Does what we consume define who we are? Harry Wallop takes a fresh look at society and shows you to your place in today's modern consumer world. Are you an Asda Mum, Wood Burning Stover or Sun Skittler? Do you know a Portland Privateer or Rockabilly? And exactly who are the Hyphen-Leighs? Journalist Harry Wallop has spent a disproportionate amount of his working life chronicling the buying habits of the British people. Taking a sweep through the seismic changes that have happened in the UK since the end of food rationing in 1954, he argues that our social standing in today's society is no longer determined by the accent you speak with, the school you attended, or your parents. Rather, it is determined by the food we eat, our choice of holiday destination, the clothes we wear, the size of the TV we sit in front of, and whether you use a plug-in air freshener or a smelly candle. He shows us how retailers and big business are making the most of how we fit into these new social categories, and offers up some intriguing insights into the state of Britain today.

Political Consumerism captures the creative ways in which citizens, consumers, and political activists use the market as their arena for politics. This book theorizes, describes, analyzes, compares, and evaluates the phenomenon of political consumerism and how it attempts to use market choice to solve complex globalized problems. It investigates theoretically and empirically how and why consumers practice citizenship and have become important political actors. Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti describe consumers' engagement as an example of individualized responsibility taking, examining how political consumerism nudges and pressures corporations to change their production practices, and how consumers emerge as a force in global affairs. Unlike other studies, it also evaluates if and how consumer actions become effective mechanisms of global change. Stolle and Micheletti offer a candid discussion of the limitations of political consumerism as a form of participation and as a problem-solving mechanism.

As shopping has been transformed from a chore into a major source of hedonistic pleasure, a specifically Russian consumer culture has begun to emerge that is unlike any other. This book examines the many different facets of consumption in today's Russia, including retailing, advertising and social networking. Throughout, emphasis is placed on the inherently visual - not to say spectacular - nature both of consumption generally, and of Russian consumer culture in particular. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which brands, both Russian and foreign, construct categories of identity in order to claim legitimacy for themselves. What emerges is a fascinating picture of how consumer culture is being reinvented in Russia today, in a society which has one, nostalgic eye turned towards the past, and the other, utopian eye, set firmly on the future. Borrowing concepts from both marketing and cultural studies, the approach throughout is interdisciplinary, and will be of considerable interest, to researchers, students and practitioners wishing to gain invaluable insights into one of the most lucrative, and exciting, of today's emerging markets.

There has been an increasing recognition that financial knowledge (i.e., literacy) is lacking across the population. Moreover, there is recognition that this lack of knowledge poses real problems as credit, mortgages, health insurance, retirement benefits, and savings and investment decisions become increasingly complex. Financial Decisions Across the Lifespan brings together the work of scholars from various disciplines (family and consumer sciences, economics, law, finance, sociology, and public policy) to provide a broad range of perspectives on financial knowledge, financial decisions, and policies. For consistency across the volume each chapter follows a similar format: (1) what individuals know or need to know (2) how what they know or need to know affects financial decisions and outcomes (3) ways in which policies or programs or financial innovations can enhance their knowledge, or decisions, or outcomes. Contributors will provide both new and existing research to create a valuable picture of the state of financial literacy and how it can be improved.

In the age of Ikea Hackers and salvagepunks, this book charts the emergence of "rugged consumers" who creatively misuse, reuse, and repurpose the objects within their environments to suit their idiosyncratic needs and desires. Figures of both literary and material culture whose behavior evokes an American can-do ethic, rugged consumers mediate between older mythic models of self-sufficiency and the consumption-driven realities of our passive, post-industrial economy. Through their unorthodox encounters with the material world, rugged consumers show that using object's 'properly' is a conventional behavior that must be renewed and reinforced rather than a naturalized process that persists untroubled through time and space.
At the same time, this Utopian ideal is rarely met: most examples of rugged consumerism conceal rather than foreground the ideological problems to which they respond and thus support or ignore rather than challenge the structures of late capitalist consumerism. By analyzing convergences and divergences between subjective material practices and collectivist politics, Raymond Malewitz shows how rugged consumerism both recodes and reflects the dynamic social history of objects in the United States from the 1960s to the present.

