Marketplace Lifestyles in an Age of Social Media: Theory and Methods

Lynn R Kahle, Pierre Valette-Florence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138164550
• eBook ISBN: 9781317465102
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book approaches the concept of lifestyle from a contemporary scholarly perspective, and subjects it to rigorous theoretical and conceptual standards from an integrated, applied psychological point of view.

Marketplace Lifestyles in an Age of Social Media is exceptionally current, demonstrating how recent trends and developments in social media reflect the importance of lifestyle research in marketing. Numerous examples, illustrations, and comprehensive references are provided, making this volume the best single resource for scholars, students, and marketing experts in this important area of marketing theory and practice.

1

Origins and Definitions

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For many years, researchers and practitioners have shown increasing interest in the concept of lifestyles. This phenomenon can be explained in part by the shortcomings of traditional demographics such as socioeconomic variables to predict buying trends, as well as by the sometimes misleading results furnished by motivation-based studies of consumer behavior.

In practice, the concept of lifestyle encompasses a variety of elements. Its definition is quite broad, ranging from easily and directly observable behaviors to more hidden aspects of a person’s life—including values, attitudes, and opinions—that may function as determinants of his or her behaviors (Hustad and Pessemier, 1974).

The objective of this first chapter is to synthesize the diverse concepts inherent in the study of lifestyles. Taking into account their distinctive origins, these concepts will be presented first in a historical perspective (section 1). We will then retrace their evolution in the domain of marketing (section 2).

EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

Lifestyle concepts were used in other domains of the human sciences long before they were applied to marketing. Historically speaking, the concept of lifestyles is ancient. As a field of study, it can be traced back to the very first Greek philosophers. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), in his Rhetoric, already spoke of “ethos” (or habitus in Latin), which allowed for the characterization of manners of being, ways of living, status, and the character of the individual. He inspired his disciple Theophrast (372–287 B.C.E.) to explore the topic further. In his Characters, Theophrast described thirty psychological profiles of his time.

Closer to the present day we find portraits of Gidon and of Phedon in The Characters, or the Manner of the Age (1688–1694) from La Bruyère (1645–1696). The first citation of the term style appeared in the work of the English philosopher Robert Burton (1577–1640): “It is most true, stylus virumarguit—our style betrays us.” A century later, the French naturalist GeorgesLouis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) wrote: “Style is man himself.” Finally, the first appearance of the term lifestyle came in the preface of William Wen-nington’s English translation of Moralische Geschichten (title means “Moral Tales”), from the work of a German, Adlerjung (1811).

In the twentieth century, it was the German sociologist Max Weber (18641920) who popularized the term lifestyle. He defined it as “a means of affirmation and differentiation of social status” (1922, 1948), following the idea of life scheme proposed in 1899 by Thorstein Veblen. In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen refers to the life scheme as the state of belonging to a group, along with the choice individuals have to differentiate themselves from groups to which they do not belong. The concept of lifestyle, according to the Austrian physician and psychologist Alfred Adler (1870–1937), differs from the idea presented by Weber and Veblen. Adler (1919, 1929) used the term to describe the system of rules of conduct developed by individuals in order to attain their goals in life.

Adler is best known for his theories of personality and individual psychology. It makes sense, then, that his views on lifestyles would focus on an individual’s method of response to the environment. The analysis of lifestyle represents, in fact, the masterwork of Adlerian psychology, because we can trace its influence on his writings for a span of more than forty years. Note that the term lifestyle did not appear in his works until 1926, but variations on the word can be found as early as 1912 as “line of direction” (leitlinie), “life plan” (lebensplan), and “directional image” (leitbild), this last expression having been suggested by Ludwig Klages in 1906. The principal concerns of psychologists and sociologists follow the definitions offered by Adler and Weber.

Following in Adler’s footsteps, experts in sociology and psychology have preoccupied themselves with the concept of lifestyle as a reflection of personality. Contrary to Freudian theory, which insists on the role of impulse in the formation of personality and behaviors, these theorists explain personality development as a process that blends various aspects of social influence and interpersonal relationships (Hall and Lindzey, 1970; Wells and Beard, 1973).

In the domain of sociology, few works followed Weber’s approach. Especially in France, the majority of published works discuss lifestyles of very particular social groups such as the inhabitants of a city or suburb (Kaes, 1963), the members of a profession (Boltanski, 1982), or students (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1964; Baudrillard, 1970). These approaches show that lifestyles are determined not only by demographic or economic criteria, but also by psychological or sociological criteria—for instance, personal interest, taste, level of education, and adherence to certain moral values.

This diversity of work on lifestyles in social sciences, as well as the varied approaches that correspond to them, explains the variety of definitions used in the field of marketing. These definitions are presented in the following section.

DEFINITIONS OF LIFESTYLES USED IN MARKETING

The history of lifestyle studies follows two major paths: One holds that attitudes determine consumer behavior; the other stresses personality as a primary motivator in purchasing decisions. Paul F. Lazarsfeld (1935) tried to understand consumer behavior by studying the interaction of three groups of variables: predispositions, influences in the form of social connotations, and qualifiers attributed to products. These criteria became the forerunners to the approach based on attitudes and activities, from which we derive the better-known term AIO (an acronym for activities, interests, and opinions), widely recognized in the United States.

