Week 1: Consumers’ Culture
Knowledge clip 1: Introduction
Consumer culture
● Consumer culture: this represents the commonly held social beliefs that define what is
socially gratifying within a specific society.
Functions of culture
● Culture has important functions for customers. These functions shape the value of consumer
activities and include
○ Giving meaning to objects
○ Giving meaning to activities
○ Facilitating communication
Cultural norms
● Cultural norms: the rules that specify the appropriate behavior in a given situation within a
specific culture. Most - but not all - cultural norms are unwritten and simply understood by
members of a cultural group.
● A cultural sanction refers to the penalties associated with performing non-gratifying
culturally inconsistent behavior.
How do cultural norms influence consumption?
● Ecology and tradition influence culture
○ Ecology factors: all the physical characteristics that
describe the physical environment and the habitat of
the particular place.
○ Tradition factors: custom and accepted way of
structuring society.
Culture is learned
● There are two ways we can learn about a culture
○ Enculturation: the way people learn their native
culture.
○ Acculturation: the process by which consumers come
to learn a culture other than their natural native
culture.
What do we learn?
● Each culture has certain role expectations for its members.
● Role expectations: the specific expectations that are associated with each type of person
within a culture.
○ Role conflict: a situation where a consumer experiences conflicting expectations
based on cultural expectations.
○ Divergence: a situation in which consumers choose membership in micro-cultures in
order to stand out or define themselves.
,Values
● Values: abstract, enduring beliefs about what is right, wrong, important, or good/bad.
● Value system: our total value and their relative importance.
Core societal values
Knowledge clip 2: Personality and lifestyle
Lifestyles
● Lifestyles: distinctive modes of living, including how people spend their time and money.
● Psychographics: a quantitative investigation of consumer lifestyle.
Geo-demographic techniques
● Geo-demographic techniques: techniques that provide data on consumer expenditures and
socioeconomic variables with geographic information in order to identify commonalities in
consumption patterns of households in various regions.
Demographics
Self-congruence theory
● Self-congruence theory: behavior can be explained by congruence between a consumer’s
self-concept and the image of a typical user of the product.
○ Marketers can use congruence theory by segmenting markets into groups of
consumers who perceive high self-concept congruence with the product-user image.
→ the next part is about the article “standards of beauty: the impact of mannequins in the retail context”
Mannequins
● The appearance of female mannequins have mirrored society’s current notion of feminine
perfection.
○ Today it is considered more attractive to be thinner and thus mannequins are
commonly a size 4 or 6
,Mannequins as signals
● The comparisons which are made, are made relative to the normative standards of beauty
that the mannequin signals, rather than the mannequin itself.
● Mannequins are designed to represent and communicate society’s current views on what
constitutes the perfect physical appearance.
The role of appearance self-esteem
● Appearance self-esteem denotes the self-worth one derives from his/her body weight and
image.
○ Past research finds that consumers who are low in appearance self-esteem respond
negatively when presented with attractive appearance-related information.
Studies
● Study 1A:
○ Consumers lower in appearance self-esteem (vs. consumers higher in appearance
self-esteem) evaluated the product less favorably when it is displayed by a
mannequin.
● Study 1B:
○ Confirmed that the negative product evaluations reported by consumers lower (vs.
higher) in appearance self-esteem arise due to the presence of the mannequin,
rather than simply a negative evaluation of apparel.
● Study 1C:
○ When the product is unrelated to appearance (umbrella), the mannequin doesn’t
spread threatening information about the normative standard of beauty. When the
focal product is related to appearance (scarf) it is evaluated less favorably for
consumers lower in appearance self-esteem (than higher).
● Study 2A:
○ An affirmation of the self mitigates these consumers’ negative responses of
consumers with low appearance self-esteem to a product worn by a mannequin
, arise from the self-threat.
● Study 3A:
○ Consumers low in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product more negatively when
it is worn by a mannequin with no flaws as compared to when the mannequin has
some form of physical marring (facial mark or missing hair)
● Study 3B:
○ Consumers low in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product displayed by a
mannequin less favorably and are willing to pay less for it when the mannequin is
complete (i.e., full-bodied) as compared to when it is incomplete (headless).
Knowledge clip 3: Micro-culture → ethnicity and consumer’s ideology
Micro-culture and consumer culture
● Culture is a universal phenomenon.
○ Individuals may belong to many cultural groups at once.
These groups may fluctuate.
● Micro-culture: a group of people who share similar values and
tastes subsumed within a larger culture.
○ Smaller cultural groups (micro-cultures) link to one larger
cultural group.
