Critical Issues in Design - Essay Example

?Is consumption active or passive? Refer to theories of consumerism in your answer. In general terms consumption refers to the act of consuming whilein terms of modern lingo consumption refers to the social and economic phenomenon based on a desire to purchase goods and services in increasing amounts. This text will use the later definition for consumption in order to analyze if consumption is an active or a passive phenomenon. While consumerism has its roots as far back as ancient Rome and Egypt (where certain classes of people would purchase goods in excess of their needs), the modern turning point for consumerism occurred in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. In ancient societies only a few stratums of society could afford consumerism while after the Industrial Revolution nearly everyone in affluent societies could afford to buy in excess of their needs. These changes in consumption are a direct result of technological progress as well as changes in human attitudes over the years. The focus of this text will be directed to the human factors responsible for consumption and the nature of those factors. While referring to either consumption or consumerism it must be kept in mind that the more affluent stratums of society define the standards of consumption. The trends and consumption patterns displayed by these groups tend to trickle down into the rest of society. For example, fashion in clothes and foot wear is defined by the affluent sections of society such as celebrities, designers, socialites etc. but all stratums of society tend to follow these patterns. The real issue to consider here is why these trends are followed and whether the causations are active or passive in nature. It is pertinent here to define active and passive so that their use in this text is clarified. Active engagement refers to the participation of members of society in a manner such that they define their own identities and the conglomeration of these identities forms social structures. In contrast passive engagement refers to the participation of members of society in a manner such that their choices and will are dictated by certain individuals and groups. The formed identities are a reflection of the affluent individuals’ and groups’ desires and the resulting social structure reflects this strongly. Consumption is also affected by active and passive engagement of the society’s members. The resulting consumption patterns can be taken as independent consumption decisions for active engagement and influenced consumption decisions for passive consumption. The state of consumption in contemporary society is important in deciphering if consumption is actually an active or a passive phenomenon. The start of the nineties signaled a new era of consumerism. More and more people began attending colleges to make more money rather than to become experts in their relevant fields or to help others out. This change can be related closely to the overbearing influence of materialism on people’s everyday lives. The advent of the digital age brought an array of new products as well as the reduction in cost to purchase them. This influence was also helped out by the expansion of communication that brought these new products into the focus of nearly all stratums of society. These changes in turn affected prevalent culture directly and Madeline Levine criticizes this change in cultural values by remarking that this was “a shift away from values of community, spirituality, and integrity, and towards competition, materialism and disconnection.”1 Sensing this change businesses have also realized that the best targets of marketing are wealthy and affluent consumers. The choices and preferences of the more affluent consumers tend to trickle down and become standards for other consumers. The less affluent consumers tend to purchase new commodities and services to provide instant gratification and to create symbols that speak of their affluence in respect to society. This also indicates that both active and passive consumption are carried out by people in order to provide gratification and to provide a sense of improving their social status.2 Therefore it can be said that consumption is influenced by the more affluent groups who are targeted by businesses and that consumption provides gratification to both active and passive consumers alike. Another major aspect of consumption is emulation where the less affluent consumers will imitate the consumption patterns of the more affluent consumers. The poorer sections of society imitate the wealthier sections of society and the wealthier sections in turn imitate icons such as celebrities and designers. The move towards celebrity endorsement of products indicates that the modern consumer tends to procure goods and services in order to emulate the behavior of people with a higher social status. This kind of purchasing behavior can exist in the mind of an average consumer along with the image of one being an individualist. The views of Uusitalo indicate that neoclassical economics as well as behavioral psychology oriented consumer research proves that the ideas and actions of consumers are both self determined and independent. On the other hand the Critical Frankfurtian and the Galbraithian political economy groups see the consumer as being dictated by market trends and mass culture trends. Traditionally research into consumer behavior has been ruled by the passive consumer point of view with the consumer having only a few limited options or “free choices”. However recently there has been a move to see the consumer as an active agent who makes his own choices. The consumer has been construed as an independent agent who can take his own decisions and form an independent social identity which in turn creates social structures as mentioned before.3 The more dominant contemporary approach is to view the consumer as an active agent who can self reflect and create new meaning in order to take a somewhat critical distance to both advertising and mass media.4 This perspective on consumerism is also influenced by the ideas of Mary Douglas ja Baron Isherwood and this approach tends to view consumption as a means of social communication. Recent studies in marketing have also been influenced by culture based ideas from fields such as culture, semiotics and anthropology. Marketing has been seen to import a large number of its analytical and diagnostic methods from the field of behavioral sciences. The research by Celia Lury and Alan Warde provides key examples of different techniques from behavioral sciences that have been incorporated into marketing. However this brand of research fails to account for the assumption of concepts from consumer behavior as well as marketing oriented research into the social consumption theory.5 Concepts such as target groups and segments have become a part of cultural and media studies. Moreover these disciplines have also been incorporated into promotional culture which is dedicated to the study of contemporary cultural forms from the perspective of a member. In