Chapter 3 - How Do Consumers Attatch Meaning Flashcards
Burberry
Chavs ended up wearing their clothes, wear consumers starched their one meaning to the product.
“People are not just passive receptors of meaning but can attribute their own meaning to things”
Context And Culture
A lot is dependent on context and culture thus companies expanding in to foreign markets must understand the social context they are heading in to.
“Humans are like animals suspended in webs of meaning” - Ethnography unable us to understand these webs.
Why Do People Shop?
Daniel Miller
“THEORY OF SHOPPING” - Daniel Miller
When people buy things it seems to go against common understanding, buying things for others seems to be integral to human society, kingship and how people connect”.’
found out that when people go shopping that people buy things for family, wife, husbands, kids etc, not for ourselves. Buying things for others is an essential ingredient of kinship.
Material Culture Of Love
Daniel Miller
“Material Culture Of Love” - This is where people attach meaning to things and it becomes part of their culture.
“Individuals are not simply passive consumers of objects but they are active creators and producers of meaning”.
E.G. The mantle piece - there is often meaning behind the objects placed on it.
- He uses this idea that through these objects, people showcase their love and affection for each other.
- How people buy and consume things to create sociality with others
Grant McCracken
He stated that when people do things, it is to fulfil a certain aspiration that they have for the future.
• certain products have a cultural orientation towards a certain future that you want to construct or reach- by buying these things people are trying to construct this future and fulfill personal aspirations
Objects can act as a ‘bridge’ between the present and the future.
• If people are active creators of meaning, attaching meaning to products, where does that take us?
• It takes us into ‘consumption sub-cultures’
• This can be understood as a sub-culture of people that are brought together through the consumption of a certain product or service. E.g Pokémon GO
By things to create relationships with each other, community, a certain commonality
e.g. Harley Davidson
Grant McCracken
He says that goods are used in US culture as a…
‘bridge to hopes and ideals’
- People often buy things which they can’t afford but which symbolise the life they would like to have.
- What people are doing through this kind of consumption is to take control of what he calls ‘displaced meaning’, the difference between the ideal and the actual state.
- can be seen in the purchase of expensive consumer items like watches or cars
A Money
‘Material Culture and the Living room’
Her points:
- Things come to be appropriated, that is assigned meanings, in the context of everyday use and display, and these meanings are rooted in the history of the object: where it came from, who gave it to the person, and how it is displayed in the living room as part of the house most open to outsiders.
- Material things make and maintain relationships.
- evident in the daily objects she studied, most of which had been given as gifts and were displayed because of what the relationship meant rather than the beauty or look of the object.
- Items here are, in Miller’s words, ‘the material culture of love’.
- mostly items bought by children, photos of children. Things become invited with memory, and also because of conventions around what kind of images of family can be displayed.
- Meaningful things here are not bought by householders but are given to them.
Holloway et al Muji, Materiality and Mundane geographies:
Muji prides itself on being a ‘non brand’, but it works because its design ‘fits in’
- It fits into a particular aesthetic associated with the stripped down minimalism of the urban middle class.
- Having fewer objects in a home is becoming a statement of wealth.
The Experimental meaning of Harley Davidson:
- This explores what a brand means to people who choose to identify themselves with it through lifestyle choices including how they spend their time and what they wear, even how they decorate their bodies with tattoos etc.
- How Harley Davidson works in conjunction with Harley owners to create an emotional connection with the brand as more than a lifestyle but as something which captures the essential essence of the self.
- They customise their bikes to stand out and reflect their own sense of self.