First published in 2005, Economics and Social Interaction is a fresh attempt to overcome the traditional inability of economics to deal with interpersonal phenomena that occur within the sphere of markets and productive organizations. It makes use of traditional economic concepts for understanding interpersonal events, while venturing beyond those concepts to give a better account of personalised interactions. In contrast to other books, Economics and Social Interaction offers the reader a rigorous effort at extending economic analysis to a difficult field in a consistent manner, sensitive to insights from other behavioural and social sciences. This collection represents an important contribution to a growing research agenda in the social sciences.

In 2008, average, ordinary family guy Dave Bruno decided to winnow down everything he owned to merely 100 things and to unhook himself from the intravenous drip of consumerism that seemed to be fueling his life. Media around the world started taking immediate notice of Dave and the grass-roots movement he was starting. The culture of consumerism has created a continuous rushing to acquire ever more stuff, but without realising any gain in life satisfaction. "The 100 Thing Challenge" is meant to be a cause for pause. Dave Bruno offers compelling anecdotes and practical advice readers can use to resist consumerism and live a more meaningful life. Each chapter introduces a theme and presents a conflict between that theme and the culture of consumerism. In addition to his own experience, Dave collects and shares the thoughts and experiences of others who are fighting consumerism in their lives. Each chapter concludes by describing in practical terms how an average person can resist consumerism in order to engage the theme in more spiritually and socially meaningful ways. "The 100 Thing Challenge" provides an opportunity for readers to consider how positive life changes can occur when an individual chooses to defiantly hop off the treadmill of consumerism and start living a saner and more satisfying life.

When Dr. Duane Graveline, former astronaut, aerospace medical research scientist, flight surgeon, and family doctor is given Lipitor to lower his cholesterol, he temporarily loses his short-term memory. Urged a year later to resume the drug at half dose, he lost both short-term and retrograde memory and was finally diagnosed in a hospital ER as having transient global amnesia (TGA). This is the "scary, appealingly written" account of his search for answers that his medical community didn't have -- the how and why of his traumatic experience, and what needs to be done to prevent the devastating side effects to body and mind from the escalating use of the statin drugs.

Green lifestyles and ethical consumption have become increasingly popular strategies in moving towards environmentally-friendly societies and combating global poverty. Where previously environmentalists saw excess consumption as central to the problem, green consumerism now places consumption at the heart of the solution. However, ethical and sustainable consumption are also important forms of central to the creation and maintenance of class distinction. Green Consumption scrutinizes the emergent phenomenon of what this book terms eco-chic: a combination of lifestyle politics, environmentalism, spirituality, beauty and health. Eco-chic connects ethical, sustainable and elite consumption. It is increasingly part of the identity kit of certain sections of society, who seek to combine taste and style with care for personal wellness and the environment. This book deals with eco-chic as a set of activities, an ideological framework and a popular marketing strategy, offering a critical examination of its manifestations in both the global North and South. The diverse case studies presented in this book range from Basque sheep cheese production and Ghanaian Afro-chic hairstyles to Asian tropical spa culture and Dutch fair-trade jewellery initiatives. The authors assess the ways in which eco-chic, with its apparent paradox of consumption and idealism, can make a genuine contribution to solving some of the most pressing problems of our time.

Green lifestyles and ethical consumption have become increasingly popular strategies in moving towards environmentally-friendly societies and combating global poverty. Where previously environmentalists saw excess consumption as central to the problem, green consumerism now places consumption at the heart of the solution. However, ethical and sustainable consumption are also important forms of central to the creation and maintenance of class distinction. Green Consumption scrutinizes the emergent phenomenon of what this book terms eco-chic: a combination of lifestyle politics, environmentalism, spirituality, beauty and health. Eco-chic connects ethical, sustainable and elite consumption. It is increasingly part of the identity kit of certain sections of society, who seek to combine taste and style with care for personal wellness and the environment. This book deals with eco-chic as a set of activities, an ideological framework and a popular marketing strategy, offering a critical examination of its manifestations in both the global North and South. The diverse case studies presented in this book range from Basque sheep cheese production and Ghanaian Afro-chic hairstyles to Asian tropical spa culture and Dutch fair-trade jewellery initiatives. The authors assess the ways in which eco-chic, with its apparent paradox of consumption and idealism, can make a genuine contribution to solving some of the most pressing problems of our time.

