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© The Author(s) 2018
Brian M. YoungConsumer Psychologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90911-0_2
2. Concepts and Themes
Brian M. Young1
(1)The Business School, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Brian M. Young
Email: [email protected]
Epistemological ‘Creep’
No not a term of abuse hurled with bread rolls at an Oxford gaudy. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and there are several ways of increasing knowledge and understanding. For example in this book I am trying to explain what other writers have said, and to clarify and integrate their ideas using my own vision of how they ‘work’ together. Having to explain consumer psychology and imposing a life-span vision on that discipline might not exactly concentrate the mind wonderfully but it might just bring the task into focus by describing the scope of the book as reflected in the title and structure for example. Or we can use images to help us see at a glance what might take several paragraphs of text to explain rather laboriously, although this is not one of my tools here. Metaphor is for me a preferred instrument to help in increasing knowledge and providing insight. Metaphors are not just words in odd contexts that release extra meaning but they can constitute whole systems of understanding tied together with root metaphors . 1 We look at metaphors in more detail in Chapter 3 in the section on “Metaphor”. We can mix metaphors and images in writing for example where an image is suggested by the words and my interest in the concept of ‘value chains ’ is partly because of the visual potential of the idea of chains with links and how choosing or contemplating a choice entails plugging yourself into an already existing intangible network of changes in value that stretches across the globe. The next stage in developing a systematic understanding is to create a model which is a word that is often used very loosely. Ideally a model should work and lead to systematic insights that can be tested. So for example if you drilled into my brain you would poking about in the main part of the central nervous system which extends to my spinal cord. It’s a messy place to be, with chemicals swishing about and tiny pulses of electricity and small cells where some look different from others but others are similar. In order to model this system we look at one aspect of it and make some assumptions to simplify the system and make it manageable. So maybe we have circuits with electric currents flowing along them and boosted at every junction. Donald Hebb created a very famous model of the central nervous system in the middle of last century and his books were essential reading for serious psychology students in the 1960s. When a model has been tested and shown to work and provide new insights then it may be incorporate into a theory which a systematic and coherent set of formulations either in scientific or in mathematical language, often a mixture of both. One of the jobs of a scientist is to try and test these theories with a view to demonstrating where they might be inadequate.
You will notice there are mercifully no sources cited in the above paragraph because it is just setting a stage to make a point. And the point is this: Consumer psychologists tend to take a mixture of images, metaphors and perhaps simple models too seriously as explanatory devices. For example there are assumptions that we process information using two sets of processes (see Chapter 5), that we have a theory that explains how we go through different stages as children and adults (see this book!) and we have a fear of death that can makes us consume in certain ways (see Chapter 12). Often these are given theory names in capital letters as in Terror Management Theory or are described using flow diagrams. These assumptions are useful and enable us to design experiments and describe consumption scenarios and they should be used to illuminate along with the other insights and metaphors that are used in consumer research. As for ‘creep’ I’m using the expression in the sense it was used during the Vietnam War when ‘mission creep’ described the gradual escalation of the conflict because the success of one part of the campaign would breed more ambitious goals . What I read in consumer psychology is a mixture of images, metaphors, and the occasional theory borrowed from psychology. However there is a tendency to upgrade these to be more systematic than they are and that’s where the ‘creeping’ comes in. There is no need to upgrade working metaphors and images of how the consumer ’s mind works to a theory or a model. I’m quite happy to take the accounts I’ve read in researching this book as stories and explorations of the world of consumption and I think you should read my interpretations in the same way.
Describing Change
Having several processes operating at the same time suggests that change is happening on different dimensions. Talking about change implies that things are different now from before and will be different in the future. How best to describe these processes? There are several ways that are relevant here and I have borrowed unashamedly from other writers who were writing in different traditions and academic disciplines. But I do think their descriptions are enlightening.