Other authors based their approaches on the links that exist between personality variables and the choice of certain kinds of products. Gottlieb (1959), Koponen (1960), and Bernay (1971), for instance, pioneered the incorporation of personality-based variables in more generalized studies of lifestyles. These studies, thus, take on the name of psychographic approaches, which—like studies of the AIO type—are also centered on personality and its relation to economic and social status. However, the majority of research on personalities has proved inconclusive at best (Kassarjian, 1971a), explaining only a small percentage of the variation in consumer behaviors.

It is interesting to note the essentially empirical character that the studies of lifestyles have borrowed from these two orientations (Peltier, et al., 2002; Bolton, et al., 2008). This effect is made apparent in marketing through ongoing efforts to define lifestyle. Many suggestions have been made, both in France and in the United States. Some remain quite general; others are more pragmatic and centered on the individual; still others introduce explicitly the notion of social influence.

Lazer’s definition (1963) of lifestyle is very general. It straddles the line between individual and aggregate elements of behavior: “Lifestyle is … the result of forces such as culture, values, the symbolism of certain objects, moral values, and ethics. In a certain sense, the aggregate of consumer purchases and the manner in which these purchases are used reflects the lifestyle of a society.” This definition is linked to the idea of a system whose process can be schematized, as shown in Figure 1.1.

Source: Lazer, W. (1963), Life-Style Concepts and Marketing. In S.A. Greyser (ed.), Toward Scientific Marketing (Chicago: American Marketing Association), 130–139.

Figure 1.1 Hierarchy of “Lifestyles” as Proposed by Lazer

Wind and Green’s definition (1974), which is less theoretical than Lazer’s and focused more on the individual, defines different levels of lifestyle identification. It falls into the second category of definitions. Wind and Green identify three levels of lifestyle study:

• values and personality traits

• activities, interests, and attitudes

• consumption behaviors

Finally, the concept of lifestyles proposed by Reynolds and Darden (1972b and 1974) and Bernard-Becharies (1980) stresses the importance of social influence. They use ideas founded on George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs (1955). Kelly believed that a major goal of humans is to predict and control events and experiences. We develop personal constructs to describe our views about the connections between events and experiences. Each person’s unique collection of constructs is the basis of personality, in this view.

Reynolds and Darden’s approach conceives human behavior as being directed:

• on one hand by the group of cognitive structures that are organized in a system of personal constructs

• and on the other hand by the process according to which an individual changes conceptual structures of the universe.

The lifestyle of an individual refers to the system of constructs she or he elaborates and develops personally. In this sense, lifestyle is composed of subsystems built from personal constructions (dimensions or schemas) about the connections between events and experiences. These mental subsystems are ordered, giving the resulting system a pyramid-like allure. The subsystems can also be used in a fragmented way, which is why incomplete information regarding lifestyle is hardly illuminating. We are not capable of understanding the entire person—only certain aspects of the lifestyle. However, it is possible to “group” people according to the similarity of their personal constructs.

The formation of groups of people based on individual similarities of personal constructions is an interesting prospect, but considerable difficulty lies in the measurement of these constructions. The group view of lifestyle rests on a composite concept—one that describes related types of cognitive behavior among members of a sociocultural subgroup. The main problem posed by this definition is its lack of a sufficiently precise operational framework, which leads to ambiguity.

Bernard-Becharies’s study (1980) looked at how individuals place themselves in a social group. As a scholar in the field of lifestyle studies, he defined lifestyle as the way of life particular to one group as compared to society as a whole, or of one family as compared to one group, or of one person as compared to one family. According to Bernard-Becharies, lifestyle is really a form of communication, and the concrete manifestations of lifestyle choices— clothes, manners, languages, habits, education, etc.—can be viewed as a system of signs. It would be by such a system that a community communicates its attachments, its norms, and its ways of perception to others.

Bernard-Becharies and Pinson (1981) introduced a distinction between the individual and collective levels of lifestyle. At the collective level, lifestyle— which they call “the way of living”—refers to a great collection of people’s cognitions, but with socially differentiating attachments, which they call social values. This represents “the ensemble of types of production of individuals by themselves in a considered hyper-group.” At the individual level, lifestyle is the personal expression of a group’s way of living and communicating. This definition, too, lacks a precise operational framework.

Figure 1.2 Integration of the Constituent Elements of Lifestyle

It is difficult to find any sense of convergence among these defi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Origins and Definitions
• 2. Methodological Approaches Centered on Values
• 3. Traditional Approaches Focusing on Attitudes and Activities
• 4. French Approaches
• 5. The Analysis of Products, Goods, and Services Purchased by the Consumer
• 6. Fields of Application of Lifestyles
• 7. Problems and Critiques Raised by Studies of Lifestyles
• 8. New Methodological and Conceptual Proposals
• 9. Social Media and a Theory and Method for Future Research
• 10. General Conclusions
• References
• Index
• About the Authors