After a discussion I was able to organise what I’d discovered doing this assignment. My results were as follows…
I interviewed 6 girls, all friends of friends and all from different walks of life. One was from Romania studying a masters of design, another was from Pakistan studying architecture and the rest were Western and studying different things from psychology to film studies.
As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, the question I chose to base my interviews on was How knowledgeable are people about what they are buying? I wanted to get a really good background on consumerism and what people could tell me about why western culture is so focused on it so I began by asking some questions on the industrial revolution. I was surprised that everyone I interviewed knew a lot more about it than they seemed to think they did, giving more information than the standard grade history course! Most importantly all six interviewees agreed that this was the main reason that there is so much choice nowadays in food, clothes and leisure.
I then asked questions about the social and economic aspects of shopping. I asked these as separate categories, but in analysing them it might be easier to take them together as economic aspects is just a small relation to the question. There was a general acceptance that shopping was now seen as a social activity or something that people associated with enjoyment, and this wasn’t just clothes shopping – one participant even said she really looked forward to her weekly food shop! There were several agreed reasons for this. One was the fact that when children get to an age where they want to start socialising with friends one of the first places they are interested in going is to a shopping centre, particularly girls. Another reason that one participant brought up was the fact that shopping for fancy clothes and accessories is no longer exclusively for those with a huge disposable income or particular phisique – anyone can shop for these items now, as shops cater for all budgets and sizes. Economics also come into play in this end of the spectrum. The fact that the government are giving the disadvantaged and the unemployed huge benefits means they have money for luxuries.
Another social aspect is the ever increasing television advertisements which feature products such as clothes, household goods and even foodstuffs in desirable situations. These adverts, one interviewee informed me, are “turning consumer wants into needs” She went on to say that this was so successful because most everybody has access to a television, even those who can’t afford to buy their own can pay for it in installments over the course of a couple of years, meaning these adverts are bombarding millions and millions of people at a time.
I asked a few questions on the role that shop assistants have on the social aspects of buying. The interviewees that had worked in retail informed me that shop assistants were taught to have a huge effect on what people bought – giving them alternative items, offering matching items, informing them of promotions and special offers. However, what was interesting was that everyone agreed that this was more likely to put consumers off making extra purchases, as every interviewee told me that they’d had an experience like this where they’d been put off making a purchase after a shop assistant had been particularly pushy – you wonder why they do it!
On the flip side it was revealed by the people that had worked in retail that there were rewards for the people that had managed to push customers into certain promotions. In one instance, the interviewee worked in Clarks the shoe shop and was required to get 2.2% of her sales on shoe care otherwise she’d be pulled up by management. I’d come across this type of attitude to sales before, and it seemed to me that all companies were interested in was the best turnover they could get and their hackles definitely appeared to be up when it came to competitors. This got me thinking about the economic side of things in relation to the recession. Who was in the better position? Were shops successfully managing to rake in the money with all their campaigning or were people conscious of saving money for a rainy day? I got a mixed response for this question. Some of the girls thought that people were too sensible to let sales people pressure them into buying especially while the economy is more unstable while others, as previously mentioned, had the opinion that people were spending every penny they had rather than saving a portion. One person had the more optimistic view that people were being sensible – buying what they needed and a few little treats but saving some money for when it might be needed.
What I’ve said so far might not make much sense in relation to the main question, but the reason I investigated these things was to gain background information on peoples knowledge about consumer culture before I asked the fundamental aspects of the question. Ultimately, it is all linked – the way people buy, the conditions economically under which they buy, the impact what they buy has on the world and how much they really know about this.
The next set of questions on environmental aspects of buying set the stage for answering the bigger question. Everyone agreed that the current attitude towards buying was having a big impact on the environment in many ways. They mentioned effects such as transporting goods, the frivolous attitude of mass factory production and the issue of waste particularly food wastage. They were also aware of worldly issues such as fairtrade, child and cheap labour and unfair aid.