Émile Durkheim and Sacred/Profane
Durkheim was a French sociologist and an important figure in the history of sociology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He used the distinction sacred-profane to describe the change occurring when people come together in religious ceremonies which are full of ritual behaviour as opposed to the individual interests that guide our profane or ordinary lives. Sacred here means ‘special’. For me a good example would be the events surrounding what is called ‘9–11 ’ when New York suffered an attack with the consequent collapse of the Twin Towers. The date is enshrined in the name ‘9–11’ and a ceremony involving the reading of names of those who died is held at the site of 9–11. These and other ritual ways of talking about the event and remembering it characterise it as ‘sacred’. The use of names to call things (either action words like verbs or object words like nouns) is a way of recognizing sacredness. For example, the horrors of the concentration camps and the attempted genocide of the Jewish people are remembered in the term ‘Holocaust’ and such a time and event is sacred and special. In consumer research Belk , Wa
llendorf , and Sherry (1989, p. 13) talk of consumption as replacing religion in contemporary society when the secularized becomes sacred and the sacred is secular.
Claude Lévi-Strauss and Raw/Cooked
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist who lived a long and productive life, passing away aged 100 in 2009. The contrast known as raw/cooked (or le cru et le cuit in French) is deliberate as Levi-Strauss used a concept from structural linguistics known as distinctive features to provide a structural analysis of aspects of human societiey. Raw is natural as found in nature and cooked is culturally prepared, made acceptable according to the mores of the culture. We find this in language where in English we eat pork from pigs and beef from cows or bulls. The names are different to separate raw from cooked. Other food customs and habits prescribe what is acceptable and unacceptable as food with prawns ‘yes’ and grubs ‘no’. 2 In consumer research we find that in the search for authenticity in vacations we see a tension between a desire for the ‘raw’ environments and a corresponding need for the comforts (culturally ‘cooked’) of home . A mixture of the two is found in the current portmanteau expression ‘ glamping ’ which blends luxury (glamour) with the outdoors (camping).
Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
This is a triad of words that describe the process of change and it’s often associated with the German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. It is quite an abstract process and tracking its provenance is an intellectual exercise but it can be useful in describing societal and political change and also in life-span development when we look at the work of Erik Erikson in Chapter 7. The words can be used to describe a process of change where a proposition is put such as ‘consumption is to do with buying things’. That’s a thesis and we can nod wisely now. Then an antithesis is put: Some examples of consumption that don’t directly involve buying directly; say throwing away trash. This clash between thesis and antithesis drives us to seek a solution and there is an implicit assumption that this is an imaginative leap or a creative solution. We might go to a different level to synthesize and end up discussing exchange and reciprocity and gift giving or how there’s a cycle in consumption and see it more as a time-based process. We have seen that teaching and the general management and development of ideas can use variations on the theme of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Keep it handy when you next have a conversation about politics! It’s mentally good for you to think this way.
Some Psychology Now…
How much psychology do you need to understand this book? From my experience of teaching business school students, many of whom have never taken any modules in psychology before, far less attended a programme in the subject, I reckon that you can understand the basics of consumer psychology from a life-span perspective without a background in psychology. I’ll start you off with the basics here and then introduce you to more specialist material in other chapters.
It’s important first to keep three things separate. What happens to you, how your mind processes information, and what you do are three areas that are intimately related in practice or else we would never be able to cope with the complexity of being human in the twenty first century. However they need to be examined, analysed and described separately. Then we can look at how they interact. Back in the middle of last century the expression S → O → R was used where S are stimuli, you are the organism O and you respond R and we still talk about stimuli and responses in psychology although the organism part has gone out of fashion and ‘he or she’ is often used instead.
So let’s look at what I am doing right now. I’m sitting at a table typing into my laptop. There is a window in front of me and the sun is low on the horizon and shines through the clouds so I feel generally peaceful and appreciative of what’s happening to me right now. But I must concentrate and get the 1000 words I’ve set myself to write on the book today (I sometimes call it something else but that’s been filed away under ‘private’ in my mind). As I write, ideas kind of bubble-up in my mind and other slip off to the back of my mind. I type with two fingers and I wish I had learnt the proper way when I was younger.
