Cultural and Consumption Conclusion

There is clearly a link between Taste, social class and consumption, however it is becoming increasingly threatened. Since the period in which Bourdieu constructed his theories of distinction and taste, much has changed. The progression of consumption theory over time, has led to more and more variables been associated and investigated in relation to consumption behaviour. The founding economic models that considered only price, volume and costs, then later social sciences added individuals tastes and preferences, limited variables too some extent made it relatively easy to see patterns and relationships with consumption.

However now, there are many complicated and interconnected factors that can dominate consumption behaviour instead of these basic principles. The effect of intelligent marketing and advertising that aims to associate their brands and products with specific segments of the population are increasingly eminent. With the likes of Shelia’s Wheels car insurance, the master label of consumption is exclusively the female gender, with Lucozade the main attribute to the purchase is the ‘athlete desire’ these marginalising strategies exist everywhere in society and include a vast multitude of variables including age, ethnicity, pride, attractiveness, sex, love, and sexuality. In regards to sexuality, does been gay affect consumption, and if so does this have more of an effect than social class? In this instance, it is very difficult to identify the master identity, or the “main internalised self concept” that defines an individual. This presents a problem for retailers as would an individual’s consumption behaviour be more affected by being gay, or by being middle class and which should advertisers target? In todays society, each individual is much more multidimensional than being simply a working class or middle class consumer, and in predicting current consumption behaviour, retailers now have to cross examine a vast range of demographics and psychodemographics. Although, social class and taste may be integrated into many of these identifying variables, the direct relationship is much more concealed and is no longer a reliable measure to determine consumption behaviour.

Today’s society is an information society dominated by the Internet. This raises many issues, first, does the online website of a middle class store, still hold its middle class values? This is truly a difficult question, with online retailing, there are a lot less barriers to access, although some websites such as Chanel.com are clearly designed to appeal to a stylish, wealthy consumer and so to some extent will only attract the higher classes. Another question to ask is, is it possible for a purely online organisation, to have no class associations, therefore appealing to all, possibly, Amazon.co.uk, ebay.co.uk might just fit this description, so to summarise, increasing levels of consumption online could see the link between social class and consumption relatively redundant.