The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology

The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology
Author: Cait Lamberton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 873
Release: 2023-04-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1009243942

In the last two years, consumers have experienced massive changes in consumption – whether due to shifts in habits; the changing information landscape; challenges to their identity, or new economic experiences of scarcity or abundance. What can we expect from these experiences? How are the world's leading thinkers applying both foundational knowledge and novel insights as we seek to understand consumer psychology in a constantly changing landscape? And how can informed readers both contribute to and evaluate our knowledge? This handbook offers a critical overview of both fundamental topics in consumer psychology and those that are of prominence in the contemporary marketplace, beginning with an examination of individual psychology and broadening to topics related to wider cultural and marketplace systems. The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology, 2nd edition, will act as a valuable guide for teachers and graduate and undergraduate students in psychology, marketing, management, economics, sociology, and anthropology.

Luxury Fever

Luxury Fever
Author: Robert H. Frank
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2001-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0743223403

A new luxury fever has America in its grip. Independent of stock prices, recessions, and inflation rates, the past two decades have witnessed a spectacular and uninterrupted rise in luxury consumption. Ordinary, functional goods are no longer acceptable. Our cars have gotten larger, heavier, and far more expensive. Mansions larger than 30,000 square feet no longer seem extravagant. Wristwatches for the super-rich cost tens of thousands of dollars. We are living in an era of excess. Consider: The average house built in the United States today is nearly twice as large as its counterpart from the 1950s. Even as houses have gotten more expensive and farther from the workplace, there has been a sharp increase in second-home ownership. The average price of an automobile sold in the United States now exceeds $22,000, up more than 75 percent from a decade ago. Total U.S. spending on luxury goods increased 21 percent between 1995 and 1996 (typical of recent years), while overall merchandise sales increased only 5 percent. Robert Frank caused a national debate in 1995 when he and co-author Philip Cook described the poisonous spread of "winner-take-all" markets. Now he takes a thought-provoking look at the flip side of spreading inequality: as the super-rich set the pace, everyone else spends furiously in a competitive echo of wastefulness. The costs are enormous: We spend more time at work, leaving less time for family and friends, less time for exercise. Most of us have been forced to save less and spend and borrow much more. The annual rate at which American families file for personal bankruptcy has grown to one in seventy. Budgetary pressures have reduced our willingness to fund even essential public services: Our food and water are increasingly contaminated. Potholes proliferate, and traffic delays double every ten years. Frank offers the first comprehensive and accessible summary of scientific evidence that our spending choices are not making us as happy and healthy as they could. Furthermore, he argues that human frailty is not at fault. The good news is that we can do something about it. We can make it harder for the super-rich to overspend, and capture our own competitive energy for the public good. Luxury Fever boldly offers a way to curb the excess and restore the true value of money.

Social Status and Cultural Consumption

Social Status and Cultural Consumption
Author: Tak Wing Chan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2010-04-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1139485970

How does cultural hierarchy relate to social hierarchy? Do the more advantaged consume 'high' culture, while the less advantaged consume popular culture? Or has cultural consumption in contemporary societies become individualised to such a degree that there is no longer any social basis for cultural consumption? Leading scholars from the UK, the USA, Chile, France, Hungary and the Netherlands systematically examine the social stratification of arts and culture. They evaluate the 'class-culture homology argument' of Pierre Bourdieu and Herbert Gans; the 'individualisation arguments' of Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman; and the 'omnivore-univore argument' of Richard Peterson. They also demonstrate that, consistent with Max Weber's class-status distinction, cultural consumption, as a key element of lifestyle, is stratified primarily on the basis of social status rather than by social class.

The Sum of Small Things

The Sum of Small Things
Author: Elizabeth Currid-Halkett
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400884691

How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption—like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide. Exploring the rise of the aspirational class, Currid-Halkett considers how much has changed since the 1899 publication of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. In that inflammatory classic, which coined the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” Veblen described upper-class frivolities: men who used walking sticks for show, and women who bought silver flatware despite the effectiveness of cheaper aluminum utensils. Now, Currid-Halkett argues, the power of material goods as symbols of social position has diminished due to their accessibility. As a result, the aspirational class has altered its consumer habits away from overt materialism to more subtle expenditures that reveal status and knowledge. And these transformations influence how we all make choices. With a rich narrative and extensive interviews and research, The Sum of Small Things illustrates how cultural capital leads to lifestyle shifts and what this forecasts, not just for the aspirational class but for everyone.

