Woman in a Material World: Two Interpretations of a Consumer Case Study

WOMAN IN A MATERIAL WORLD: TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF A CONSUMER CASE STUDY

Eileen Fischer, Faculty of Administrative Studies, York University

Stephen Arnold, School of Business, Queen's University, Canada

Our cultural inventory of stereotypes regarding women and materialism contains two which are in sharp contrast. One image convoys women as 'born to shop'-as naturally acquisitive consumers more preoccupied with purchasing and owning things than men. The other image derives from our archetype of women having 'caring' natures, and being chiefly concerned with maintaining social and familial bonds. This paper represents an attempt to explore the influence of both of the cultural images concerning women and materialism, and in particular to explore their interstices and limitations so as to allow for hermeneutic understanding. The paper juxtaposes two interpretations of an interview with a young mother about her purchasing behaviours and possessions. One interpretation stresses the woman's seemingly excessive preoccupation with acquiring and owning material objects and describes the woman as a compulsive shopper obsessed with buying and having things. The other interpretation focuses on the manner in which the woman uses acquisition behaviours and material things to care for her family and maintain social relationships. The consequence is a deeper understanding of gender, materialism and shopping behaviour.

Materialism in general and the materialism of women in particular are subjects which have attracted much derisive social commentary (cf Pollay 1986, Frat 1991). Preoccupation with acquiring and owning goods is viewed as having 'a social effect of displacing affect from people to objects and an alienating effect where the self is perceived not as a child of God or as an element of the community, but as an exchange commodity' (Pollay 1986, p. 25). In other words, it is argued that caring about goods diverts people from caring about other people, and defining the self as a commodity diverts people from defining the self in terms of some linkage to community or spirituality.

Women in particular have been associated with materialism in the sense that they are identified much more than men as the principal consumer in the family. As First (1991) explains, the consequence of the increased industrial productive capacity brought about by the industrial revolution was that women were assigned to the 1. private" domain of the home in order to consume the ever-increasing supply of products. Firat notes that, paradoxically, women were "devalued for being I consumers, and yet if they were not I good consumers I they hurt the national economic growth" (1991, p. 382).

A paradox related to the characterization of women as particularly materialistic can also be noted. At the same time women are assigned the role of "consumer," they are assigned the role of "kin-keeper' or maintainers of familial and social relationships (Rosenthal 1985). To the extent that they-as consumers-are materialistic, women might be assumed to invest their affections in goods rather than people and define themselves as objects rather than as members of social communities. At the same time, to the extent that they-as kin-keepers-are communally oriented, women might be assumed to invest a particularly high value in social relationships and to be much more communally oriented than men. Indeed, some social scientists and feminists have argued that it is an "other-orientation' that is quintessentially feminine (see, for example, Cheal 1988; Chodorow 1978; Gilligan 1982). This paradox is compounded when we recognize the contrasting social valuations placed upon a materialistic versus a communal orientation. Materialism is often regarded as a sinister characteristic; a devotion to caring for others and maintaining social relationships is often regarded as a highly desirable feature.

To explore these paradoxes in our consumer culture, we undertook a hermeneutic analysis of a transcript produced from an interview with a contemporary female consumer. The transcript was selected from several produced through a series of interviews on the topic of holiday gift shopping. The informant in this case had much to say not only about gift shopping but also about her consumer behaviours in general. Relative to other informants interviewed for the original project, the informant seemed to the interviewer extremely preoccupied with acquiring and owning goods. Thus, the transcript, though created for another purpose, seemed well-suited for an opportunistic exploration of the ideas reviewed above.

The research approach adopted for this study is consistent with hermeneutic philosophy (Gadamer 1975) which stresses that developing understanding-of others and ultimately of one's self-requires an effort to achieve a "fusion of horizons' with the object of inquiry (in this case, the transcript). That is, the goal in this type of inquiry is for the researcher or research team to use their initial [pre-] understanding, prejudice or bias as a starting point for analysis, and then open this [pre-] understanding to revision in the course of the interpretation. The process involves requires repeated iterations of analysis, moving back and forth between individual elements of the transcript and the transcript as a whole, to make an increasingly coherent and contradiction-free reading.

Portions of the transcript interpreted are presented immediately following this introduction; these are intended to allow the reader to form their own initial reaction to and understanding of the transcript. Two related but different interpretations of the transcript are then presented in an effort to show how an initial interpretation, grounded more completely in our original [pre- ]understanding yielded to a distinctly different interpretation reflecting substantial revisions to our (pre-] understanding. Comments on the cultural paradox of woman as consumer versus woman as kin-keeper are offered in conclusion.

SELECTED TRANSCRIPTION NOTES FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH JEANNE

[Interviewer's Note: Jeanne is in her early 30s. She has 2 children, Todd age 2 and Karen age 5. The interview takes place in her home; both her children and another child are present.

