How you think about you?

How can I find you in the crow?

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Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and
Being
Fourteenth Edition

Chapter 5
Identity and the Self

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Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
9.1 Explain how the self-concept strongly influences
consumer behavior.
9.2 Describe how our consumption choices are expressions
of our identities and extensions of our selves.
9.3 Summarize how consumers are finding new ways to
express identity via their consumption choices.

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Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
9.4 Recognize the many sociocultural factors that contribute
to gender identity
9.5 Discuss how our bodies are an important component of
our identities.

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Are you what you buy?

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Learning Objective 9.1
Explain how the self-concept strongly influences consumer
behavior.

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The Self
The Self-Concept and Self-Esteem
• Self-concept: the beliefs a person holds about their own
attributes and how they evaluate the self on these qualities
• Identity: Each element that contributes to our self-concept
• Self-esteem: the positivity of a person’s self-concept

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What Is Self-Esteem?
• Self-esteem
– The positivity of a person’s
self-concept
– People with low self-esteem
expect that they will not
perform very well, and they
will try to avoid
embarrassment, failure, and
rejection

Some products promise to give

our self-esteem a boost

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The Self and Others
• Ideal self: our conception of how we would like to be
• Actual self: our more realistic appraisal of the qualities
we have
• Avoidance selves. the type of person we don’t want to
be
• Products can:
– Help us reach ideal self
– Be consistent with actual self
• Impression management means that we work to
“manage” what others think of us
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Looking-Glass Self
• Self-fulfilling prophecy

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Social Comparison/ Self Construal
• Social comparison: the person tries to evaluate their
appearance by comparing it to the people depicted in
these artificial images
• Self-construal: the degree to which we think of our self as
independent from others versus feeling interdependent
with them
– Independent self
– Interdependent self

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Self-Consciousness
• Public self-consciousness
• Self monitors
• The malleable self
– Each of us really is several different people

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Creating Our Self as We Consume
• Self-image congruence models: we choose products
when attributes matches the self

• Self-signaling: a
message to
ourselves that our
choices sync with
how we want to think
about ourselves

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For Reflection (1 of 5)
• Advertising can utilize a consumer’s self-esteem in
promoting a product by offering the product as a remedy
to low self-esteem
• Self-esteem advertising
– Products provide remedy to low self-esteem
• How effective do you think this form of advertising is?

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Learning Objective 9.2
Describe how our consumption choices are expressions of
our identities and extensions of our selves.

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We Consume to Express Our Identities
the Extended Self
• Extended self Figure 9.1 Levels of the Extended Self
– Individual
– Family
– Community
– Group

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Learning Objective 9.3
Summarize how consumers are finding new ways to
express identity via their consumption choices.

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Embodied Cognition
• Power posing
• Enclothed cognition

Is it true that you are

what you wear?

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Our Digital Selves
• Wearable computing
• Virtual makeover

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Learning Objective 9.4
Recognize the many
sociocultural factors that
contribute to gender identity

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Gender and Consumer Behavior
• Gender Socialization and Gender Roles
– Gender roles: People often conform to their culture’s
expectations about how those of their gender should
act, dress, or speak
– Gender socialization: Many commercial sources,
such as girls’ dolls, boys’ toy guns, and cartoons
provide lessons for both girls and boys
– Patriarchal masculinity: a viewpoint that advocates
the superiority of masculinity over femininity, or the
authority of men over women

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For Reflection (3 of 5)
• What are two examples of
sex-typed products?
• Are there situations for
which promoting sex-typed
products might limit the
market for a product?

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Beware of Gender Stereotypes in
Advertising and Products
• Androgyny and gender-bending products
• Toward greater gender Fluidity
• The quest for gender justice and equality

A male sex-typed product

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Learning Objective 9.5
Discuss how our bodies are an important component of our
identities.

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The Body
• Body image
– A consumer’s
subjective evaluation
of their physical self

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Ideals of Beauty and Stereotypes
• Satisfaction with physical image depends on how closely
the image corresponds to the ideal our culture values.
• Ideal of Beauty: model or exemplar of appearance
– Physical features (e.g., a well-rounded derrière for
women or a six-pack for men)
– Clothing styles, cosmetics, hairstyles, skin tone
– Body type--petite, athletic, voluptuous
• Desires to match these ideals drive purchase decisions.

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Marketing and Advertising Contribute to
a Society’s Ideals of Beauty
• Media determining which forms of beauty we consider
desirable at any point in time
• Whether the ideals of beauty are shaped by advertising
and affect society or shaped by society and reflected in
advertising is an age-old debate
• Images of impossibly thin and flawlessly beautiful women
continue to bombard young girls and women
• The irony is that media standards are impossible to attain
– The svelte models do not exist in real life

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Beyond Ageism and Sexism
• Negative consequences of
impossible body ideals
• Body positivity
– Enter the fatshionistas

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Negative Consequences of Impossible
Body Ideas
• Body image distortions
• Thinspiration
• Group dieting

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Body Positivity: Enter the Fashionistas
• The growing popularity of “full-figured” women has drawn
attention to the endangered self-esteem of larger women

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Body Decoration and Mutilation
• Body modification
• Cosmetic surgery
• Tattoos
• The mechanized
body
• The quantified self

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For Reflection (4 of 5)
• What is considered the ideal of beauty among your peers?
• How does this ideal affect your choices as a consumer?

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For Reflection (5 of 5)
• Do you have a tattoo? If so,
what motivated your decision?
If not, why not?
• Can you see the influence of
culture on your decision to
tattoo or not?

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Chapter Summary
• The self-concept influences consumer behavior.
• Gender identity is an important component of a
consumer’s self-concept.
• The way we think about our bodies (and the way our
culture tells us we should think) is a key component of
self-esteem.

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Copyright

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