What psychology is going on here? My environment is near to me (laptop keys, screen, and feeling of the chair—a bit too hard) and also away from me (noises-off from next door, setting sun outside near the horizon). Sometime we call near environments proximal and far away ones distal . If my environment is defined in terms of how I am coping and responding to it then we can call it my perceptual ecology . My responses are typing, pausing, glancing at screen’, listening, internal speech to myself to ‘keep going, ignore what’s happening next door’. They might include standing up and sorting out the chair, adjusting the height. I can respond to things. I think and feel and intend i.e. am motivated to do as well as directly respond to the environment if I want to or if I have to (watch out! The coffee will be spilt!). I have skills both poor (typing) and good (saving coffee spillage). I have emotions that could be described as rippling across my mind as they are peaceful and a bit creative but mild irritation at the potential spillage. That’s some of what’s happening.
A lot of the way we make sense of our world involves using this background processing which is often done without our awareness. Ideas are awakened and others slip back with attention wandering, so that a lot of our mental effort and organisation is working to keep us on task. But many leisure activities involve occasions when we indulge in complex skilled performance whether it is a ball game or an engaging conversation. We consume for example bungee jumping, mountaineering, dancing to rock bands, and appreciate art and music. All of these involve orchestrated behaviours. So to return to S → O → R, think about three large baskets rather than a sequence of symbols with arrows between them. The one in the middle is you and in that one there are various metaphors, images, models of the mind. The other two, at the moment, involve skilled behaviour on the right and various events in your environment on the left. So let’s say you are consuming the experience of a mountain by climbing it and you’ve got to a difficult bit and every part of you is working in a skilled way. Your environment is surrounding you and your senses are picking up temperature, colour, the ‘feel’ of the rock, the tug of the wind, and you will be sensitive to any changes in the ambient parameters of your immediate environment that herald a possible avalanche, or a storm front. The visual metaphor of categories linked with arrows doesn’t seem appropriate somehow and a description of how you process information in this situation would be better framed as you being immersed in a sea of sense data and from that you construct a perceived world and act on it. We’ll return to this way of conceiving S, O and R when Gibson’s theory of perception is discussed in Chapter 3.
But there’s something missing. Bungee jumping is terrifying but exciting. Mountaineering is exhilarating and aesthetically powerful. Emotion permeates much of our consumption and satisfying emotional needs and drives is often the reason why we consume. And finally we want to do it, whether it is jumping from a plane with a parachute, or white-water rafting in New Zealand. Or maybe just put our feet up and watch trash TV. We have a will to act. These three mental functions which can be called thinking, feeling, and intending or to use more specific psychological terms we talk of cognitive , affective , and conative 3 aspects of mental events.
Conceptual Toolbox
The preceding section brings me to my toolbox of concepts and what you will find useful in order to understand the psychology part of consumer psychology. The first concern is to do with the mind and how best to talk about it. Of course philosophers have talked about this for centuries and it would be beyond the scope of this book to even attempt to do so. One way of side-stepping the issue is to talk about models of the mind i.e. how people, and psychologists are people too, think about what’s going on when we introspect and try and think about our thinking. 4 We can start off by laying out three general candidates for inclusion. One would be the structure of mental activity, the other would be the content, and the final one would be
what could be called ‘levels of representation’ which deals with how the outside world is coded in different systems in our minds.
Starting with content then a ‘concept ’ is a word that has a well-established provenance in psychology. ‘Schema ’ is often used when we talk about structure and the three levels proposed by Jerome Bruner in 1966 of enactive , iconic and symbolic have stood the test of time and are still in use today (see section “Images of Childhood” in this chapter). However the distinctions should not be seen as rigid demarcations but rather looser ways of clarifying ideas in your own minds. I shall now introduce you to them starting with thinking, feeling and intending. This triad appears frequently in attitude research and in a classic early paper (Insko & Schopler, 1967) the authors argued that there is a strong tendency for the three elements to become consistent with each other 5 and examples are given (see their Table 2) with various post hoc explanations of how people do achieve such consistency. In consumer psychology we encounter the triad in two papers on destination choice in tourism research (Yuksel, Yuksel, & Bilim, 2010; Pike & Ryan, 2004). My own use of it was when I taught a module on questionnaire design and came across the idea that a good questionnaire was one on a topic that respondents understood (cognitive), had feelings about (affective) and were in a position to do something about (intending). In other words these three aspects if they are interrelated with a particular object will assess a consistent attitude toward that object so an attitude consists of organised beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies towards things, people, and symbols (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005, p. 150) and these of course can be brands and other objects that are relevant to us as consumers.
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