Question: So that takes a lot of forward planning.

Answer: I don't go ail that often. I go maybe once a month, and I don't usually buy a lot of things unless the kids need it I usually go to Biway to got Me kids clothes. If I don't got them on sale, that's where I buy them. You have to loam how to shop if you have kids.

Answer: Usually right at the start of the summer. Just because I don't figure I'm going to have Hm money right at Christmas. I have to do it gradually, because I don t have, like say 100 or 200 dollars in the bank where I can just go blow it. I just start picking up like that. I find it easier, and its easier on Me pocket too. ... I thought I was done this year, and I went to Canadian Tim and came bark with lot more things.

Answer: He's still young enough that I can take him out. Karen I cant If I'm going to go shopping with her, I usually leave her home with Gord. Him, its ail right.

Answer: Oh yes. You got out and he gets cranky, and it's hard to keep him happy. You can't stop for long. You start looking at things, he starts trying to climb out, and he's gone....

Answer: As far as the kids, I got it when they need it. I don't just say I'm going to got this and got that. Usually if I need clothes I head to Biway at the normal time of the year. For summer clothes I got it when I need it. Its not that I really plan it. If they need something, I go looking for it.

Question. You said you like to have some shopping to do close to the end. Can you talk a little about that?. What is there about it?

Question: Do you do all the shopping for your family?

Question: How does your husband work it? You do the grocery shopping and the clothes shopping -Answer I do all the shopping. Question: What about his gift for you?

Question: Would you do your grocery shopping all in one day?

Question: Which stores do you most like to go into?

Answer: I look through the flyers, and Me paper. And you see things. Like we went out to Biway two weeks ago, and I got a pair of leather boots for ton dollars. If You just happen to hit the sales right, you can do really well. If I'd gone out them later, I wouldn't even have bought them. It was just one of those things. You hit the right day.

Answer: Yes. For 10 dollars, sure it does. I had boots, but I couldn't pass them up for 10 dollars. They were North Star, and they were leather When you know they fit, you have to buy them.

Question: You make pretty good use of the January sales, it seems. Do you put off a lot of purchases until then?

Question: You prefer shopping by yourself then?

Question: Closer to the end, when you have got less to buy, would you go out with someone else?

Question: Is that a bad shopping trip for you, when you got nothing? How often would you browse but buy nothing?

INTERPRETATION 1: JEANNE AS A TERMINAL MATERIALIST

"Born to shop." This bumper sticker epithet encapsulates Jeanne's way of life. She states again and again how much she enjoys shopping. In her own words "I even like grocery shopping." She appears to be saying that even the most mundane acts of acquisition are appealing to her. In fact, she seems to have an love for shopping and buying that borders on the obsessive. She acknowledges going to stores without any specific objective in mind, but like a compulsive buyer finding there is "always something you need.... You always purchase something."

Jeanne's hunger for acquisition seems to drive her to irrational purchasing behaviour. She describes how, having completed her Christmas shopping, she goes out again and comes back with a lot more things." Similarly she recounts how, even though she already owns perfectly good boots, when she sees a new pair on sale she cannot .pass them up for 10 dollars." She ends up with so much .stuff" for her children she has to put some of it away. "I had too much," she states. Yet it seems that no amount of goods is ever enough to satisfy Jeanne.

In fact, Jeanne takes pride in her ability to acquire more things than other people for the same amount of money. She brags that she gets 'twice as much for the money.' In this competitive acquisition Olympics, she says she is better than her husband, her mother and her sister. She also suggests her friends and acquaintances are not as efficient at acquiring goods as she is.

Her self-perceived expertise appears to have more to do with acquiring quantity than acquiring quality. She doesn't go shopping with a list of specific things to buy. She just keeps "picking up stuff" until she thinks she has "enough.' She appears to operate on the philosophy that 'more is better,' whether in regards to clothing, groceries or toys.

While Jeanne enjoys buying things and having things, and is proud of her shopping acumen, she feels a certain lack of control over her acquisitive impulses. Money slips through Jeanne's hands. it seems to burn a hole in her purse. She spends her grocery money "in no time." She says "I have to spend it when I get it." She can't carry the Visa card because if she came across a sale, it would be a "little too handy."

This lack of control in the face of materialistic impulses is almost a form of illness: Jeanne seems addicted to acquiring things. Shopping provides a temporary high. It serves as her daily I fix. I Even to feel a part of the Christmas spirit, she has to go into a store.

One symptom of this I illness I or I addiction I is that Jeanne can't wait until her kids are in school so she can be more free to shop. She looks forward to a time when she 'might not have to take any other kids.' She views caring for the, children as an inconvenience preventing her from getting out to the stores. It would seem, consistent with the criticism of materialism leveled above, that Joanne's relentless quest for and acquisition of goods detrimentally affects relations not just with her children but also with her friends and husband. She won't go shopping with friends because it slows her down. Her attitude towards her husband borders on contempt because he, unlike her, doesn't know the regular price of every item in every store.

