Customer Consumption Behaviour - Essay Example

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 2 IDENTITY AND CONSUMPTION 2 ITEMS AS SYMBOLS OF SOCIAL POSITION 3 CONSUMPTION OF MUSIC 4 MUSICAL PREFERENCE OF TEEN-AGERS 5 CREDIT CARD AND YOUTH CONSUMPTION 6 VALUE-ADDED PRODUCTS 7 CONCLUSION 8 WORKS CITED INTRODUCTION Consumption is a core part of everyday life and can be observed in many different places, spaces and times. Consumption is as variable as the consumers themselves. One's preference for a product or service is another person's garbage. Consumption is a function of income, taste, preferences and cultural factors. Big spenders differ greatly from the low-income consumer. An educated consumer has a different pattern of consumption from an uneducated one. Consumption is to be treated 'as a process by which artifacts are not simply bought and consumed, but given meaning through their active incorporation in people's lives (Jackson 1993:209, p. 1). The innovative ways of using mass-production goods are conceptualized as 'styles' which are expressive of the individualities/identities of the users. In the construction of lifestyles, the use-value of an object of consumption is secondary to the object's signifying effects, to its 'sign-value', organized around what Hebdige calls, 'a theology of appearances' (1993:89, p.1). Within this cultural politics, beyond the individual styles, social collectives are deemed to be constituted of a 'series of narrowly defined markets, targets, consumption, taste and status groups' (Hebdige 1999, p. 1). IDENTITY AND CONSUMPTION The concept of identity is useful for conceptualizing interrelations between tastes, social and organizational factors, and consumption. Anthony Giddens (1991, p.37) pointed out that in typical societies, lifestyles, social roles, relationships, and daily activities were monitored by religion, ascribed status, and accepted practices. Post-modernism created more scope for people to establish their own identities by adopting lifestyles, self-manifestations, and self-concepts that have symbols, pleasures, and values significant to them. In this situation, consumption plays a crucial and defining role: given the fragmentation of socioeconomic life, observable aspects such as clothing, the type of vehicle, place of residence, and eating and drinking habits provide compact signals of how one wants to be seen, what resources one commands, and what one's values are. (Dolfsma 1999, 1993:88). SHOPPING AS A CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC ACTIVITY The retail sector as a whole has been studied through analyses of 'shopping' as a social, cultural and economic activity (Falk and Campbell 1997), of shopping mall as a location of consumption of dreams and hopes, helped by architectural designs and display technologies, and of the interactions between the sales-person and customers in closing the sale (Peretz 1995). Consumer desires have been prompted by exposure to the possessions and lifestyles of a reference group. The reference group is a comparison group located nearby in the social hierarchy. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, the Pierre Bourdieu discovered a striking regularity in French consumer patterns in the 1960s and 1970s. Bourdieu discovered that a person's educational level and father's occupation revealed much about that individual's taste in music and art, what kinds of shops they patronized, and the type of cooking they did. In the consumption field, taste is created by cultural capital which is shown by the level of education and the family socialization process of this particular group of consumers. People from families who are rich in cultural capital assimilate basic concept good and bad taste. They are trained to appreciate fine art and music, to prefer food, to understand complicated art forms. ITEMS AS SYMBOLS OF SOCIAL POSITION Clothes, cars, wristwatches, living room furniture, and make-up are well-known symbols of social position. In a sense, competitive spending revolves around a group of socially visible products. Visible products become status goods for their ownership can be validated. What one drives and wears is immediately recognized by observers. (Chin, 2001, 119-141). The importance of visibility can be seen in the rise of designer logos. Logos were not needed before because only the rich bought from the top designers. The consumers were very few. The consumers can also identify the designers and their individual styles. As the middle-class market developed, the fashion industry gained millions of buyers. In effect, the consumers had little knowledge of the different designer lines and their relative standing. In order to obtain her money's worth in terms of social status, the middle-class purchaser needed to make sure that others knew what she had bought. She had to feel satisfied. CONSUMPTION OF MUSIC Choosing one type of music over another may perhaps personalize your choice, but the most important thing about the fact of choosing is that it assigns you a place in the overall economic order. [Baudrillard 1996, P. 141]. According to Baudrillard, the capitalist system allows consumers ample freedom, and this attitude is a signature of the capitalist system. Frith (1990, p. 45) distinguished between a bourgeois taste by the public and a classical taste of music from the Western world. The researchers observed how young consumers select and purchase music compact discs in a local music store. These are the basic observations. About 30 boys entered the music store. They each have a particular choice of favorite composers / performers. The researchers focused on asking questions regarding the music styles that the students want. The respondents had ages ranging from 15-21 years old. A random and purposive sampling was implemented. The researchers went