The study of pilgrimage often centres itself around miracles and spontaneous populist activities. While some of these activities and stories may play an important role in the emergence of potential pilgrimage sites and in helping create wider interest in them, this book demonstrates that the dynamics of the marketplace, including marketing and promotional activities by priests and secular interest groups, create the very consumerist markets through which pilgrimages become established and successful - and through which the 'sacred' as a category can be sustained. By drawing on examples from several contexts, including Japan, India, China, Vietnam, Europe, and the Muslim world, author Ian Reader evaluates how pilgrimages may be invented, shaped, and promoted by various interest groups. In so doing he draws attention to the competitive nature of the pilgrimage market, revealing that there are rivalries, borrowed ideas, and alliances with commercial and civil agencies to promote pilgrimages. The importance of consumerism is demonstrated, both in terms of consumer goods/souvenirs and pilgrimage site selection, rather than the usual depictions of consumerism as tawdry disjunctions on the 'sacred.' As such this book reorients studies of pilgrimage by highlighting not just the pilgrims who so often dominate the literature, but also the various other interest groups and agencies without whom pilgrimage as a phenomenon would not exist.

Increasingly it is being recognized that consumer behavior may be a key trigger in the march toward sustainable development. Several lines of psychological theory and approaches have been developed relatively independently, each of which may provide major implications and action points on how consumers might be moved toward more sustainable behavior. This book is the first that brings together this variety of perspectives and theoretical angles around the common ambition of sustainable development. The contributors are all leading social scientists in the field of consumer behavior who met the challenge to sketch out their theoretical perspectives, but also to go beyond their normal theorizing and think out of the box in order to show how these theoretical perspectives might be made actionable in terms of key managerial and policy perspectives toward sustainable development. The result is a book that shows a wealth of information and approaches the question of how to encourage sustainable behavior from a myriad of divergent perspectives. This should stimulate scientists and policy-makers alike to find similarities, differences, and synergies between state-of-the-art psychological thinking about how to most effectively stimulate sustainable consumer behavior.

Edited by Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, this volume features early work on the theory and measurement of consumer behaviour. Featuring contributions from leading economists such as Anthony Atkinson, Nicholas Stern, John Muellbauer and Deaton himself, the book offers papers on a wide range of topics. Topics covered range from theory to econometrics, from Engel curves to labour supply and fertility, and from consumer demand in England to consumer behaviour in the USSR. These papers were written and collected for this volume to honour Sir Richard Stone on the occasion of his retirement from his chair at the University of Cambridge.

"A fascinating investigation that explains semiotics, the science of signs, and shows how it can help us understand the way marketing and advertising shape our behavior as consumers and the way we use brands to help create our public identities. Semiotics deals with the messages we are always sending about ourselves by the clothes we wear, our facial expressions, our body language, and the objects we purchase. It also helps us learn how to interpret the messages that others are always sending to us. The book also analyzes a number of the "objects of our affection" such as toasters, teddy bears, hamburgers and computers. In the appendix, there are a number of learning games and activities that involve using semiotics to better understand consumer culture"--Provided by publisher.

This book analyzes the factors behind the recent expansion of Fairtrade and questions whether the trust given to the scheme by "ethical" shoppers is warranted. It goes about this assessment by analyzing the claim of ethical shopping and by scrutinizing the specific contribution of the Fairtrade Certification Mark to producer's welfare. This assessment is based on information gathered in a mixture of desk-based research and fieldwork carried out in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Tanzania and South Africa. This book comprises separate chapters written by academics of various backgrounds, who have worked together on Fairtrade, it should however be noted that the authors do not necessarily hold a common set of views in respect to Fairtrade.

