“Reading Consumer Culture”Project: Part I—SHOPPING
from
NETWORKED
A Project Approach to Writing
Pamela Gay
This material may not be copied or distributed without permission from the author.
______________________________________________________________
Shopping
America has changed from a country that makes things to a country that buys things.
Danny Schechter, journalist, media critic, and director of the documentary “In Debt We Trust,” which shows
how “the mall replaced the factory as America’s dominant economic engine.
Shopping is My Cardio
Barbara Kruger (1987)
Mary Ciaramello, Editor
BUZZ entertainment guide
Volume 3, Issue 20, p. 2
Hi, my name is Mary, and I’m a shopaholic. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I never realized the full extent
of my obsession until recently when I was looking at a scrapbook of my wedding and I came across the
speech that my sister-in-law/maid of honor gave at the rehearsal dinner. It was a modern fairy tale about a
princess (presumably me) with magical shopping powers and who was felled by a knight from the realm of
Xbox…not too far from the truth, really.
What really struck me about the story was that my loved ones see shopping as a big part of my identity, and
it is.
I guess I learned it from my mother, who can shop for days without getting tired of it. For me, shopping was
always more fun than going to the park. It was how my mother and I bonded, and it’s how I bond with most
of my friends. If you haven’t hung out with me at the mall, then you haven’t met the real me.
And it’s not like I’m a spender, really. I’m totally fine about leaving a store without buying anything. I just like
to walk around and look at all the stuff.
Chances are, if you’re going to bump into me somewhere out and about with my friends, it won’t be at a bar
or coffee shop or any place like that. It would be at a place where I can shop.
See you at the mall,
Mary
Where do you like to shop? E-mail me at editor@freebuzzonline.com
[Insert “Let’s SHOP!” cover from Oprah magazine.]
Much of the joy of holiday shopping can be traced to the brain chemical dopamine.
Dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health….Dopamine can cause
someone to get caught up in the shopping moment and make bad decisions.
This Is Your Brain at the Mall:
Why Shopping Makes You Feel So Good
Tara Parker-Pope
Wall Street Journal
December 6, 2005
When Wazhma Samizay and her friends have a bad day, they go shopping, a ritual
dubbed "retail therapy."
"When you are shopping to buy a gift or get something for yourself, either way it's kind of
a treat," says Ms. Samizay, who three years ago opened a Seattle boutique named
Retail Therapy. "The concept of the store was about finding things that made people feel
good."
Science is now discovering what Ms. Samizay and many consumers have known all
along: Shopping makes you feel good. A growing body of brain research shows how
shopping activates key areas of the brain, boosting our mood and making us feel better
— at least for a little while. Peering into a decorated holiday window or finding a hard-tofind toy appears to tap into the brain's reward center, triggering the release of brain
chemicals that give you a "shopping high." Understanding the way your brain responds
to shopping can help you make sense of the highs and lows of holiday shopping, avoid
buyer's remorse and lower your risk for overspending.
Much of the joy of holiday shopping can be traced to the brain chemical dopamine.
Dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health. The brains of people
with Parkinson's disease, for instance, contain almost no dopamine. Dopamine also
plays a role in drug use and other addictive behaviors. Dopamine is associated with
feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, and it's released when we experience something
new, exciting or challenging. And for many people, shopping is all those things.
"You're seeing things you haven't seen; you're trying on clothes you haven't tried on
before," says Gregory Berns, an Emory University neuroscientist and author of
"Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment."
University of Kentucky researchers in 1995 studied rats exploring unfamiliar
compartments in their cages — the laboratory equivalent of discovering a new store at
the mall. When a rat explored a new place, dopamine surged in its brain's reward center.
The study offers a warning about shopping in new stores or while out of town. People
tend to make more extraneous purchases when they shop outside their own
communities, says Indiana University professor Ruth Engs, who studies shopping
addiction.
But MRI studies of brain activity suggest that surges in dopamine levels are linked much
more with anticipation of an experience rather than the actual experience — which may
explain why people get so much pleasure out of window-shopping or hunting for
bargains.
Dopamine can cause someone to get caught up in the shopping moment and make bad
decisions. Dr. Berns of Emory says dopamine may help explain why someone buys
shoes they never wear. "You see the shoes and get this burst of dopamine," says Dr.
Berns. Dopamine, he says, "motivates you to seal the deal and buy them. It's like a fuel
injector for action, but once they're bought it's almost a let down."
Dr. Berns and his colleagues have devised studies to simulate novel experiences to
better understand when and why the brain releases dopamine. In one set of studies
volunteers reclined in an MRI scanner while a tube trickled drops of water or sweet KoolAid into their mouths. Sometimes the Kool-Aid drops were a predictable pattern, while
other studies used random drops. Notably, when the Kool-Aid was predictable the brain
showed little increased activity. But the scans showed a high level of activity when the
Kool-Aid was given at random. This indicates that the anticipation of the reward —
whether it's Kool-Aid or a new dress — is what gets our dopamine pumping.