Status Through Consumption

Status Through Consumption
Author: Steven D. Silver
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1461509831

Consumption takes place in settings or environments which have both direct and indirect effects on its dynamic path. Direct effects of environments on activities in consuming can occur through constraints that environments impose. Environment can also have indirect effects on consumption through enduring modification of internalized constructs which enter heuristics for decisions on activities. The importance of environments to consumption is increased by the definitional dependence of status on the judgements of others. This study examines microprocessing in consumer activities for status as it interacts with structure in the environments of these activities. The importance of environments in status activities provides the basis for a seperate, but related inquiry into observed differences in the form they take across societies. Conjecture on the consequences of differences in the structure of environments for consumption that typify a society is studied in the narrative statements by members of comparison societies and in the content of print advertising in these societies. Evolutionary processes which could establish observed differences in structure across societies are also considered in both their systematic and random components. I review models of random drift and stochastic resonance as candidate forms for generating observed structure in environments. Directions for the subsequent study of status through consumption are discussed.P Introduction: Status Through Consumption; Knowledge Use in Nonwork Activities for Status; Interactions of Consumer Microprocessing and Structured Environments: Activity Feedback and the Stability of Structure; Awards and Honors Systems in Structured Environments: Cross Societal Comparisons of Narrative Statements on Consuming for Status; Comparative Analyses of Consumption Appeals in the Print Advertising of the USA and France, 1955-1991 Random Process in the Generation of Structured Environments; Overview and directions for Study of Status Through Consumption.

The Theory of the Leisure Class (Annotated)

The Theory of the Leisure Class (Annotated)
Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-03-14
Genre:
ISBN:

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is a treatise on economics and a detailed social critique of conspicuous consumption, based on social class and consumerism, derived from social stratification. of people and the division of labor, which are social institutions of the feudal period (9 to 15 c.) that have continued until the modern era. Veblen claims that the contemporary lords of the mansion, the entrepreneurs who own the means of production, have been employed in the economically unproductive practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are useless activities that contribute neither to the economy nor to production material of the useful goods and services required for the functioning of society, while it is the middle class and the working class that usefully work in the industrialized and productive occupations that support the whole of society.Conducted in the late 1800s, Veblen's socioeconomic analyzes of business cycles and the consequent pricing policy of the U.S. economy and the emerging division of labor, by technocratic specialty (scientist, engineer, technologist, etc.), proved to be predictions. precise and sociological of the economic structure of an industrial society.

Handbook of Research on Consumerism in Business and Marketing: Concepts and Practices

Handbook of Research on Consumerism in Business and Marketing: Concepts and Practices
Author: Kaufmann, Hans-Ruediger
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 668
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1466658819

The modern era of business has prompted an increased focus on the consumer and the responsibility of corporations to consider their ethical and social obligations to their customers. The rise of the consumerist movement has encouraged further research and development on the topic of consumerism, enabling business to succeed in a consumer-driven market. Handbook of Research on Consumerism in Business and Marketing: Concepts and Practices features research on diverse topics on consumerism in the global marketplace, focusing on the ways in which businesses can improve their relationships with customers as well as analyze and influence purchasing behavior. As a comprehensive reference source on topics pertaining to consumer management, identity, and behavior, this publication is intended for use by marketing professionals, business managers, students, and academicians.

Conspicuous Consumption

Conspicuous Consumption
Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 83
Release: 2005-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0141964316

With its wry portrayal of a shallow, materialistic 'leisure class' obsessed by clothes, cars, consumer goods and climbing the social ladder, this withering satire on modern capitalism is as pertinent today as when it was written over a century ago.

Consequences and Perceptions of Status Consumption

Consequences and Perceptions of Status Consumption
Author: Sona Klucarova
Publisher:
Total Pages: 101
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

Consumption of certain products or services often brings status or prestige to the consumer. Such status consumption plays an essential role in the lives of many consumers and in today’s economy. In my two dissertation essays, I seek to examine the role of status consumption in consumer behavior context. In the first essay, I explore the connection between status consumption and charitable donation behavior. The results of nine studies demonstrate that status consumption, considered a self-centered behavior, leads to increased charitable donations, a prosocial outcome. This effect is driven by subjective feelings of empowerment that consumers derive from status consumption. My second essay investigates inferences made about consumers who share word of mouth about their status products. I demonstrate across 12 studies that word of mouth about status products decreases consumers’ perceived status in the eyes of other people. This is because word of mouth about their status products reduces the perceived cultural capital of status consumers, which in turn reduces the perception of status. This is paradoxical since consumers share word of mouth about their status products with the intention to elevate their status in the eyes of others. In the two essays, I use both lab and field experiments to test my hypotheses, employ both mediation and moderation methods to test the psychological processes, rule out an array of alternative explanations, and explore several boundary conditions. I conclude the two essays by outlining their contributions to both theory and marketing practice.

The Sociology of Consumption

The Sociology of Consumption
Author: Joel Stillerman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2015-08-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745696910

The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Approach offers college students, scholars, and interested readers a state-of-the-art overview of consumption the desire for, purchase, use, display, exchange, and disposal of goods and services. The book’s global focus, emphasis on social inequality, and analysis of consumer citizenship offer a timely, exciting, and original approach to the topic. Looking beyond the U.S. and Europe, Stillerman engages examples from his and others’ research in Chile and other Latin American countries, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and East and South Asia to explore the interaction between global and local forces in consumption. The text explores the lived experience of being a consumer, demonstrating how social inequalities based on class, gender, sexuality, race, and age shape consumer practices and identities. Finally, the book uncovers the important role consumption has played in fueling local and international activism. This welcome new book will be ideal for classes on consumer culture across the social sciences, humanities, and marketing.