Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Poverty
Poverty
Richard Elliott
is Professor of Marketing and Consumer Research at Warwick Business School and a
Fellow of St Annes College, Oxford. He is Associate Editor of the British Journal of
Management and European Editor of the Journal of Product and Brand Management. His
research focuses on the symbolic meaning of brands, consumer culture and identity
and the dynamics of brand ecology.
Clare Leonard
graduated in Management from Exeter University and is currently travelling the
world.
symbolism, fashion
Abstract
Attitudes towards fashion brands (trainers/athletic shoes) and their symbolic meanings are
explored among a sample of 30 children aged 812 years from poor homes in the UK, in an
interpretive study using projective methods. The children form stereotypes about the
owners of trainers: if the trainers are obviously branded and expensive the children believe
the owner to be rich and young, if the trainer is unbranded and inexpensive looking the
children believe the owner to be poor and old. If a child is wearing branded trainers they are
seen as popular and able to fit in with their peers. These opinions are so strongly held that
the children would prefer to talk to someone wearing branded trainers than unbranded
trainers. The children also feel pressure to wear the trainers that their friends wear, partly
to make friends and fit in and partly because of the teasing experienced if they are wearing
unbranded clothes or are clearly from a poor home.
Richard Elliott
Warwick Business
School,
University of
Warwick,
Warwick, CV4 7AL,
UK
Tel: +44 024 7652 4800
Fax: +44 01392 263242
e-mail: richard.elliott@
relliott.demon.co.uk
INTRODUCTION
Despite anecdotal evidence that peers
exert a very powerful influence over
childrens consumer behaviour, there
has been a surprising lack of research on
the topic (Bachmann et al., 1993). Peer
pressure is most likely to be experienced
for public luxuries such as branded
fashion items (Childers and Rao, 1992)
and the authors concentrate here on the
case of branded trainers (athletic shoes)
rather than clothes, as they are
considered to be a high fashion item,
but do not have the extreme variance in
their types that clothing does.
The emergence of a British
Keywords:
Children, peerpressure, brands,
poverty,
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No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Brand
Nike Air Turbulence
Amulet (Reebok)
Unbranded shoe for men (Kee)
Nike Air Max 90
Walk-Lite (Hi-Tec)
Detroit
Unbranded shoe for women (Kee)
Nike Air Tremble Cross
Nike Air International Trait 3
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E
yeah
did you want to look good like her?
E
yeah
do you think now that you have them you look
kind of like your sister a bit?
E
yeah
Peer pressure
People with decent trainers also
appeared to be popular with their peers,
the children seemed to fit into gangs
and groups of friends easier if they were
appropriately dressed, one interviewee
saying my best friends wear trainers
that I like. This peer pressure seemed to
lead to many of the children wanting
branded trainers to fit in with their
friends and the popular children at
school.
why are they (shoes you are now wearing)
decent?
R (boy) because everyone at my school
wears them
. . . why do you want to wear the same as the
others?
R
because then I dont feel left out
. . . so if tomorrow everyone decided that they
want to wear Nike trainers you would try and
get some as well?
R
yeah
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DISCUSSION
Very few of the children interviewed
owned new, premium-branded trainers,
despite saying that they desired them.
The majority of the children indicated
that their trainers had been bought
when the previous pair wore out; this
suggests that poor children have less
control over their parents spending, as
they do not have the trainers that they
want. The children interviewed were
from poor families and appeared to
have little influence over the brand of
trainers they had, the vast majority
desiring Nike trainers, but often
wearing cheaper brands.
Although few of the children were
able to afford expensive, top-of-therange trainers, the majority owned a
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IMPLICATIONS
A seminal study on the unintended
consequences of television advertising
on childrens behaviour (Goldberg and
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Close
You said earlier what all the cool kids at
school wear, do you think you are one
of the cool kids?
Would you like to be really popular/
cool?
Do you think if you wore these trainers
you would be?
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