Experiential Consumption: a critical journey

1. Experiential Consumption: a critical journey Dr Matt Frew

2. Lecture Content • Consumption: so what! • Thinking Cultural Consumption • Choice & Cultural Consumption • Hyper-consumption: a problem?

3. Consumption: so what! • Consumption: • An engrained part of modern everyday life BUT a recent theoretical phenomenon • Lies at the core of the rise of the experience economy and global events industry • However, consumption and consumerism are not the same thing • Consumption refers to the ‘selection, purchase, use, maintenance, repair and disposal of any product or service’ (Campbell, 1995: 102) • Consumerism is ‘concerned with the hidden properties of consumption, and, in particular, the ideological dimensions of consumer society’ (Miles, 2001: 60) • Post-1945s western society has increasingly become affluent with a leisure age - focus and life satisfaction moved form work and production and cultural consumption began to boom

4. Consumption: so what! • Four conditions for consumer culture - people, excess and exchange, consumption legitimation, judgment and identity consumption (Belk, 1995) • So today, in the West, we now live in consumer culture where society is ‘increasingly organized around consumption’ (Abercrombie, et al, 2000: 72) with needs have been systematically replaced by wants, desires and even dreams. • We are now viewed as ‘consumer citizens’ where individualism is celebrated through communities of consumption (Giddens, 1995) • However, consumerism does not and cannot sit still: : • Comfortable with style rather than function • Live in a world of disposability • Planned obsolescence • Consumerism demands perpetual consumption • The global growth in events industries testifies to a search for new forms of consumption

5. The dominance of consumer culture means consumer behaviour is key and has been variously examined (see Holt, 1997): Integration - consumption sees the self and object become one and thus access symbolic or status value Experience - emphasis is on the subjective emotive aspect of consumption ‘consumer experience is increasingly both the object and medium of brand activity’ (Moore, 2003: 42) Play - consumption fuels another desire being used to facilitate emotive and empathetic communication (e.g. the event is the space and materials around which empathetic experience is shared building and intensifying a collective experiential web) However, much of this intensifies processes of classification - how consumer use consumption practices to self-classify - consumption practices construct identity with and against others. Thinking Cultural Consumption

6. Consumer culture appears to offer variety, choice, opportunity (think about the array of events and the experiences they offer) However, the consumer is NOT king rather they engage in form of ‘pseudo-sovereignty’ - the trick of consumerism is to make the consumer to feel they are king and in control Consumption is not so free or neutral - how open is events consumption? Remember consumerism masks and reflects an ideology - it makes consumption feel right, natural and the only way to live Consumerism is tied to issues of structure/control and agency/freedom - Marxism helps here Thinking Cultural Consumption

7. Marx: History is one of class struggle - consumer capitalism is simple one such period Superstructure supports the ideology of consumer capitalism and masks its exploitation commodification process (sell/exchange/value system) drives priorities and enslaves individual to the marketplace. Capitalism resulted in commodity fetishism where: ‘the commodity has a mystical quality…and are therefore ascribed a significance beyond their use-value’ (Miles, 2001: 62) Choice & Cultural Consumption?

8. Choice & Cultural Consumption? • Consumerism is dominant and an important vehicle as it: ‘abstracts cultural and financial value from material production; it plays an integral role in the internationalization of investments and production, and it represents a significant shift in the derivation of social meaning’ (Zukin, 1990: 53) • Given experiential consumptions are the new fetishised commodities of consumerism events and festivals is seen as a market winner: ‘If you want to create tremendous value in today’s marketplace, you should consider designing a meaningful brand experience’ (Norton, 2005: 24). • The events consumer and their consumption patterns are now the source of critical interest

9. Choice & Cultural Consumption? • Evens consumers are now profiled and matched to types of event particularly in relation to economic gain they can deliver for organizations, communities and cities • Categories of event consumer all with differential impact on the event - Extensioners, Event Visitors, Home Stayers, Runaways and Changers (Preuss, 2005) • From category to control - predict, manage and manipulate? • However, is experiential consumptions faced with the paradox of hyper-consumption?

10. The Problem of Hyper-consumption • Paradox of consumption?: • Consumerism promises an outlet from our dissatisfaction with daily reality - an means of escape, freedom and release BUT: ‘Consumption gives us the belief that we can fulfill our fantasies. But the actual pleasures afforded by consumption always fall short of that to which we aspire’ (Miles, 2001: 70) • Worrying hyper-consumption? - ‘The world of the hypermarket, which is the effective reality of the hyper-industrial epoch, is, as the place of barcode readers and cash registers, where to love must become synonymous with to buy’ (Stiegler, 2006: 2) • Moving to a time of disaffected consumption bound to, but frustrated by, consumption - a future problem for the event experience?

11. The Problem of Hyper-consumption • Experiential consumption represents a new ‘focus and playground for individual consumption’ (Bauman, 1988: 60) but one where the consumer cycle can become self-destructive killing the experience and so the raison d’etre of the event • Also reflects an arena of symbolic competition, freedom and exclusion, display, domination and distinction • In the circuit of cultural consumption events and the experiences offer levels of meaning that is symbolic, can be read and convert. This is the focus of lecture three

12. References • Abercrombie, N., Hill, S. and Turner, B. (2000) The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, Harmondsworth, Penguin. • Bauman, Z. (1988) Freedom, Buckingham, University Press • Campbell, C. (1995) ‘The Sociology of Consumption’, in Acknowledging Consumption: a Review of New Studies, Miller, D. (ed), London, Routledge. • Belk, R. (1995) Collecting in a Consumer Society, London, Routledge. • Holt, D. (1995) How Consumers Consume: a typology of consumption practices’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 22 • Horne, J. (2006) Sport in Consumer Culture, London, Palgrave. • Miles, S. (2001) Social Theory in the Real World, London, Sage. • Moore, E. (2003) ‘Branded Spaces: the scope of new marketing’, Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol 3, 1: 39-60. • Norton, D. (2005) ‘Will Meaningful Brand Experiences Disrupt Your Market?’, Design Management Review, 16, 4. • Preuss, H. (2005) The economic impact of visitors at multi-sport events’, European Sport Management Quarterly, 5, 283-304. • Seigler, B. (2006) ‘The Disaffected Individual’, working paper for the Ars Industrialis seminar, Suffering and Consumption (Feb, 2006) • Zukin, S. (1990) ‘Socio-spatial prototypes of a new organization of consumption: the role of real cultural capital’, Sociology, Vol 24, 1: 37-56