This book explores the new politics of leisure and pleasure in relation to a range of popular activities. Current generations in Western societies are essentially recipients of the changes that the Sixties - fabled decade of sex, drugs and rock n' roll - left behind. In their leisure lives - whether drinking, reading, surfing the net, taking drugs, going to a comedy gig, watching TV, taking a holiday, downloading music, supporting a football club, having a bet, having sex or simply roaming the countryside - people seem to enjoy unprecedented freedoms. But what are these freedoms? How are they exercised? And to what extent have traditional controls been relinquished?

How is it that a Big Mac is merely lunch in America and a symbol of cultural imperialism in France? Why did the September 11 terrorists choose United and American over any other airlines? Because they are branded, looming as larger-than-life symbols of America. Branding, to hear James Twitchell tell it, is nothing more than commercial storytelling - and it's become so ubiquitous that even institutions we thought were above branding have succumbed. And according to Twitchell, that's probably just fine. BRANDED NATION lays bare an American society where megachurches resemble shopping malls, where a university lives or dies on the talents of its image-makers, and where museums have turned to motorcycle exhibits and fashion shows to bolster revenue. Full of provocative anecdotes and penetrating analyses, Twitchell's parsing of the age of 'McCulture' is a triumph of great verve, sharp wit and, most striking of all, infectious optimism.

As conscientious consumers, we have become overwhelmed with alarms about food contamination, over-fishing, clear-felled forests, loss of biodiversity, climate change, chemical pollution, and other environmental and health-related risks. This book is an analysis of a primary set of tools aimed at dealing with these risks: green labels and other eco-standards. The authors address political, regulatory, discursive, and organizational circumstances and raise the questions: how can ecological complexities be translated into a trustworthy and categorical label? Is there a mismatch between the production and consumption of green labels? Is it possible to achieve broad public participation in environmental issues through labelling? This is a timely book that provides a social and policy-oriented analysis of the challenges for green consumerism through green labelling.

In the last two years, consumers have experienced massive changes in consumption - whether due to shifts in habits; the changing information landscape; challenges to their identity, or new economic experiences of scarcity or abundance. What can we expect from these experiences? How are the world's leading thinkers applying both foundational knowledge and novel insights as we seek to understand consumer psychology in a constantly changing landscape? And how can informed readers both contribute to and evaluate our knowledge? This handbook offers a critical overview of both fundamental topics in consumer psychology and those that are of prominence in the contemporary marketplace, beginning with an examination of individual psychology and broadening to topics related to wider cultural and marketplace systems. The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology, 2nd edition, will act as a valuable guide for teachers and graduate and undergraduate students in psychology, marketing, management, economics, sociology, and anthropology.

Despite increasing public awareness of climate change, our behaviours relating to consumption and energy use remain largely unchanged. This book answers the urgent call for effective engagement methods to foster sustainable lifestyles, community action, and social change. Written by practitioners and academics, the chapters combine theoretical perspectives with case studies and practical guidance, examining what works and what doesn't, and providing transferable lessons for future engagement approaches. Showcasing innovative thought and approaches from around the world, this book is essential reading for anyone working to foster real and lasting behavioural and social change.

A not-so-quiet revolution seems to be occurring in wealthy capitalist societies - supermarkets selling 'guilt free' Fairtrade products; lifestyle TV gurus exhorting us to eat less, buy local and go green; neighbourhood action groups bent on 'swopping not shopping'. And this is happening not at the margins of society but at its heart, in the shopping centres and homes of ordinary people. Today we are seeing a mainstreaming of ethical concerns around consumption that reflects an increasing anxiety with - and accompanying sense of responsibility for - the risks and excesses of contemporary lifestyles in the 'global north'. This collection of essays provides a range of critical tools for understanding the turn towards responsible or conscience consumption and, in the process, interrogates the notion that we can shop our way to a more ethical, sustainable future. Written by leading international scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds - and drawing upon examples from across the globe - Ethical Consumption makes a major contribution to the still fledgling field of ethical consumption studies. This collection is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between consumer culture and contemporary social life.

