Conspicuous consumption
Ostentation or conspicuous consumption, means some people’s desire to provide prominent visible evidence of their ability to afford luxury goods.
Status as value refers to the active manipulation of one’s own consumption behavior in order to influence others.
Status seeking may be understood as a response to a perceived gap between a present state and some ideal state.
This leads to a motivational state which is strongest among social groups chronically affected by status anxiety.
Dining in a celebrity chef’s restaurant may be motivated as much by the wish to be seemed at a fashionable venue as about the food.
Choosing consumption experiences to project the sort of image one wants to create is part of impression management.
In attribution theory, the causes of behavior can be ether dispositional or situational.
Attribution theory clearly status related consumption is situational motivated.
Food and drinks choices are means of signaling and re-enforcing, one’s status on a more or less ongoing basis, both within the family and in wider context.
Indeed, a cursory scan of the shopping trolleys of customers in a supermarket usually allows wide ranging inferences to be made about their status in society.
Status displays include what one does not consume as well as what one does, to the extent that avoidance products may become more important to status construction that the products one does consume.
Individuals may avoid certain supermarkets or manufacturer’s brands of food or they may boycott foods from some country in order to make a political point.
They may reject products from intensively reared animals on the grounds of animal cruelty and so on.
The motivational for specific consumption behaviors can change with time, so that’s a situationally motivated behavior can eventually become dispositionally motivated.
When this happens, consumption value ceases to be other-oriented and derives instead from the re-enforcement of self image.
For example, an odivdual may have become ociditioend to enjoying excellence in cosmuner products and may have stated to identify woth the lifestyle associated woth them.
Conspicuous consumption
