which social inequalities—most notably of race, class, and gender—are formed, experienced, imposed, and resisted† (Carrier and Heyman 30). Introduction Chicago sociologists of the 1930s began to study subcultural groups in the USA as if they were studying the indigenous tribes of isolated islands. This became known as streetcorner sociology as it studied the deviant subcultures of America (Downes and Rock, 36). Ethnography is an approach to research that is often associated with cultural anthropology. This study has often been conducted over a long period of time so that researchers can gain a truly insider perspective. Management and marketing researchers have also adapted ethnographic approaches to use in shorter periods of research. Ethnographic principles have been used to study consumers and consumption in order to better understand the effects and implications of strategic marketing management actions (Clarke 1999). For example, Elliott and Jankel-Elliott (2002) have used ethnography in strategic consumer research for many global brands, while Morris (1999) studied the culture of the British pub. Ritson and Elliott (1999) used ethnographic principles to research the social uses of advertising among UK adolescent advertising audiences. Belk (1995) explored the subculture of hip-hop music. He was particularly interested in the clothes associated with hip-pop and how manufacturers gained access to the group. In management and marketing research, the applied tradition of ethnography is often reflected in the problem-focused nature of much research. Ethnography is used as a tool to help in the design of management interventions and processes. Social and cultural life is created by people through symbolic interaction. Focus on local shared meanings and the reproduction of cultural norms. This research study into a hip-hop consumption practice began with a thorough investigation of secondary sources. The research then progressed to a first-hand engagement with the contexts of consumption. In an attempt to convey something of the meanings, motivations and experiential understanding of hip-hop consumer behaviour, the research creates an imaginative representation of the social life in question. This research study involves, first, gaining as much insider knowledge as possible about the subject in question. The pervasive theme of this work is that the consumer sphere, by its very nature, is a medium for social inequality. The next section lays the groundwork for understanding the particular complexities of hip-hop consumer engagement. The following analytical section locates the hip-hop consumer experience, looks at contemporary media depictions of hip-hop youth as out of control and dangerous â€Å"combat consumers.† This analysis insists that any understanding of hip-hop consumption must be understood in its specific cultural, historical, and political context, one that engages with centuries-old incidents like slavery, as well as symbolic representations of hip-hop consumer in the contemporary consumer world. Discussion In the post-modern world of consuming passions (Huffman 25) there are a number of dynamics that are rightly the concern of cultural criminology. First there is the process of the commodification of everyday life, including crime and violence. Second there is the absolute necessity for the legal or illegal consumption of commodities for the reproduction of both the economic system and our social selves. Commodities themselves appear, as Marx (1977:435) commented, a very trivial thing and easily understood†¦it is in reality a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. However the relationship between the production and commodification process, and the distribution and consumption process, takes on a supreme significance in late modernity. In a culture in which the supreme goal is to have†¦and to have more and more†¦and in which one can speak of someone as being worth a million dollars, how can there be an alternative between having and being? On the contrary, it would seem that the very essence of being is having; that if one has nothing, one is nothing (Fromm 3). It is worth quoting Erich Fromm further on contemporary capitalism as he unravels the connections between violent acts, crime and consumption. It means: that I want everything for myself; that possessing, not sharing, gives me pleasure; that I must become greedy because if my aim is having, I am more the more I have; that I must feel antagonistic toward all others: my customers whom I want to deceive, my competitors whom I want to destroy, my workers whom I want to exploit. I can never be satisfied because there is no end to my wishes; I must be envious of those who have more and afraid of those who have less. But I have to repress all these feelings in order to represent myself as the smiling, rational, sincere, kind human being everybody pretends to be†¦ Greed and peace preclude each other (Fromm 8). Here individualism, greed, destruction, dishonesty, fear and violence are woven, through the processes of production and consumption, inevitably into all our everyday lives. Now crime, in the form of a commodity, enables us all to consume without cost as we enjoy the excitement, and the emotions of hate, rage and love that crime often contains. As everyday life becomes less and less interesting, so it also becomes less and less bearable and there is felt a general desire for daily excitement that becomes an essential ingredient in a consumer commodity culture (Clarke, 16). Excitement is now created for consumption in a multitude of manners such as bungee jumping, spectacular rides, ballooning, theme parks and carnivals, all aimed at the commodification of excitement. All these need to be bought at the market rate. The experience of excitement can also be attained by a large range of criminal activities. Bank fraud and theft, joyriding, manipulating the stock market, all contain the thrills and spills of edge-work. In a society that demands excitement and desire in order to keep the momentum of the marketplace, we can expect the problems associated with the quest for excitement to become both enduring and extensive. The general collective yearn is now for spectacle and experience as we become consumers of imagery. As