Abstract
This study examines the shopping preferences of “new poor” consumers who have incongruent capital: lower economic capital and higher noneconomic capital. The new poor exemplify consumers with ambiguous and fragmented identity; thus, they do not fit marketers’ static categorization of consumer segments. In the marketplace, these consumers must compromise between their upper-class taste and lower-class earnings. Taking a Consumer Culture Theory approach to examine consumers’ identity projects in social inequality, we conduct 20 interviews among self-defined new poor consumers in the United States and Taiwan to explore how their dynamic social class consciousness is reflected in everyday consumption. The findings suggest that new poor consumers perform “compromised ideal consumption” in which they strategically interpret and wield their remaining capital to signal social class differences, while employing adaptive and active capitalization acts to access goods that should have been beyond their price range. The findings illuminate how incongruent, devalued capital reproduces social stratification in the context of downward mobility.
Highlights
Norah: If somebody pointedly asked me according to my economic status and income...I'm a very educated poor person, yes
I live in a nice neighborhood, in a nice home, with nice parents
While income and social class are both common indicators of consumer behavior (Mihić and Čulina, 2006), this study explores how new poor consumers cope with the conflict between these two indicators and reproduce their self-identities in today’s marketplace
Summary
We aim to explore how participation in the consumer society is structured by the possession and the dynamic negotiation among incongruent levels of capital
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