around the store to check all the music types which are available inside the store. There were 35 music styles. All the music types were considered. The respondents voluntarily participated in this research activity. Only 5 people said that they do not want to be observed and interviewed. The researchers also asked for the socioeconomic backgrounds of the respondents. The interview time covered the 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm business hours of the music store. Each of the participants was asked to name two genres that best describes their current taste in music. The researchers observed that the teen-agers bought CDs of their preferred music types before they left the store. Their specific musical preferences were in consonance with their purchasing decision of the music CDs when they were observed as they were lining up at the store cashiers' area. MUSICAL PREFERENCE OF TEEN-AGERS Approximately sixteen of the 35 musical styles were selected by the teen-agers. Their choices of music styles encompass a range of musical styles. Three respondents like choral music. Seven respondents liked 20th century Classical music. Another three respondents liked drum & bass. Four respondents preferred world music. Only two teen-agers liked baroque. One teen-ager preferred English folk songs. About eight respondents listen to new age / relaxation music. About eight focused on psychedelic rock. Early music is the preference of three students. Reggae is the music for four students. Punk music elates three students. Electronic music dazzles 13 teen-agers. About 17 teen-agers are hooked on funk and acid jazz music. Heavy metal interests four students. The other musical styles they liked were: opera, country and western, jazz , current chart pop, Rhythm and Blues, soul, classical, disco dance / house, hip hop / rap, musicals, blues, indie and adult pop. To analyze this consumer behavior, the researchers considered the inner desires of the respondents. These inner desires are prompted first and foremost by exposure. The respondent's knowledge about the release of a new music compact disc is spread to the others when he first hears it on the radio. Then the recording company organizes a promotional tour in various record stores, one young person buys the CD product and listens to it and recommends it to their friends. One young person hosts a party and plays the music on the CD. When the others like it, they buy it from the record store. They also view the consumer items in advertisements and films or on television. CREDIT CARD AND YOUTH CONSUMPTION The rise of the consumer plastic, namely the credit card enables young people to make a consumption decision easily. Most of what they purchase they finance through borrowing. The earning comes later. Most consumers borrow to buy their homes, and most automobiles are bought on credit. The availability of the credit card balances, finance company loans, department store debts, and debts to individual shows the pervasiveness of household debt. Credit cards, with interest rates hitting nearly 20 percent, are a remarkably lucrative part of the loan business. Debtors pay an average of US $1,000 a year in interest and fees alone. The companies look increasingly like credit pushers soliciting heavily and beyond their creditworthy base. VALUE-ADDED PRODUCTS The business of modern consumer goods, like most successful enterprises these days, is all about adding value to machine-made products of the same inherent value. This oxymoron is at the heart of consumption. Whereas the fashion houses like Ralph Lauren focus on design and marketing, the Europeans have exploited the critical link between the brand name and the mystique of handcrafted quality. That link is done by branding. The concept of a brand is constructed on the glossy pages magazines. Consumer behavior is heavily influenced by effective advertising. It is advertising that tells the story about the merits of the product. Advertising travels in a medium, either in print or electrons. The history of these media is simple. If they can't carry commercial speech, they won't survive. As they have evolved, various media have established themselves as part of the process of understanding the value of goods. The newspapers and magazines are conduits of information for the goods and services. Consumer objects are best explained in the technical and slow moving media: newspapers and, glossy magazines. The basic money-making status consists of a person's earning money, making it quick and making it count. The second thread of consumer life, was to cooperate, make it slow, get rewarded later, and do it by dint of labor. Hence, reallocating our time and money in these ways would result in healthier, longer, and more satisfying lives (Douglas Walker, 1999, p. 30). Conclusion The essay tackled the consumer behavior of college students with respect to their consumption of particular types of music. The interviews with the young people had showed that the musical preferences should be associated with personal choice, lifestyle choices, and that there is a need to study how to determine the main lifestyle dimensions along which groups of young music fans differ from one another. Furthermore, this study validates the notion that the young people are the greatest and fast-growing segment of consumers of music today. Parallel to this study, the research featured the major related literature on consumption theory which was tackled during the semester. The choice of music styles reflected the cultural capital of the young people as described by their socioeconomic background, peer influence and the advertising promoted by the music industry. References Adorno, T. W., 1941. On popular music. Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung, 9, 17-49. 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