Buying decision making is a complicated process, in which a consumer's decision is under the influence of others. The buyer's decision making is directed in such a way that they must act as a consumer in society. Media and family are key socializing agents for adolescents. Moreover, changes in the socio-cultural environment in India necessitate that adolescents' influence in family's buying decision making should be investigated. In comparison to Western society, Indian society is quite different when compared in terms of family composition and structure, behavior, values and norms which impact adolescents' buying decision making. Adolescents, Family and Consumer Behaviour studies the role of consumer socialization agents for adolescents, examining socio-economic factors that influence adolescents' buying decision making in Indian urban families. It aims to discover the influence tactics that adolescents employ and to qualitatively analyse how marketers in turn influence adolescents. It addresses the topics with regard to strategic management and marketing and will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of management, entrepreneurship, small business management, and human resource management.

"Utopian in theme and implication, this book shows how the practices of critical, interpretive inquiry can help change the world in positive ways?. This is the promise, the hope, and the agenda that is offered."--Norman K. Denzin, From the Foreword

"Its focus on learning, education and pedagogy gives this book a particular relevance and significance in contemporary cultural studies. Its impressive authors, thoughtful structuring, wide range of perspectives, attention to matters of educational policy and practice, and suggestions for transformative pedagogy all provide for a compelling and significant volume."--H. Svi Shapiro, University of North Carolina?Greensboro

Distinguished international scholars from a wide range of disciplines (including curriculum studies, foundations of education, adult education, higher education, and consumer education) come together in this book to explore consumption and its relation to learning, identity development, and education. Readers will learn about a variety of ways in which learning and education intersect with consumption. This volume is unique within the literature of education in its examination of educational sites ? both formal and informal ? where learners and teachers are resisting consumerism and enacting a critical pedagogy of consumption.

This is the first scholarly book to fully address the topics of the psychology of deceptive persuasion in the marketplace and consumer self-protection. Deception permeates the American marketplace. Deceptive marketing harms consumers health, welfare and financial resources, reduces people s privacy and self-esteem, and ultimately undermines trust in society. Individual consumers must try to protect themselves from marketers misleading communications by acquiring personal marketplace deception-protection skills that go beyond reliance on legal or regulatory protections. Understanding the psychology of deceptive persuasion and consumer self-protection should be a central goal for future consumer behavior research.

The authors explore these questions. What makes persuasive communications misleading and deceptive? How do marketing managers decide to prevent or practice deception in planning their campaigns? What skills must consumers acquire to effectively cope with marketers deception tactics? What does research tell us about how people detect, neutralize and resist misleading persuasion attempts? What does research suggest about how to teach marketplace deception protection skills to adolescents and adults?

Chapters cover theoretical perspectives on deceptive persuasion; different types of deception tactics; how deception-minded marketers think; prior research on how people cope with deceptiveness; the nature of marketplace deception protection skills; how people develop deception protection skills in adolescence and adulthood; prior research on teaching consumers marketplace deception protection skills; and societal issues such as regulatory frontiers, societal trust, and consumer education practices.

This unique book is intended for scholars and researchers. It should be essential reading for upper level and graduate courses in consumer behavior, social psychology, communication, and marketing. Marketing practitioners and marketplace regulators will find it stimulating and authoritative, as will social scientists and educators who are concerned with consumer welfare.

Children today are growing up in an increasingly commercialised world. But should we see them as victims of manipulative marketing, or as competent participants in consumer culture? The Material Child provides a comprehensive critical overview of debates about children's changing engagement with the commercial market. It moves from broad overviews of the theory and history of children's consumption to insightful case studies of key areas such as obesity, sexualisation, children's broadcasting and education. In the process, it challenges much of the received wisdom about the effects of advertising and marketing, arguing for a more balanced account that locates children's consumption within a broader analysis of social relationships, for example within the family and the peer group. While refuting the popular view of children as incompetent and vulnerable consumers that is adopted by many campaigners, it also rejects the easy celebration of consumption as an expression of children's power and autonomy. Written by one of the leading international scholars in the field, The Material Child will be of interest to students, researchers and policy-makers, as well as parents, teachers and others who work directly with children.