Consumer Aspirations Research Articles

The rise and fall of the ‘people's car’: middle-class aspirations, status and mobile symbolism in ‘New India’

When the Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors launched its new ‘people's car’ in 2008 it was widely predicted to revolutionise automobility in India. Yet seven years after the launch, the car has barely made an impact on the Indian car market and is widely regarded as a failure. This article offers a detailed study of the rise and fall of India's ‘people's car’. Based on a mapping of the changing popular representations and symbolic imaginaries that attach to the car as a means to mobility and an object of identity and social status, we suggest that the car failed neither because it was mediocre, nor because it remained economically out of reach for most Indians. Rather, we argue that its insertion into the lower ranks of a powerful status hierarchy of identity-defining objects precluded it from adequately tapping into new and hegemonic forms of consumer aspiration in ‘New India’.

An Empirical Study on the effect of Brand Equity of Mobile Phones on Customer Satisfaction

In a competitive and brand conscious market like India, building brand equity of mobile phones is a challenging task. The companies need to assess the prior experiences and future aspirations of consumers to possess these brands. In this context, present study examines the relationship between brand equity dimensions, overall brand equity and customer satisfaction. Data was collected from 245 university students in New Delhi and adjoining cities of India through self-administered questionnaires using convenience sampling technique. Out of these, 205 were used for the purpose of study, which provided a response rate of 83.5 percent. Multiple regressions confirmed a significant relationship between the dimensions of brand equity and overall brand equity; and also between overall brand equity and customer satisfaction. Marketing managers often have limited resources in terms of money, time, and manpower to implement branding strategies, so these findings can help them to prioritize and allocate resources across important dimensions.

Exploring the Feelings and Thoughts that Accompany the Experience of Consumption Desires

ABSTRACTDesires represent a central aspect of human motivation. Recent studies in the field of consumer behavior have shown the importance of the concept of desire to better understand the aspirations of consumers living in economically developed countries for whom most basic needs are satisfied. There has been however no previous attempt at circumscribing the feelings and thoughts that accompany the experience of desire. The present research addresses this gap in the literature. The objectives of the research presented in this article are threefold: (1) to identify the affective and cognitive responses that accompany the experience of consumption desire, (2) to develop a valid scale to assess these feelings and cognitions, and (3) to explore the theoretical links that these internal responses have with other concepts of interest in the field of consumer behavior, such as impulsive and compulsive buying, materialism, innovativeness, voluntary simplicity, self‐esteem, and life satisfaction. In order to address these objectives, five studies were conducted. The results of these studies have revealed that the experience of consumption desires is generally accompanied by psychological events that are affective (i.e., pleasure, discomfort, and guilt) and cognitive (i.e., control). This research contributes to a better understanding of the phenomena that surround the experience of consumption desires as lived and managed by consumers through the development of a reliable and valid measuring instrument that can be used to explore the relationships between these phenomena and other fundamental consumer behavior concepts.

Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States by Jan L. Logemann (review)