The interviewees were also able to give examples of the wasteful attitudes of the retail environments they’d worked in. One who had previously worked in the clothing store Republic stated that managers had encouraged the workers to slash old stock before throwing it in the bin so that there was no way anyone else could get it. This not only meant that clothes that could have been sold to places such as TK MAXX or given to the homeless were being wasted but also meant that they were being flung on to landfill sites with other rubbish where they would never biodegrade when they could have been reused. All this from the selfishness of one company! The participants were also able however, to give examples of companies who prided themselves on their environmentally friendly habits. Interestingly, these only seemed to include companies in the supermarket industry such as the M&S Plan A campaign with their efforts to reduce the energy they use in the creation of their products and the huge effort Tesco was making with recycling all cardboard and encouraging the recycling of plastic bags. It would appear that bigger companies feel they have more responsibility to promote this mentality while also perhaps using it as a way to promote themselves as “do gooders” as being huge well known companies with lots of income gives them the opportunity to do so.
The interviewee from Romania gave an interesting example of a differing cultural attitude to consumerism. Some friends she had in India placed importance on their treasured clothes and accessories that their mothers and grandmothers had made them. She said they had a real emotional attachment to them and placed a great deal of value in the quality and circumstances under which they were made which is completely different to western culture which is more concerned about the quantity of things they own. Off topic slightly, I thought western people would probably be able to identify with this value in the form of special jewellery given to them by somebody important. This made me wonder if it will ever be possible to have the same attachment to clothes or if acceptance of mass production has meant we are passed that stage?
Despite this, another point the interviewees agreed on was the fact that buying things second hand from places like ebay and charity shops had definitely become more acceptable as people become more and more aware of the impact of always buying new things. One girl even informed me of a “free shop” that exists within the university campus where students can swap objects they no longer need or want. One person’s junk is another persons treasure and all that!
The last few questions used the context of what I’d previously asked to allow the interviewees to answer the main big question. They all agreed that people certainly weren’t as knowledgeable as they once were about what they were buying and they all had different yet valid ideas about this. One person said it was because products often didn’t come with clear “labeling” as such about where they were made and who made them. A couple of others emphasised the point they’d made in the question I asked them about how much responsibility they thought companies had in informing consumers about their product, and said that they should be informing about products in all instances good or bad. Another couple of people went back to the industrial revolution and the fact that it had meant that there was less demand for local produce and more demand for overseas goods to be imported.
The last very last question I asked was whether or not people thought there was a link between all the areas I had mentioned and the responses have allowed me to draw the following conclusion. The fact that the industrial revolution meant localised good were diminishing meant people knew less and less about them and they lost their value, leading to people sometimes being in a mentality of buying for the sake of buying. The media has worsened this by promoting lots of desirable things and making us feel as though we need them so we don’t grudge spending our money on them even in hard financial times. However, the problem is that we are producing far more than we need and our lack of knowledge about the products and where they come from means we don’t know what impact our culture is having on the rest of the world but we keep buying anyway because we don’t know any better anymore. We all know we do it, and we are all responsible but we don’t know how to stop it and take responsibility. So maybe ultimately, it is lack of knowledge about the bigger picture of the products we buy that is holding us back from taking responsibility and making changes to the impact our lifestyle is having on the rest of the world?
I know, certainly not rocket science working that one out!
This topic definitely also has a place in relation to jewellery. I’ve heard it mentioned several times by jewellery professionals in our department that the quality of precious metal is continuing to decrease. For example, 24 carat gold is considered the highest quality, yet in this country we give 9 carat gold the same value, simply by calling it gold without going into the specifics. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same went for hallmarking silver too in some cases, although admittedly I’d have to look further into that instead of making a crude guess! There is also a lot of value placed in acrylic and plated jewellery, I would be tempted to say there was just as much if not more value placed in these types of jewellery than there is in precious metal jewellery. Even jewellers who have just begun practicing professionally have started upping the value of acrylic and less precious metals, even though they shouldn’t cost overly much to produce. However, I guess this is the debate between the value of the material and the value of the craft skill used to make it and everybody will always have a differing oppinion. At the other end of the spectrum, high street stores such as Topshop, Accessorize and Claires Accessories make jewellery that is designed to be quirky and “individual” even though there is hundreds more of it’s kind but hey until we can afford bespoke why not?!
On the whole, I think this assignment went quite successfully but there were a couple of things that could have gone more smoothly. I didn’t manage to interview any of the boys I’d asked which would have probably offered an interesting contrast, especially as the buying habits of boys versus girls tend to be very different. Another mistake I made was interviewing three people that knew each other at the same time. I thought they’d maybe have felt more relaxed doing this and more ideas could have been bounced around, but it backfired a little bit and caused a lack of concentration on what I was asking. I think this would have worked better if they didn’t know each other so well…
…as I said in my subject line – why use 10 words when 1000 will do?