such we have lost our capacity for astonishment, wonder and curiosity in a world that no longer moves us in an emotional way. There is a high fantasy factor within emotional life and existence that creates the need for immediate satisfaction which in turn becomes the driving force of violence. In this world the desire for excitement can, for some, only be satisfied through senseless acts of violence and destruction. In this way the images we consume become devoid of context and become infantile and immediate. As Schopenhauer points out, this outlook is like the childish delusion that books, like eggs, must be enjoyed when they are fresh (Schopenhauer, 1470). In this world based on sensations and emotions the individual is revered and nurtured. It is a Disney-like world based on the immediacy of and need for fun and pleasure. In everyday life and education in particular, there is an emphasis on morale rather than morality. Here institutions strive to achieve activity without pain. Learning must be fun; poverty must be fun; housework must be fun; and as in Clockwork Orange and even Wind in the Willows (where Toad steals a car and partakes in what must be the first literary joyride) violence, crime and disorder must be fun. The violence demonstrates the closeness that the stars of rap and hip-hop have with the community that they come from. They are in a sense still part of that struggle for both survival and the maintenance of whatever success they have achieved. It is a precarious position for all young people from these communities where nothingness waits just round the corner, where acceptance and success are transient and culturally ephemeral, disappearing as quickly as they arrive. Along with clubbing and rave, rap completes the criminalisation of youth styles and creative culture that ensures that the continuing carnivalisation of everyday life will remain the major experience of being young. There is here a strange tension between the rationality (organisation) demanded by production and consumption and the irrationality of senseless consumption needed to reproduce the cycle. As science and rational liberalism attempt to order everyday life and meaning-making, so irrationality is banished to the act of consumption, as irrational acts themselves become commodified, acting as a bridge to the displaced world of the upside down. It is part of the consuming of displays, displays of consuming, consuming of displays of consuming, consuming of signs and signs of consuming (Lefebvre, 108). The endless, senseless and irrational appears a necessary ingredient of contemporary life as we strive through consumption to push back the ordering of rationality and return once more to the comfort of anarchy, disorder and irrationality. Violence itself is not to do with a rational approach to life but is connected to the personal gratification gleaned from the excitement of the superiority of winning. The consumption of crime becomes a blissful state of non-responsibility, a sort of never-ending moral holiday where we can enjoy in private immoral acts and emotions. It is the political and economic realities of life outside of polite society that are reflected in rap as it analyses and celebrates the otherness of poverty and struggle. It celebrates the cultural answer to ascribed social position and economic survival, which includes the legal and illegal acquisition of wealth, the struggle not just for work but the struggle at work. It reflects oppression both through education and through policing and the struggle for respect in life. It not only emphasises suffering but is also a celebration of leisure time as the time free from the industrial processes of production. And it is in the street where others darent go that hip-hop and rap culture is lived and comes to life. The aim is to be street-wise, to survive with dignity and respect amongst your own, without selling out. In the roll-call of rap stars, their names and song titles reflect not only their clashes with the law but also the violence involved in living a life of struggle and the maleness of the culture, although female rappers and DJs have large followings as well and reflect their own struggle for survival. To give some examples, there was the shooting of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas in September 1996 followed by Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G.), shot at the age of 24 in a rap war on 8 March 1997 not long after his last album Life after Death and its ironic track Youre Nobody Til Somebody Kills You. Ninjaman was imprisoned in Jamaica charged with murder, reflecting his raps Murder Dem and Murder Weapon. Frances best-known rappers, Kool Shen and Joey Starr, were jailed in 1996 for 6 months for anti-police lyrics Piss on the brainless police machine from the Nique ta Mà ¨re (Fuck your Mother) concert. Then Frankie Tah of the Lost Boyz was shot dead on 29 March 1999. In April 1999 Sean Puffy Combs was arrested for beating up an employee of Interscope Records and later also arrested for the possession of weapons. Consumption of the irrational remains an important connecting bridge to pre-productive life. Here the marketplace and the process of hip-hop consumption take on an extraordinarily important role in the creation of self and identity. Now in the ever-expanding realm of commodification and consumption, acts of hurt and humiliation, death and destruction, all become inextricably woven into processes of pleasure, fun and performance. We all participate in the creation of crime as we consume the filming of the carnival of the chase, becoming part of the process of production of real crime and real violence. It is not just the criminals but also the police, the public and the media who all play a part (Clarke 15). If hip-hop young people dont steal cars there can be no chase. If the police dont chase there is no event. If the event is not filmed there can be no product. If the product is not communicated there can be no distribution. If we dont watch there is no consumption and the process of production distribution and consumption is incomplete. Shopping is infused with racism; going to the corner store is at once an adventure in independence and a trial where the temptations and dangers of the drug economy