Reviewed by: Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States by Jan L. Logemann Els De Vos (bio) Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States. By Jan L. Logemann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012, Pp. xvi+300. $45. European postwar consumer societies often are depicted as places where the “Americanization” of consumption has taken place, with American types of mass-scale consumption replacing a more bourgeois mode. Recently, however, that generalization has been challenged. For example, in the framework of the European Science Foundation–funded project European Ways of Life in the American Century: Mediating Consumption and Technology in the Twentieth Century, several (mainly European) researchers question the extent to which the European postwar modes of consumption and material cultures were “Americanized.” In the project’s just-published synthesizing book, they shed light on processes of transforming, ignoring, or resisting American influences that took place in various countries (see Per Lundin and Thomas Kaiserfeld, eds., The Making of European Consumption). Jan L. Logemann’s Trams or Tailfins fits this new approach. Logemann, a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., compares the postwar American consumer society with the West German one. While the suburban house, supermarket, fully equipped kitchen, and individual’s car were dominating the American consumer landscape, West German consumers preferred urban living, trams, and the local grocery store within walking distance. Logemann looks for explanations in the following areas: public policy, social norms, and the geographical environment. As a result, the book is divided into three parts. The first maps the public policy attitudes toward public and private consumption in West Germany and the United States. The higher level of private spending in the United States can be attributed to the higher purchasing power of Americans, less state intervention in the free market, and less public spending. This last point is very interesting, as consumption history has focused mainly on private consumption, with public consumption remaining out of sight. Nevertheless, the investments in areas such as public transport and social provisions were crucial in the formation of the European welfare states. They cultivated an urban culture. [End Page 283] The second part focuses on consumer aspirations and the social meaning of consumption. Logemann argues that American citizens bought more durable goods because they saw doing so as a way to increase their social status, while in West Germany, social stratification dominated consumption patterns. That might be mistaking cause for effect, however: as incomes increased in the United States, possession of certain material goods became a measure of social status. In this vein, Logemann notes that the easy accessibility of mortgage loans accelerated private U.S. consumption. The last part discusses how consumption reconfigured space, while space reinforced certain consumption patterns. In the United States, large-scale suburbanization took place, which encouraged (and depended on) car ownership to reach the workplace. Car use was a catalyst for supermarkets situated near big roads and surrounded by large parking lots. The long distance to the city center led people to invest more in leisure activities at home, which contributed to the disinvestment in public provisions such as the theater, cinema, or public transport. Logemann convincingly outlines the developments of the consumer societies in the two countries. Instead of the Americanization of West Germany, he shows how the country took lessons from the developments in the United States. The West Germans did not blindly adore the U.S. system; its policymakers worked to maintain lively and compact cities with small shops. West German consumers remained critical toward American products. They preferred sound, durable goods instead of fancy objects. Certain “American” evolutions were present in Germany, such as suburbanization, the rise of car ownership, and the emergence of supermarkets. However, these were guided and regulated much more in favor of public interests. The case of West Germany illustrates how the “soft power” of the United States was quite successfully resisted and transformed in Europe. Despite his interest in the role of public policy, Logemann pays little attention to a set of influential actors. In Europe, many organizations and institutions, including state agencies...

An Industrious Revolution in Norway?

Jan de Vries’ theory of an industrious revolution has received much attention from historians working on economic and social development. Its aim is to unify the contrasting descriptions of the rise of the Industrial Revolution, but the question is how it fits the empirical development. This article tests if the industrious revolution is a fruitful concept to use to describe and explain pre-industrial development in Norway. It concludes that Norwegian pre-industrial economic development resembles an industrious revolution only superficially. On closer examination, it is clear that the consumer aspirations that are central in the industrious revolution theory were not the main driving force behind the economic development that took place in pre-industrial Norway. One must instead see the changes in a wider, transnational perspective.

India - A Lead Market for Frugal Innovations? Extending the Lead Market Theory to Emerging Economies

India has emerged as a vibrant and versatile source for cost effective, disruptive innovations of various varieties. Price-sensitive consumers in a large and growing market keep inducing firms to apply frugal engineering for creating affordable products and services without compromising excessively on quality. Because, as The Economist asserts: Frugal does not mean second-rate. Such innovations are characterized by high affordability, robustness, and good enough quality in a volume-driven market. Resource constraints motivate firms and entrepreneurs to think out-of-the-box. The trick lies in creating solutions that are able to circumvent given environmental constraints in a cost effective way. India's large and enormously young population faced with limited budgets, but well-endowed with high aspirations, provides an ideal experiment ground for many firms. Solutions created for the Indian market are often suitable for other developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America that frequently face similar socio-economic conditions. In some instances they succeed even in developed country markets by enabling significant cost reductions. This emergence as a hub for frugal innovations possibly suggests a lead market role for India. On the other hand, lead markets, as understood today, are characterized by high per capita income, great customer sophistication and high quality infrastructure. Such assumptions imply that lead markets, almost by default, can only exist in economically developed countries because only they can finance the development effort. Using two anchor-cases of product innovations aimed at price-sensitive segments in India we generate preliminary evidence to challenge some of the core assumptions of the lead market theory and propose that lead markets can emerge in developing countries too because market attractiveness (e.g. volume of demand, export possibilities) and technological capabilities are able to offset many other deficiencies. The supposed absence of customer sophistication is channelized into a challenge for supplier-side sophistication to design cost effective, good enough solutions (low-cost, thin-margin) that can meet the aspirations of consumers in a highly competitive market. In order to master this challenge companies need access to a competent and sufficiently large technical base with first-hand knowledge of the ground situation of targeted customer groups (social capital).

