Recap – the story so far...

1. Recap – the story so far... • Common thesis of major theorists: pre-modern religious (Marx, Benjamin Adorno) and tribal (Veblen) structures are replicated in mass consumer culture, re-entrenching the social order • Mobilization of the instincts, the commoditized acceptance of “civilization” (Ewen 31, 48)‏ • Inoculation Model (Barthes –Margarine, Fiske 321)‏ • Culture Industry, collapse of high brow art and popular/folk culture

2. Marketing Practices – Constructing Meaning for Consumers • Mall design (Cohen 250, 254)‏ • Gruen transfer • Subliminal techniques • Demographic targeting • Sales techniques (GAPACT)‏ • Coolhunt • Product placement in the media (regulated by FCC “payola laws” of the 1950s)‏ • Product integration,“fusion planning” (iTVX)‏ • Brand entertainment (advertainment, retailtainment, brandvertising)

3. Example: Gruen Transfer • In shopping mall design, refers to the moment when consumers respond to "scripted disorientation" cues in the environment • induces impulse purchases because of unconscious influences of lighting, ambient sound and music, spatial choices, visual detail, mirrored and polished surfaces, climate control, and the sequence and order of interior storefronts

4. Controlling one's environment through consumption • Ownership (Fiske 316)‏ • Choice (80% of new commodities fail)‏ • Culturally specific use of commodities (“The gods must be crazy”)‏ • Guerilla tactics, tricksters, window shopping (Fiske 309, 322), cognitive rejection, “zapping” etc. • Assertion of identity (ethnic, race, gender, sexual orientation) through commodities • Assertion of status, honour, self-esteem through commodities and “style”

5. Controlling one's environment through consumption • Display (Fiske 317)‏ • Conspicuous consumption (Veblen, Fiske 322)‏ • Cultural capital (Bourdieu)‏

6. Theory of the Leisure Class • Economic life is driven not by notions of utility, but by social vestiges from pre-modern and even pre-historic times. • Conspicuous leisure – exemption from manual labour • Conspicuous consumption is one type of conspicuous leisure

7. People, rich and poor alike, attempt to impress others and seek to gain advantage through "conspicuous consumption" • Consumption is used as a way to gain and signal status. • Much of modern advertising is built upon a Veblenian notion of consumption.

8. Conspicuous consumption • The waste of money and/or resources by people to display a higher status than others. • Famous example: the use of silver utensils at meals, even though utensils made of cheaper material worked just as well or, in some cases, better.

9. Thus exchange value has use value, demonstrating social position and wealth: wasteful expenditure is useful as a social marker • Today due to industrial expansion, majority now consume conspicuously • Brand names, labels are a form of conspicuous consumption

10. Veblen goods • -- a theoretical group of commodities for which peoples' preference for buying them increases as a direct function of their price, instead of decreasing according to the theory of supply and demand.

11. The Veblen Effect considered an anomaly in the general theory of demand in microeconomics. Related to: -- the snob effect -- the bandwagon effect -- the counter-Veblen effect: preference for goods increases as their price falls.

13. Cultural Capital • Looking at the class-related differences in consumption, Bourdieu asks a different question, but their two studies on status and consumption complement each other nicely • Reproduction of social class through consumption • Social class is not quite the same as economic class; styles of life, culture

14. Economic capital—financial • Social capital—relationships, networks, organizations, affiliation • Cultural capital—distinctive tastes, skills, knowledges, practices

15. Cultural capital is spent in the consumption of art, food, interior décor, clothing, popular culture, hobbies and sport • not just what is consumed, but in what manner • along with bearing, posture, diction, pronunciation and language usage, manners are forms of legitimate behaviour that are taught at home but which bestow distinction in everyday life

16. Cars • Cars as emblems of modern industrial society • A signifier of Modernity, Technology and Progress

17. Marketing the car: • 1. technology, the sports car, the muscle car • 2. genteel luxury car, vestiges of upper class carriage • 3. family sedan, minivan, mobile home

18. Since the 1970s, cars have been identified as “part of the problem” and advertisers have attempted to revise the image of the car as emblem of modern industrial society. • New strategies include: • 1. Car as animal • 2. Car as safe retreat • 3. Nostalgia; the obverse of novelty as source for new trends