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Summary lecture notes Lifestyle & consumption
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Summary lecture notes Lifestyle & consumption Summary lecture notes CHL20806
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Lifestyles and consumptionLifestyle: the particular way that a person or group lives and the values an the ideas supported by
that person or group
➔ The distinctive pattern of personal and social behavior characteristic of an individual or a
group.
Consumption: any form of exchange of any good or services (buying, eating, drinking, traveling,
wearing clothes):
- Broad: taking and using goods or services.
- Narrower: Formal or informal contract accompanying processes of payment
- Act of consumption: processes related to an exchange of money or reciprocal expectations
Studied in different fields about what consumption entails → Very fragmented field with
different topics.
• Economy → processes of demand
• Sociology → symbolic arts, relate to class status and taste
• Psychology → attitudes, decision making processes
• Business administration → marketing, strategic influence consumption patterns
- Consumption beyond acts of choosing, buying, repairing but is socially embedded
- Taking place in changing and evolving societies, different times, markets and cultures.
- Goods and services variate more than only price and function;
• Different use and meanings
• Different degrees of social acceptance
• Different forms of markets; formal and informal
Consumption relates to time we live in: like smoking, was earlier social accepted, luxury goods at
first. But later it was normal to put some cigarettes on the table at your birthday party.
Consumptions related to society we live in: like abortion, abortion is legal in the Netherlands but in
other countries it is an issue and sometimes illegal.
Consumptions related to position in system of social class: somethings you cant consume because
you’re not in that class.
Consumption:
Goods and services more than variation in price and function:
- Different use and meanings
- Different degrees of social acceptance
- Different forms or markets: formal and informal
Vary in time and society, but also on preferences depending on lifestyles and related tastes
Trends: sustainability & digitalization
,Sustainability & circular economy:
- Growing awareness about product quality, footprints, ecological footprints.
- Consumption is sort of an end-phase.
- But now → consumption is not an end, we can re-use stuff, recycle somethings.
Consumption for sustainability:
- A number of specific consumer behavior:
• (Not) purchasing (second-hand/refurbished) → how doe we deal with waste etc.
• Swopping/exchanging
• Gifting
• Returning
• Repairing
• Renting/leasing
• Caring for products …
Collaborative consumption: consumers are no longer obtainers but are seen as providers and
obtainers
- An economic model based sharing, swapping, trading or renting products and services,
enabling access over ownership
- Peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving or sharing the access to goods and services,
coordinated through community-based online services
- Exchanging, sharing, gifting, lending and leasing or renting.
Examples:
- Swapfiets
- Vinted
- Peerby: service, digital, application, people share stuff belongings rather than buying it
yourself.
, Collaborative consumption: part of sharing economy, goes further than just sharing. Mostly informal.
There is no money asked for the services.
Digitalization of markets, goods and services:
Trends:
- Geographical limitations diminish → global markets
- Shifting role of consumers into hybrid functions:
- Prosumption: interrelatedness of productions and consumption. Actors who are consumers
but are also putting in part of the production process → like solar energy (zonnepanelen),
you are using the energy but you are also producing it. Production and consumption are
highly related.
- Prosumers: actors who are consumers but also entrepreneurial producers or labourers. →
they provide labour in a process.
→ you are using the energy but you are also produce energy. → the McDonaldization of
society.
Consumption = embedded in a system → it is not individual, there is a pattern, just like lifestyles.
- Consumption and lifestyles are not just isolated individual behaviors, but patterns arise from
the social groups one belongs to, the physical settings in which one operates and society ate
large.
Lecture 2
Je kan er niet van uit gaan dat mensen standaard voorkeuren hebben wat betreft consumptie.
Life Course Perspective: people have changing rationalities to spend (or save) money depending on
their position in their life cycles. In other words, younger people make different plans and have
different consumption plans than older people. (modigliani’s life theory of consumption)
Life cycle: universal biological process of aging according to a fixes set of phases – predominantly
based on biological age. → baby – child – adult – elderly → this is not relevant to consumption.
Recent development; it is not about your biological age but the state where you’re in. → individuals
who are chronologically and legally adults. Waiting to make the transition to adulthood (marriage,
children)
Biological age ≠ social age
A life course perspective allows us to think about different stages in life
→ different attitudes towards and habits consumption. And difference of belonging to a group.
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