MAKING TIME FOR THE CHILDREN: Self-Temporalization and the Cultivation of the Antisuicidal Subject in South India

This article examines suicide prevention among children in India's “suicide capital” of Kerala to interrogate the ways temporalization practices inform the cultivation of ethical, life-avowing subjects in late capitalism. As economic liberalization and migration expand consumer aspiration in Kerala, mental health experts link the quickening of material gratification in middle-class parenting to the production of insatiable, maladjusted, and impulsively suicidal children. Experiences of accelerated time through consumption in “modern” Kerala parenting practice reflect ideas about the threats of globalization that are informed both by national economic shifts and by nostalgia for the state's communist and developmentalist histories, suggesting that late capitalism's time–space compression is not a universalist phenomenon so much as one that is unevenly experienced through regionally specific renderings of the past. I demonstrate how experts position the Malayali child as uniquely vulnerable to the fatal dangers of immediate gratification, and thus exhort parents to retemporalize children through didactic games built around the deferral of desires for everyday consumer items. Teaching children how to wait as a pleasurable and explicitly antisuicidal way of being reveals anxieties, contestations, and contradictions concerning what ought to constitute “quality” investment in children as temporal subjects of late capitalism. The article concludes by bringing efforts to save elite lives into conversation with suicide prevention among migrants to draw out the ways distinct vulnerabilities and conditions of precarity situate waiting subjects in radically different ways against the prospect of self-destruction.

Brand‐self identity narratives in the James Bond movies

AbstractConsumers learn to attach social and contextual meaning to products and brands through observing the character relationships with particular objects or specific brands in the archetypal stories in film on “the big screen” (cinema). Luxury brands become objects of desire, fueling consumer aspirations and giving consumers frames of reference in their own consumption ideals. However, substantial research attention to the brand narratives that popular culture portrays has yet to emerge. This paper therefore presents a textual analysis of the brand narratives evident within popular culture, specifically in the context of James Bond films. In taking this interpretive approach, this article identifies three different and contrasting brand‐self narratives that reinforce a particular archetypal myth of a lover, hero, or outlaw. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Securitisation of Standard Assets: A New Business in India

With escalating aspirations of Indian consumers, nowadays credit growth is taking place at an unparalleled pace and all together the much slower pace of deposit mobilization is inadequate to keep the growth momentum going. In such state of affairs, banks and non-banking finance companies strapped for funds need to identify alternate sustainable funding sources to supplement existing. Securitization is an ultimate option for originators allowing them to sustain growth, leverage existing capital and manage risks. Investors benefit by accessing a constant supply of highly rated instruments tailored to their requirements and offering better yields. This paper is concerned with the securitization of standard assets under RBI Guidelines issued in Feb. 2006 & developing business for banking industry.

Artisans in Early Imperial China (review)