On this interpretation of the transcript, Jeanne's central preoccupation seems well described by Rassuli and Hollander (1986, p.10) as "materialism, an interest in getting and spending that results from the perception of possibilities for acquiring large sets of desirable goods and services, and the perception that others are generally also so engaged" (p.10). Her particular kind of materialism is what Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Hafton (1981) diagnosed as 'terminal materialism: ... [where] consumption for the sake of consumption becomes a fever that consumes all the potential energy it can got access to' (p.231). It seems that Jeanne's happiness and "greatest sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction" (Belk 1984, p.291) comes via her consumption activities.

INTERPRETATION II: JEANNE AS SHOPPING EXPERT

Recognition of Jeanne's financial and social circumstances, largely ignored in the preceding interpretation, sheds a slightly different light on her materialistic behaviours. Jeanne's husband works shifts in a factory, and Jeanne earns what money she can by caring for a child in addition to her own. Jeanne and her family live from paycheck to paycheck, constantly feeling financially squeezed due to the many housing, clothing, food, appliance and insurance purchases that must be made.

Based on both spouses' education, income and occupation levels, Jeanne's family could be categorized as members of a relatively low socio-economic class. As a member of such a group, Jeanne's values are likely to emphasize sharp sex role divisions and traditional values (Coleman 1983, pp.270-71). In taking all responsibility for the family shopping, Jeanne is enacting a fairly traditional division of labour. Her husband is the wage earner. She looks after the household. He holds the Visa card, consistent with his role as "head of the household," but Jeanne does all the physical work of household maintenance, including shopping.

As Jeanne is not employed outside the home and is primarily responsible for the care of her two young children, her chief roles are those of mother / wife and home-maker. Buying goods and maintaining a household inventory of "necessities' is one way in which Jeanne fulfils normative social prescriptions pertaining to these roles. Her statement that "You have to learn to shop if you have kids" shows that her acquisition behaviours are associated in her mind with her role as mother. Moreover, much of what she acquires is not actually for herself, or at least not for herself alone. She buys groceries for her family. She buys toys and clothing for children. Significantly, the goods which she tends to stockpile are things for her children-clothes and toys. While Jeanne does recount buying things for herself, the majority of her shopping and acquisitions appear to be for her children. Thus it seems reasonable to argue that Jeanne is not so much displacing her affections for others into affection for things, but expressing her devotion to her children through her acquisition of things for them.

Jeanne's remarkable enthusiasm for shopping and buying, however, seems more than might be expected if shopping simply allowed her to fulfil her mother/wife and home-maker roles effectively. The fact that her children are sometimes regarded as obstacles to the effective performance of shopping suggests that while the fruits of her efforts may be intended to benefit others, there is an immediate sense in which acquiring things is more important than the people for whom she acquires them.

As we noted above, Jeanne appears to take pride in her acumen as a consumer: it is not simply having things, or the thrill of acquiring them at a good price, or the knowledge that the goods will increase the well-being of her family, that makes Jeanne place such emphasis on her purchasing role. Underlying her enjoyment of the activity is her sense that what she does is important and requires certain skills. She relishes the superior skills which she fools she possesses.

Moreover, close reading suggests that Jeanne construes her shopping activities just as others might construe their job outside the home. She states: "[My husband] pays me on Fridays. . . . [He] gives me so much money for groceries every two weeks." Jeanne is paid every two weeks and earns her pay by being an expert shopper. The testimony to her labour is the stockpile of "stuff" she brings home-large quantities of goods all acquired at deeply discounted prices.

In Jeanne's family, where a traditional division of labour between spouses exists despite contemporary trends toward wives working outside the home, a heightened importance seems to be attached to the consumer activities which are one aspect of her role-related duties. House cleaning and meal preparation have been simplified by modern conveniences. Shopping, however, has been rendered more complex by the proliferation of stores and brands, and by the pricing practices of retailers which make simple choice algorithms impossible for those who wish to ensure they pay a minimum price. Moreover, unlike caring for children, shopping is like most forms of paid employment in that it requires leaving the home to .go to work" and directly managing money. Shopping can more readily be viewed as a job-equivalent since it has some of the hallmarks of paid employment. Although no extant consumer typology would classify Jeanne as a .working wife," it is clear that Jeanne has a job: she is a shopper.

Contributing to the depiction of shopping as obligatory work rather than voluntary entertainment, Jeanne emphasizes the importance, the difficulty, and the necessity of shopping; the pleasure or self-indulgent aspect she do-emphasizes: "There's always something you need. it may not be clothes or anything, but you'll be going by and you need toothpaste. You always purchase something. it's not something you enjoy buying, but you have to buy it."