Because the shopping experience can't be replicated inside an MRI scanner, other
researchers are using electroencephalogram, or EEG, monitors that measure electrical
activity in the brain to better understand consumer-shopping habits. Britain's Neuroco, a
London consulting firm, uses portable monitors, strapped on to shoppers, to produce
"brain maps" as a way to understand consumer buying habits. The brain maps show a
marked difference in the brain patterns of someone just browsing compared with a
consumer about to make a purchase.
"Shopping is enormously rewarding to us," says David Lewis, a neuroscientist and
director of research and development. But Dr. Lewis also notes that stressful holiday
crowds, poor service or the realization that you've spent too much can quickly eliminate
the feel-good effects of shopping.
Knowing that shopping triggers real changes in our brain can help you make better
shopping decisions and not overspend while in a dopamine-induced high. For instance,
walking away from a purchase you want and returning the next day will eliminate the
novelty of the situation and help you make a more clear-headed decision.
Dr. Engs of Indiana has compiled a list of dos and don'ts to help people make better
shopping decisions. Although the steps are aimed at people with compulsive shopping
problems, they are useful for anyone caught up in the holiday shopping frenzy.
Buy only the items on your shopping list to avoid impulse purchases.
Use cash or debit cards. Financial limits keep you from buying things you can't afford in
the midst of shopping excitement.
Window-shop after stores have closed or when you've left your wallet at home. You'll get
the pleasure of shopping without the risk of overspending.
Don't shop when you're visiting friends or relatives. The added novelty of shopping in a
new place puts you at higher risk of buying something you don't need.
______________________________
*NOTE: The following 3 articles will be provided in print!
*Self-Help for Shopaholics:
How to Cut Your Cash Consumption in Half in Just One Week!
Sophie Kinsella
Sophie Kinsella, a former financial journalist, is the author of the bestselling ‘Shopaholic’ series
published by Black Swan (London). In this selection from The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic
(2000: 64-67), Rebecca Bloomwood, a journalist who spends her working life telling others how to
manage their money and her leisure time shopping tries cutting back.
*Learning Diderot’s Lesson: Stopping the Upward Creep of Desire
Juliet B. Schor
Labor economist Juliet B. Schor is currently Professor of Sociology at Boston College. She has written
extensively on work and consumption patterns of Americans and has received numerous awards. The
Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer, from which this selection is taken
(148, 158-160), received the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in
Public Language from the National Council of Teachers of English. In this chapter, Schor outlines nine
principles to help people get off the ‘consumer escalator.’ The following includes the introduction (Diderot’s
Lesson) and Principle 6.
*Haggling on the Net: Negotiating with Online Clothing Retailers
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Wall Street Journal
June 23-24, 2007, pp. 1 & 3
Shop with Eileen Shopping Mall: e Shops Galore
For those shoppers who like a variety of stores that malls have to offer but can’t stand fighting the
crowds, your obvious alternative is right in front of you. Here at Shop with Eileen Shopping
Mall you will find everything you need!!! We provide you with easy access to top online
merchants with thousands of products. You can order from companies like Overstock, eBay,
Wal-Mart, Petsmart, and many more!
http://www.sitemapdesigns.com/960265/index.html
Three-story Wal-Mart Could Give Urban Malls New Lease on Life
Tim Craig, Washington Post staff writer
February 10, 2003
DSN Retailing Today (magazine)
Inside, there are sleek new escalators equipped with parallel tracks, one for shoppers and
another for their carts.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Just about every trade show I attend these days contains some sort of seminar about the death of
mall retailing. And the recurring theme many pundits love to espouse is that mall retailing has
fallen out of favor with the U.S. consumer. In its place, they add, the stand-alone big box has
taken over the industry.
While that would be a convenient explanation for a lot of developments in retailing in the last few
years, I have to say I really don't buy it--not entirely anyway. I don't believe the fundamental
argument that malls are any less capable than stand-alone stores of creating excitement and
drawing traffic. I don't believe in the "paradigm shift" theory that says consumers have changed
the way they shop. And I definitely don't believe that the mall is beyond the point of revival.
And now I have the proof.
On a recent trip to sunny Southern California--a welcome respite after two weeks straight of
below-freezing New York weather--I stopped in on a Wal-Mart grand opening in urban Los
Angeles. Far from its marquee supercenter and Neighborhood Market concepts, there wasn't a
whole lot of buzz surrounding the opening of this discount store. The write-ups in the local papers
made no mention of food offerings. In fact, there was nothing particularly special about its
merchandise mix at all.
One novelty that did catch my attention was its three-story structure, a brand new, experimental
concept for Wal-Mart. Aesthetically, there are many intriguing features at the new Baldwin Hills
store, including its art deco exterior signage (see story, page 3). Housed in a former Macy's, the
store is a stately street-level location flanked by towering palm trees that create a setting
reminiscent of a bygone retailing era. Inside, there are sleek new escalators equipped with
parallel tracks, one for shoppers and another for their carts. The store also has multiple
entrances--at least one on each floor--along with multiple checkouts scattered throughout.