contrasts, Conrad Lodziak puts forward the argument that the cultural consumption theory puts too much focus on symbolic consumption while the active consumer as well as the creative consumer can be utilized for legitimizing the consumer based ideology used by global conglomerates.6 Similarly Uusitalo has also argued that the post modernist views of consumption make the freedom of the individual consumer more romantic than they actually are. To bring about a more balanced theory on consumption, Uusitalo has proposed a giddensian approach for structure of society. This kind of ideology proposes that the existing social structures as well as values and norms have an effect on people’s individual choices, however, the consumer still finds great autonomy in his activities and choices that result from his persona. This structure of consumerism also helps to bring about a more balanced approach to the differing aspects of consumerism. The often lobe sided social deterministic views on consumerism and the empty descriptive views on consumers as being individual consumers or brand slaves are well balanced using the approach delineated above. This kind of view has also been supported by Gabriel and Lang through their research on consumerism.7 In contrast to the ideas presented before a different set of perspectives is presented by the needs theories behind consumerism. A need is defined as a trait that drives an individual to chase an objective through his actions which provide a purpose along with direction and meaning for the individual’s behavior. Human needs can be classified broadly into two categories which are psychological needs and objective needs. Psychological needs are objectives that have not been previously satisfied and most classifications of such needs place them in a hierarchical structure. The classifications presented by Maslow and Alderfer can be seen as examples of such a hierarchical structure of psychological needs. As far as objective needs are concerned, the need can be seen as a particular manifestation of a specific goal that must be achieved. Such classifications have also been extensively studied by the likes of Gough and Doyal. As per Maslow’s models of needs and other models based on it, basic human needs should be fulfilled before human beings can go for more “luxurious” needs. Basic human needs represent needs that are necessary to human survival such as food, clothing, shelter and other basic needs.8 Every human being strives to fulfill these needs actively because they are required to survive. In the current era most of these needs are provided by large business enterprises that expand these needs into more passive pursuits. For example clothing is an essential need to shelter oneself from environmental elements but the projection of stylish clothing forces a large number of individuals to buy expensive clothing that they may not necessarily require. Clothing accessories such as scarves, hand bags etc. are all not required for survival. Instead they all represent luxury and instant personal gratification. Such consumption patterns can be seen as supportive of passive consumerism. Based on this line of argument, there seems to be a blurry distinction between active consumerism and passive consumerism in contemporary consumerism. On the other hand if Maslow’s model of needs is explored further, it will become clear that all human beings try their best to reach the pyramidal structure’s top. Therefore human beings desire product and services actively at all points in time based on human nature and psychological needs. In order to reach their goals for psychological needs, human beings may pursue active as well as passive modes of consumerism. The basic needs are fulfilled actively as mentioned before but they may have passive influences. As people climb Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the intervention of passive consumerism increases as the top level needs are luxuries because they are not essential to human survival. Passive consumerism is of course influenced in great proportion by mass media, advertising and social as well as cultural influences. On the other hand objective needs can be seen as self created goals by human beings that may be based on active or passive engagement or as a combination of both. For example if a person desires to buy an iPod, it is a self created goal as there is no chance of dying out due to the lack of an iPod. This self created need could have been a person’s self initiated desire to listen to music while on the go or it could have been a result of social influences such as friends and colleagues who also possess iPods. The fluctuation between self initiated needs and socially influenced needs itself depends on a variety of factors such as the prevalent culture, the individual’s age group, the individual’s spending power, the individual’s maturity etc. These factors possess both active as well as passive characteristics. Even if these factors are determined whole to favor either active consumerism or passive consumerism, there is no guarantee that an individual will follow these distinctions religiously. Consumption patterns indicate that individual consumers have an affliction for both active as well as passive consumerism. If passive consumption were dominant, there would have been little need to market products and services as aggressively as they are marketed in current times. This marketing aggression indicates that the individual does have a role to play in individual decisions on consumerism. Based on the arguments presented above, it is clear that all major theories of consumerism support both active and passive consumerism. Consequently, consumption can be seen as a mixture of active and passive influences. Therefore, consumption cannot be relegated to active consumerism or passive consumerism alone but has to be treated as a compromise between both. The extent and domination of the influence between active and passive consumerism in consumerism is however debatable and is based on socio-economic and cultural factors for groups of individuals. Bibliography Gabriel, Yiannis, and Tim Lang. The Unmanageable Consumer. Contemporary Consumption and its Fragmentations. London: Sage, 1995. Lash, Scott, and John Urry. Economies of Sign and Space. London: Sage, 1994. Levine, Madeline. “Challenging the Culture of Affluence.” Independent School 67(1), 2007: 28-36. Lodziak, Conrad. The Myth of Consumerism. Virginia: Pluto Press, 2002. Lury, Celia, and Alan Warde. “Investments in the Imaginary Consumer. Conjectures regarding power, knowledge and advertising.” In Buy this book: Studies in advertising and consumption, by M. Nava, A. Blake, I McRury and B. Richards, 87-102. London: Routledge, 1997. Maslow, A. H. “Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review 50, 1943: 370-396. Miller, Eric. Attracting the Affluent. Naperville, Illinois: Financial Sourcebooks, 1990. Uusitalo, Liisa. “Consumption in Postmodernity - Social structuration and the construction of the self.” In The Active consumer, by M. Bianchi, 215-235. London: Routledge, 1998. Read More