In a world where there is inevitable pressure to draw in a significant second income to make ends meet, a woman in Jeanne's position may feel her shopping and purchasing must be recognized for the contribution to domestic production which it clearly is. This helps to explain her pride in being a better shopper than her husband or mother. While society (including consumer researchers) do not label shopping as a job, Jeanne views it as such and derives from it the rewards that others gain from their paid employment.

We now understand more fully Jeanne's preoccupation with shopping and acquiring. First, Jeanne uses her purchases to care for family, both literally and symbolically. The care she lavishes on buying things for her children, and the piles of goods she has for them, are a testimony to her affection for them. At the same time, Jeanne is like a "workaholic," preoccupied with her job to such an extent that it sometimes does take precedence over her relationships. She views successful shopping as a challenging form of work and a meaningful contribution to her family's well-being. It is her most unique contribution to the family, since her husband assists in child care responsibilities. She derives her unique status and a sonse, of accomplishment from this work, and she devotes herself to the task unremittingly.

WOMEN, MATERIALISM AND PARADOX

Neither of the" two interpretations is the correct I interpretation. We would argue, however, that the second represents more of a departure from our [pro-] understanding and is more comprehensive: it does not negate the first interpretation, but reconfigures the emphasis on material acquisitions in two slightly different ways. First, Jeanne's enthusiasm for buying and having goods is a form of demonstrating her owe for her children and thus fulfilling her role as kin-keeper. Second, Jeanne's heavy emphasis on shopping and buying relative to other activities is interpreted as a form of careerism.

These two interpretive themes have interesting implications for the paradoxes noted above. First, it would appear that Joanne negotiates the potential contradiction between 'woman as consumer' and 'woman and kin-keeper' by construing material goods and her efforts to acquire them as a way of caring for her children. A critical theorist (see Murray and Ozanne 1991) might argue that Jeanne suffers from "false consciousness" in that she buys into the capitalist notion that she needs to use material objects to express love. A semiotician (see Mick 1986), on the other hand, might regard the vocabulary of goods as a rich one from which to construct expressions of affection for others in contemporary North American society.

The second theme concerning Jeanne's shopping career speaks directly to the paradoxical value assigned to women's roles as consumers. Women have been, as was noted above, assigned the "private realm" role of consumers, and simultaneously devalued for being so concerned with the materialistic activities of consumption. Joanne appears to move beyond this contradiction by recognizing the public nature of shopping activities and the basic correspondence between doing the work required to earn money and doing the work required to spend money.

These reflections on the meaning of materialism in the case of Jeanne have implications for one of the 'foremost issues involving materialism, (Le.,] whether materialism is a positive or a negative trait" (Belk 1985, p.266). This interpretation suggests it cannot, in isolation, be classified as either. Materialism must be viewed it terms of the way it operates in the context of individual lives.

All would likely agree Jeanne fits at least some definition of a 'materialist." Acquisitions are central to her life, acts of acquisition are central to her satisfaction, and Jeanne seems to judge herself and others in terms of their success in acquiring possessions (Richins and Dawson 1991). Some might argue that Jeanne's materialism is a positive trait because it is "instrumental materialism ... the possession of things serves goals that are independent of greed itself and have a specific limited scope with a context of purposes" (Csikazentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981, p.231). To the extent that shopping for and acquiring goods enables Jeanne to care for others, her materialism can be regarded as instrumental.

Yet while shopping for and buying goods is a means to an end for Jeanne, it is also an end in itself. She derives a considerable portion of daily satisfaction from her perceived ability to shop well and from the stockpile of goods she accumulates. To Jeanne, the acquisition of goods is the forum wherein she can exercise her intelligence, build on a knowledge bass, demonstrate expertise, wield power and experience success. The purchase of goods is an inherently satisfying occupation - being a materialist is her job.

As end in itself, Jeanne's shopping activity would be defined as "terminal materialism." To construe to Jeanne's career materialism as a negative trait, however, requires a value judgement that making money to support a family is more valuable than spending money to support that same family. This notion not only ignores the imperatives of the capitalist system in which we live, but draws on and contributes to social stereotypes which devalue 'women's work' relative to "men's work."

This hermeneutic investigation has been undertaken with the hopes of deepening our understanding of materialism, particularly as it figures in the social construction of gendered stereotypes. Materialism may be intrinsic, to various degrees, in membership in various demographic and socio-economic categories. Attaching a valence to materialism without considering the context in which it is exhibited may be a result of failing to challenge pervasive "prejudice' or "[pro-]understanding." This (pro-] understanding is both enabling and constraining. it is enabling in that it offers a starting point for ascribing meaning to such phenomena as the actions of a woman in her role as consumer. It is constraining to the extent that it remains untested and unrevised.

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