Reviewed by: Artisans in Early Imperial China Anne P. Underhill Artisans in Early Imperial China by Anthony J. Barbieri-Low. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Pp. x + 394. $60.00. Barbieri-Low’s engaging book, Artisans in Early Imperial China, tackles an important topic that has not been adequately addressed by historians, art historians, or archaeologists: the people behind the production and distribution of hand-crafted goods during the Qin and Han periods, 221 b.c.e.–c.e. 220. Whereas other scholars often discuss the finely made art objects from this era in isolation, Barbieri-Low breathes life into them, revealing their hidden human dimensions. He argues convincingly that “one cannot truly understand the visual and material cultural remains of early imperial China without understanding something about how they were made, who made them, and under what social and economic circumstances they were fashioned” (p. 26). Barbieri-Low succeeds in demonstrating the effectiveness of adopting a multidisciplinary approach to investigating ancient artisans and their products. He uses historical texts and inscriptions on objects to uncover information about the lives of artisans and the division of labor in production, art history to analyze the artisans’ creations, and anthropology to analyze the socioeconomic context. His aim is to employ historical, art historical, and anthropological (including archaeological) data in equal measure. He has, moreover, organized the chapters of his study to highlight the lives of artisans from different perspectives; he examines artisans in society (Chapter 2, which covers the topics of social status and social mobility), in the workshop (Chapter 3, which covers production methods, division of labor, work conditions), in the marketplace (Chapter 4, which deals with the organization of official markets and marketing methods), and at court (Chapter 5, which discusses the role of art objects in palaces and the organization of palace workshops). Chapter 6, “Artisans in Irons” examines non-free artisans, such as convicts, who were forced to produce for the state. His analysis of texts and inscriptions especially provides an illuminating view of the lives of artisans and the objects they made during the early imperial era. [End Page 491] Readers should know that anthropologists have long employed a holistic approach to research on craft goods, analyzing goods within systems of production, distribution, and consumption, rather than in isolation. For these scholars (including myself), the focus has always been the people behind the artifacts, revealed through the study of such topics as social identity, labor organization, craft specialization, exchange systems, consumption patterns, and regional economic systems.1 Research projects have included the production, distribution, and use of craft goods (especially ceramics, stone objects, textiles, metal objects) in prehistoric and early historic societies. Relevant publications exist for most world areas, including societies comparable in social complexity and scale with early imperial China such as the Inca empire.2 Considering the anthropological literature on these topics, I offer suggestions here for future research on early China. My intention is not to replace the productive multidisciplinary approach advocated by Barbieri-Low, but to discuss how one might amplify the anthropological component even further to provide more information on the producers and consumers of craft goods in early China. [End Page 492] The bulk of Barbieri-Low’s book treats the term “artisan” as a highly trained and skilled person who makes fine objects by hand. His book thus implies that such beautiful objects, works of art, were produced primarily for elite consumers. While recognizing that objects of beauty can be made for more than one type of consumer, the anthropological literature also distinguishes between various craft goods on the basis of class, status, gender, and ethnicity of the consumers. Researchers investigate how certain kinds of goods may bring prestige or wealth to consumers. They focus on how people actively use different kinds of goods in a social system. Also worthy of future investigation is the impact that consumer demand in early China had on the production of various kinds of craft goods. Consumer demand affects the production of both prestige-bearing goods and the common goods used in daily life. Barbieri-Low provides clues about variation in the social and ideological aspirations of consumers during the Qin and Han...

Commercializing artistic authenticity via collaborative design

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of the artist's authentic identity in fashion design and art collaborations and evaluate the efficiency of collaborative brand projects.Design/methodology/approach – Through the case study approach, this paper explores the attempts of Adidas to create authenticity by teaming up with artists. It also investigates consumer attitudes toward the brand's collaborative projects via a questionnaire survey.Findings – Authenticity can be understood in two general aspects: conceptual forms and incarnate forms. Within the value system of authenticity, Adidas' collaborative projects and diverse promotional strategies are to a large degree consistent with consumer aspirations. Nonetheless, the factors that contribute to authenticity via conceptual (e.g. originality, exclusivity) and incarnate forms (e.g. creative process, final designs) occupy different positions in the consumer's mind. This study also reveals that when a brand intends to launch such artistic...

Predictive microbiology: providing a knowledge-based framework for change management

This contribution considers predictive microbiology in the context of the Food Micro 2002 theme, “Microbial adaptation to changing environments”. To provide a reference point, the state of food microbiology knowledge in the mid-1970s is selected and from that time, the impact of social and demographic changes on microbial food safety is traced. A short chronology of the history of predictive microbiology provides context to discuss its relation to and interactions with hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) and risk assessment. The need to take account of the implications of microbial adaptability and variable population responses is couched in terms of the dichotomy between classical versus quantal microbiology introduced by Bridson and Gould [Lett. Appl. Microbiol. 30 (2000) 95]. The role of population response patterns and models as guides to underlying physiological processes draws attention to the value of predictive models in development of novel methods of food preservation. It also draws attention to the paradox facing today's food industry that is required to balance the “clean, green” aspirations of consumers with the risk, to safety or shelf life, of removing traditional barriers to microbial development. This part of the discussion is dominated by consideration of models and responses that lead to stasis and inactivation of microbial populations. This highlights the consequence of change on predictive modelling where the need is now to develop interface and non-thermal death models to deal with pathogens that have low infective doses for general and/or susceptible populations in the context of minimal preservation treatments. The challenge is to demonstrate the validity of such models and to develop applications of benefit to the food industry and consumers as was achieved with growth models to predict shelf life and the hygienic equivalence of food processing operations.

