Cultural Selection & Meaning Transfer Flashcards
Subculture
A group whose members share beliefs and common experiences that set them apart from others.
Microculture
Niche, often built around specific interests or lifestyles or aesthetic preference
Culture
The accumulation of shared meanings, rituals, norms, and traditions among the members of an organization or a society.
Enculturation
Learning the norms and values of your own culture.
Acculturation
Adapting to a new culture’s norms—critical for marketers in global or multicultural markets.
The Progressive Learning Model
People gradually absorb a new culture, blending old and new behaviors.
This process affects consumption habits, product preferences, and media use—even when moving within the same country.
Acculturations Agents
People and institutions that teach the ways of a culture
Ethos
A set of moral, aesthetic and evaluative principals
Cultural Sytems - 3 core elements
- Ecology
- Social Structure
- Ideology
Ecology
How a culture adapts to its envirionment
Social Structure
How people organize social roles and relationships.
How people maintain and orderly social life
Ideology
Shared worldviews, values, and moral codes.
Values
Shared beliefs that vary in priority across cultures (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism).
Custom
Traditional behaviors (e.g., meal times)
Mores
Strong moral rules (e.g., food taboos) or forbidden behaviour, such as incest or cannibalism.
Conventions
Norms regarding the conduct of everyday life. (e.g., how to eat or dress)
Myth
Story containing symbolic elements that expresses the shared emotions and ideals of a culture.
Sacred Consumption
Involves ordinary objects and events that a culture or group sets apart from normal activities and treats with some degree of respect or awe.
Desacralization
When a sacred item or symbol is removed from its special place or is duplicated in mass quantities, becoming profane as a result.
Eg. Fake LV Bags
Profane Consumption
Consumer objects and events that are ordinary, everyday objects and events that do not share the “specialness” of sacred ones.
Objectification
Occurs when profane items gain sacred value—through contamination, such as contact with celebrities.
Contamination
Occurs when an item gains sacredness by being associated with a person, event, or place considered sacred.
This connection is usually through physical contact or proximity.
Contagion Effect
The idea that a person’s essence or qualities can “rub off” on an object via physical contact.
This is especially strong when it involves celebrities.
Collecting
Transforms mundane items (e.g., comic books, sneakers) into personally sacred objects.