Knowledge clip 1: Introduction
Consumer culture
● Consumer culture: this represents the commonly held social beliefs that define what is
socially gratifying within a specific society.
Functions of culture
● Culture has important functions for customers. These functions shape the value of consumer
activities and include
○ Giving meaning to objects
○ Giving meaning to activities
○ Facilitating communication
Cultural norms
● Cultural norms: the rules that specify the appropriate behavior in a given situation within a
specific culture. Most - but not all - cultural norms are unwritten and simply understood by
members of a cultural group.
● A cultural sanction refers to the penalties associated with performing non-gratifying
culturally inconsistent behavior.
How do cultural norms influence consumption?
● Ecology and tradition influence culture
○ Ecology factors: all the physical characteristics that
describe the physical environment and the habitat of
the particular place.
○ Tradition factors: custom and accepted way of
structuring society.
Culture is learned
● There are two ways we can learn about a culture
○ Enculturation: the way people learn their native
culture.
○ Acculturation: the process by which consumers come
to learn a culture other than their natural native
culture.
What do we learn?
● Each culture has certain role expectations for its members.
● Role expectations: the specific expectations that are associated with each type of person
within a culture.
○ Role conflict: a situation where a consumer experiences conflicting expectations
based on cultural expectations.
○ Divergence: a situation in which consumers choose membership in micro-cultures in
order to stand out or define themselves.
,Values
● Values: abstract, enduring beliefs about what is right, wrong, important, or good/bad.
● Value system: our total value and their relative importance.
Core societal values
Knowledge clip 2: Personality and lifestyle
Lifestyles
● Lifestyles: distinctive modes of living, including how people spend their time and money.
● Psychographics: a quantitative investigation of consumer lifestyle.
Geo-demographic techniques
● Geo-demographic techniques: techniques that provide data on consumer expenditures and
socioeconomic variables with geographic information in order to identify commonalities in
consumption patterns of households in various regions.
Demographics
Self-congruence theory
● Self-congruence theory: behavior can be explained by congruence between a consumer’s
self-concept and the image of a typical user of the product.
○ Marketers can use congruence theory by segmenting markets into groups of
consumers who perceive high self-concept congruence with the product-user image.
→ the next part is about the article “standards of beauty: the impact of mannequins in the retail context”
Mannequins
● The appearance of female mannequins have mirrored society’s current notion of feminine
perfection.
○ Today it is considered more attractive to be thinner and thus mannequins are
commonly a size 4 or 6
,Mannequins as signals
● The comparisons which are made, are made relative to the normative standards of beauty
that the mannequin signals, rather than the mannequin itself.
● Mannequins are designed to represent and communicate society’s current views on what
constitutes the perfect physical appearance.
The role of appearance self-esteem
● Appearance self-esteem denotes the self-worth one derives from his/her body weight and
image.
○ Past research finds that consumers who are low in appearance self-esteem respond
negatively when presented with attractive appearance-related information.
Studies
● Study 1A:
○ Consumers lower in appearance self-esteem (vs. consumers higher in appearance
self-esteem) evaluated the product less favorably when it is displayed by a
mannequin.
● Study 1B:
○ Confirmed that the negative product evaluations reported by consumers lower (vs.
higher) in appearance self-esteem arise due to the presence of the mannequin,
rather than simply a negative evaluation of apparel.
● Study 1C:
○ When the product is unrelated to appearance (umbrella), the mannequin doesn’t
spread threatening information about the normative standard of beauty. When the
focal product is related to appearance (scarf) it is evaluated less favorably for
consumers lower in appearance self-esteem (than higher).
● Study 2A:
○ An affirmation of the self mitigates these consumers’ negative responses of
consumers with low appearance self-esteem to a product worn by a mannequin
, arise from the self-threat.
● Study 3A:
○ Consumers low in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product more negatively when
it is worn by a mannequin with no flaws as compared to when the mannequin has
some form of physical marring (facial mark or missing hair)
● Study 3B:
○ Consumers low in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product displayed by a
mannequin less favorably and are willing to pay less for it when the mannequin is
complete (i.e., full-bodied) as compared to when it is incomplete (headless).
Knowledge clip 3: Micro-culture → ethnicity and consumer’s ideology
Micro-culture and consumer culture
● Culture is a universal phenomenon.
○ Individuals may belong to many cultural groups at once.
These groups may fluctuate.
● Micro-culture: a group of people who share similar values and
tastes subsumed within a larger culture.
○ Smaller cultural groups (micro-cultures) link to one larger
cultural group.