The New Business Significance of Branding

Understanding of the future for media industries can benefit from a look backwards. In the era before radio and television, print media alone were highly successful in creating new consumer visions and aspirations, building national brands, and establishing significant brand equity. The advent of radio and television did not change total advertising spending as a share of total economic output, nor did it change significantly total advertising spending per adult media hour. Even rudimentary media technologies are sufficient to support highly salient brands, and constraints on the extent of advertising revenue do not appear to be linked to media technology. In order for media industries as a whole to grow relatively rapidly, branding efforts must shift toward collaborative market-building to develop user routines, comfort, and trust in new types of media interactions and transactions.

Het nieuwe consumentisme: een essay over vergelijkingsgedrag, sociale ongelijkheid en de bedreiging van ons welbevinden

In this essay, it is argued that during the past decades consumption behaviour has changed dramatically in the United States and other Western societies. The traditional horizontal pattern of comparing with other consumers, has been abandoned in favour of a more vertical pattem, where consumers tend to compare with high income groups. This evolution has had profound consequences on consumption pattems and on the well-being of consumers. While consumer aspirations have risen substantially, for most middle class people actual buying power has risen but marginally. The essay also explores how these changes affect the study of contemporary society and consumer behaviour.

The new business significance of branding

Understanding of the future for media industries can benefit from a look backwards. In the era before radio and television, print media alone were highly successful in creating new consumer visions and aspirations, building national brands, and establishing significant brand equity. The advent of radio and television did not change total advertising spending as a share of total economic output, nor did it change significantly total advertising spending per adult media hour. Even rudimentary media technologies are sufficient to support highly salient brands, and constraints on the extent of advertising revenue do not appear to be linked to media technology. In order for media industries as a whole to grow relatively rapidly, branding efforts must shift toward collaborative market-building to develop user routines, comfort, and trust in new types of media interactions and transactions.

Diasporic subjects: Gender and mobility in south sulawesi

This article considers the gender dynamics of a migrant population living in an industrial processing zone on the outskirts of Ujung Pandang, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Based on historical, demographic, and ethnographic analyses of migration linked to this site, the research focuses on the ways that the relationships between morality, migration, and gender are changing for migrants to this zone. As more young women have migrated to join this peri-urban industrial workforce, their presence has spurred a renegotiation of gendered morality, particularly in terms of gendered meanings of inhabiting “public” space and participating in the industrial labor force. These migrants form their gender identities not only through place-bound contact with people in origin and destination sites, but also through contact with the sociocultural norms of migrants from other parts of the archipelago and world, transnational industrial and media expansion, and continued reference to their families' “Bugis values.” Recent research has analyzed the growth of the new female industrial workforce in relation to postmodern production relations and new patterns of consumption. In this article, I build on these studies to explore the ways migrants' cultural struggles around gender are shaped not only by new production relations and consumer aspirations, but also by the interethnic interactions of low-income migrants themselves living in the zone. The tensions that characterize these negotiations mark a historical shift in the gendered meaning of “the local” in the Bugis diaspora.

Consumer aspirations in marginalized communities: A case study in Indian villages

(2000). Consumer aspirations in marginalized communities: A case study in Indian villages. Consumption Markets & Culture: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 125-144.

Achieving quality and choice for the customer in hospital catering

The paper focuses on the opportunities, issues and problems associated with catering for National Health Service hospital patients. There is significant conflict—or gap—to be resolved between management attempts to improve consumer choice and food quality and the constraints imposed by unit cost targets and the complex operational conditions associated with hospital catering in the NHS. The paper's theme examines the role of technology and management innovation in defining and bridging the gaps between increasing consumer (patient) aspirations, and the ability of the catering service to respond with improved product delivery.

The Consumer Dream in the United States: Aspirations and Achievements in a Changing Environment

An empirical study was designed to examine the relationship between consumer aspirations and achievements defined primarily in terms of ownership of the ideal home. The characteristics of consumers who differ in their achievement of home ownership were analyzed, along with their aspirations and behavior. It was found that the changing economic environment has negatively affected the achievement of home ownership rather than the aspirations to it.

Populations & Prosperity

For most of humanity the third quarter of the century was a period of unprecedented prosperity. The world's output of goods and services, expanding 4 per cent or more annually, tripled in less than a generation. Growth seemed commonplace—and was soon built into consumer aspirations, corporate earnings projections, and government revenue expectations. Few stopped to calculate that if the 4 per cent rate of economic growth remained steady, there would be a fiftyfold expansion in just a century. And even fewer considered the pressure this would put on the earth's resources.