Consumer Socialization

Consumer socialization is the process whereby one acquires the skills to consume, as well as the values associated with being a consumer. This can involve identification with the role of consumer in consumption society or a critical awareness of the problematic nature of being a consumer and of consumption society more generally. The socialization process is not necessarily limited to learning how to buy, but can also include how not to buy, how to limit consumption, or how to shop for a variety of purposes, such as economic value, status and distinction, or ecological sustainability.

In one of the earliest studies, David Riesman and Howard Roseborough distinguished different contexts for socializing children into consumer behavior: home for goal-directed, peers for expressive, and school for adaptive elements of consumption. Scott Ward's commonly cited definition of consumer socialization narrowed a general definition of socialization by O. G. Brim to “processes by which young people acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes relevant to their function as consumers in the marketplace” (1974, 2). Ward focused on consumer socialization in childhood, though acknowledging it can be a lifelong process.

Many studies, including Ward's, have relied on Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, as Deborah Roedder John notes in a review of twenty-five years of research on childhood consumer socialization. A cognitive framework, though useful, may undervalue stages of emotional development and [Page 319]identity formation. In a broad review of consumer socialization studies, Karin Ekström has noted that the marketplace is too narrow a focus, and that consumer socialization needs to be understood in a variety of consumption and interaction contexts, life events, and socializing agents (including commodities and consumption zones), as well as through more varied theories and methods.

Although increasing attention has focused on how children are socialized into the role of consumer, it is important to remember how the “consumer,” as a role to be socialized into, is a relatively recent phenomenon. By the end of the nineteenth century, the term consumption was increasingly used to mean the buying of goods, shedding its earlier connotations of destruction and sickness, of tuberculosis. Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption in his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, signaling the newer sense of the term, even while ironically drawing attention to the older sense with his parallel term conspicuous waste.

The course of the twentieth century saw the change from production-centered to consumption-centered societies. The mid-twentieth century not only saw the rise of the consumer, but also the rise of the use of the term consumer itself. As Raymond Williams (1985) noted, it was during this time period, predominantly in America but spreading quickly, that the term passed from a more specialized sense in political economy to general use, and increasingly displaced the term customer with its more personalized sense of regular continuing relationship.

Postwar prosperity in the United States was instrumental in helping to shift spending from more frugal habits still in place from the Great Depression and World War II to a greater acceptance of consumption as a way of life. But prosperity alone was not enough, and intense marketing efforts were required to transform habits of frugality into spendthrift ways. Key to the advent of consumer culture was the diffusion of commercial television.

...