must be negotiated; Barbie dolls are representatives of a world both foreign and hostile. In recognizing that these childrens consumer lives are shaped by the same forces of social inequality evident in their neighbourhood, educations, and even their life chances, my aim has been to highlight consumer culture as a terrain in which questions of social justice loom large. The deprivations experienced by children like those in hip-hop subculture are deep and lasting and perhaps all the more poignant because they take place in such close proximity to wealth and comfort. More than a depoliticized cultural space in which people may choose to purchase or try on identities, fantasies, and styles, consumer culture is a medium through which multiple oppressions are brought to bear on peoples lives in enduring and intimate ways. While white kids (among others) might debate the assertion that â€Å"they have everything, † the important point made by this man is that people value the things they own, whether these are sneakers or Porsches. Consumer lives are not simply expressions of individual desire. These lives cannot be understood apart from such processes as urban renewal, deindustrialization, the drug economy, informal segregation, and public transportation, since these are the processes that have been critical in shaping the consumption horizons of the hip-hop community. The ethnography of consumption, then, needs to take into account more than the interactions between individuals and particular commodities, the specific moment of purchase, the malls and stores where shopping takes place. This is in part because consumption activities cannot be seen as being limited to these relatively obvious encounters; consumption begins well outside of the store and continues well after a given purchase has been made. Any particular act of consumption is a moment—a snapshot—taken at the confluence of complex social, political, and historical streams. Understanding these moments requires thinking about what is taking place within the relatively arbitrary frame as a prelude to investigation into the breadth of factors that brought that moment into being. Hip-hop childrens reasons for seeking out particular items and their capacity for â€Å"spending my money wisely† are socially rooted in attempts to please caretakers, efforts to avoid the disappointment or anger of parents, the desire to share with siblings, and anticipation of the pleasures of giftgiving. These relationships, in turn, are shaped by the straitened economic circumstances of these families, circumstances ensuring that consumption is often for these children not a realm of unbridled fantasy, but rather one where fantasies must be reined in. This is not to say that questions of fashion or style, fad and fancy have no place in childrens consumption. Such status items as Cross-Colours clothes and Nike sneakers were without doubt consistent objects of intense desire and scrutiny, coveted by some or lovingly cared for by others. Conclusion This work has cantered its attention on the ways in which consumption is implicated in the exercise of oppression and in responses to such oppression. Because much of the oppression operative in the consumer sphere is symbolic, much of this work has been generated in tension with discussion about the consumption of the hip-hop subculture. This work conducted analysis of consumption under the production of images of hip-hop pathological consumption, for instance, that such oppression is operative at both the symbolic and material levels, both of which have real and telling effects on peoples lives. Such images and portrayals are an important element in the politics of consumption, a politics that portrays the consumption of the poor as being, on the one hand, problematic because they do not want enough and, on the other, dangerous because they want too much. Tales of constrained consumption are often used as examples to show why the poor cannot get ahead, and a lack of consumer desire is often seen as preventing the poor from attaining middle-class status. Rather than not wanting enough, these poor people want too much. In this vein, terms like compensatory consumption surface with regularity. The beauty of this discourse is that whether consuming too little or too much, the supposed consumer orientation of the poor explains their poverty. In hip-hop and rap there is no need for special legislation to control and criminalise both music and culture, since the way of life that is talked of, that makes up the story of the lives of the performers in a musical and rhythmic form, is already criminalised. Indeed what better way of saying the unsayable, of stating the illegal in a legal form, than bringing the reactions of those in poverty and those from minority groups forward through the carnivalesque qualities of hip-hop and rap. Because consumption is at its root a social process, it is enmeshed with the full range of social action from positive, altruistic expressions to destructive and violent outbursts. The realm of consumption offers ample space for people to find profound meaning in their worlds and existence, to integrate (rather than fragment) a sense of self, and to utter or to perform commentaries about what they see and feel in daily living. Children in hip-hop culture often turned the consumer sphere to their own expressive and prosocial purposes, using shopping as a way to create connections to their family and friends, as a sphere of creative play, or a realm in which they could construct critical assessments of the world around them. The consumer lives of these children show the complex ways in which forces of ideology, hegemony, and power can be bent—if only temporarily—into the contours of a particular life.    References    Belk, Russell. (1995). â€Å"Studies in the New Consumer Behaviour.† Acknowledging Consumption, ed. Daniel Miller. New York: Routledge. Carrier, James G., and Josiah McC. Heyman. (1997). â€Å"Consumption and Political Economy.† journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3, no. 2: 355–73. Clarke, David B. (1999). The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City. Routledge: New York. Elliott, R. and Jankel-Elliott, N. 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