For decades, researchers have been investigating how we interact with products and brands. On 5 June 2024, our Marketing, Business & Society’s Materiality in Consumer Research Workshop presented three projects on consumer-product relationships. Here, Dr Varala Maraj, Assistant Professor in Marketing, shares three key takeaways from the day.
We are all consumers. We must consume to survive. But how are our current relationships with products changing? Evolving? Strengthening? Worsening?
Digital disruptions
Digitization has disrupted how we buy, consume, share and relate to products – especially technology products. For example, streaming is now the dominant way to consume media. But having these all-you-can-eat media platform buffets at our fingertips means there are inevitable trade-offs. With so much focus on what we gain from digitization (cost advantages, space saving, product variety), what do we give up in return?
Dr Mario Campana’s research on object materiality provides some insights. He takes a holistic view to classify different products and how they affect our behaviour. He shows how features, such as physical materiality and mutability determine how we use, value and develop attachments to each of these types of object.
He explains:
“We all consume objects every day, so we often take them for granted. Take music, for example. Traditionally, vinyl records facilitate a tangible opportunity to own, curate, display, and signal our identities and tastes to others. Digital downloads allow ownership, which may help strengthen psychological forms of consumer attachment to some extent.
“Streaming means no ownership – which may result in less consumer attachment – and also relies on algorithms, which may become filter bubbles. Some consumers may even ask ChatGPT to compile playlists for particular occasions or moods.
“Each of these represents a common route that consumers take to listen to music, but uses very different technology objects with distinct properties and implications for consumer behaviour.”
Sharing isn’t always caring
We may be ‘sharing’ information with each other now more than ever via digital platforms. But emerging research indicates new disruptions to the traditional practice of sharing – where something becomes seen as a joint possession.
Practices of sharing predate even market-based exchanges and represent important ways for us to establish and reinforce our social relationships, such as with family members, partners or flatmates. But when does something go from being considered ‘mine’ to ‘ours’?
This is one of the focuses of my research, looking at how a once traditional social practice –sharing products and resources within the home – can become more difficult as a result of digitization.
A qualitative longitudinal study that I carried out with Dr Rebecca Mardon from Cardiff University and Professor Fleura Bardhi from Bayes Business School found that cohabiting partners struggled to share digital devices, platforms and content.
Brand rivalry with digital devices often drew a line in the sand between couples. Our data showed how frustrating and difficult it was for an Android user to even take a photo on their partner’s iPhone on the spot. Couples would often share passwords for their mobiles and other devices as a symbolic gesture of trust and transparency, but where divergent brand loyalties prevailed, they were unable to create a holistically consolidated technology ecosystem.
Digital platforms also steered consumers toward more individualised types of consumption. In comparison to traditional ways of collectively storing and displaying books, movies and music within the home, couples found it difficult or were simply unable to combine their digital libraries: personalised algorithms and individual profiles encouraged cohabiting partners to keep things separate.
People see their digital libraries and profile recommendations as their own – even though these are hosted forms of content, owned by the platforms through licences. We even found that platform use over time instils a fear of unwanted ‘contamination’ that can happen from someone else, no matter how close, accessing your account.
The price of air
Although we may not actively think about it, even the air we breathe comes at an increasing cost. Professor Zeynep Arsel investigates the context of indoor air and how it becomes a valued commodity in today’s marketplace. Desirable air quality, in particular, has a price tag – via the purchase of air purifiers, air conditioning, (de)humidifiers, low-emission vehicles, and charges for driving within clean air zones.
This topic has become more important in recent years due to the Covid-19 pandemic and looming concerns over the climate crisis. Air quality is not a new issue, but it currently faces an unprecedented range of threats.
Zeynep shares:
“The invisible nature of this very material object creates challenges and opportunities. We can’t see the air, but we inhabit it and try to make sense of it through scientific measures such as the Air Quality Index or CO2 readers. We try to control and manage it by cleaning, scenting, cooling, heating and purifying it. This creates a global marketplace around air.
“However, as hazards to air quality permeate –such as forest fires, airborne illnesses and climate change – access to healthy air will come with higher costs. This means we will likely see clean air becoming a luxury commodity, highlighting social inequalities in access to health and wellbeing.”
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