But the real layer of intrigue to this new location lies well beyond the surface. By positioning this
discount store as a mall anchor in a dense urban environment, Wal-Mart is entering a realm of
retailing it has traditionally avoided. For a company founded on the principle of massive, standalone footprints in mostly rural locations, the new Baldwin Hills store is uncharted waters for the
world's largest retailer--which is exactly what makes this a must-watch venture.
Despite all the industry talk of dead malls and depressed economies, Baldwin Hills was
absolutely abuzz with activity during opening week. And if Wal-Mart can sustain that activity-which I'm sure few analysts would refute--it would not only provide an entree into select markets
like Baldwin Hills, but it could open an entirely new growth channel for the company.
Because if there's one thing this store stands to prove it's not the success of a new signage
package or escalator experiment. Rather, Wal-Mart's newest test in urban mall retailing may just
prove that the decline in the American mall over the last decade may have less to do with the
economy than it did with the quality of the anchor tenant.
As Los Angeles Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas put it in an interview with the Los Angeles
Times, "This is a market that is not a wasteland, this is an emerging market"--which may prove to
be the understatement of the next decade.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution
is prohibited without permission.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FNP/is_3_42/ai_97727796
Sweatshops, fair trade, organic food….shopping can sometimes feel like a moral minefield.
Which companies and products should we support or avoid? And which claims of social
responsibility can we trust? Do boycotts work? Is buying local better? How can we reduce our
impact on global warming?
The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience (2007)
Eco-shopping: Buying Into the Green Movement
Alex Williams, New York Times, Section 9, pp. 1, 8
July 1, 2007
HERE’S one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber
sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani
biodegradable knit shirt.
Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the
kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping
fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.
Drive to the airport, where you settle in for an 8,000-mile flight— careful to buy carbon offsets
beforehand — and spend a week driving golf balls made from compacted fish food at an ecoresort in the Maldives.
That vision of an eco-sensitive life as a series of choices about what to buy appeals to millions of
consumers and arguably defines the current environmental movement as equal parts concern for
the earth and for making a stylish statement.
Some 35 million Americans regularly buy products that claim to be earth-friendly, according to
one report, everything from organic beeswax lipstick from the west Zambian rain forest to Toyota
Priuses. With baby steps, more and more shoppers browse among the 60,000 products available
under Home Depot’s new Eco Options program.
Such choices are rendered fashionable as celebrities worried about global warming appear on
the cover of Vanity Fair’s “green issue,” and pop stars like Kelly Clarkson and Lenny Kravitz
prepare to be headline acts on July 7 at the Live Earth concerts at sites around the world.
Consumers have embraced living green, and for the most part the mainstream green movement
has embraced green consumerism. But even at this moment of high visibility and impact for
environmental activists, a splinter wing of the movement has begun to critique what it sometimes
calls “light greens.”
Critics question the notion that we can avert global warming by buying so-called earth-friendly
products, from clothing and cars to homes and vacations, when the cumulative effect of our
consumption remains enormous and hazardous.
“There is a very common mind-set right now which holds that all that we’re going to need to do to
avert the large-scale planetary catastrophes upon us is make slightly different shopping
decisions,” said Alex Steffen, the executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to
sustainability issues.
The genuine solution, he and other critics say, is to significantly reduce one’s consumption of
goods and resources. It’s not enough to build a vacation home of recycled lumber; the real way to
reduce one’s carbon footprint is to only own one home.
Buying a hybrid car won’t help if it’s the aforementioned Lexus, the luxury LS 600h L model,
which gets 22 miles to the gallon on the highway; the Toyota Yaris ($11,000) gets 40 highway
miles a gallon with a standard gasoline engine.
It’s as though the millions of people whom environmentalists have successfully prodded to be
concerned about climate change are experiencing a SnackWell’s moment: confronted with a box
of fat-free devil’s food chocolate cookies, which seem deliciously guilt-free, they consume the
entire box, avoiding any fats but loading up on calories.
The issue of green shopping is highlighting a division in the environmental movement: “the oldschool environmentalism of self-abnegation versus this camp of buying your way into heaven,”
said Chip Giller, the founder of Grist.org, an online environmental blog that claims a monthly
readership of 800,000. “Over even the last couple of months, there is more concern growing
within the traditional camp about the Cosmo-izing of the green movement — ‘55 great ways to
look eco-sexy,’ ” he said. “Among traditional greens, there is concern that too much of the
population thinks there’s an easy way out.”
The criticisms have appeared quietly in some environmental publications and on the Web.
GEORGE BLACK, an editor and a columnist at OnEarth, a quarterly journal of the Natural
Resources Defense Council, recently summed up the explosion of high-style green consumer
items and articles of the sort that proclaim “green is the new black,” that is, a fashion trend, as
“eco-narcissism.”
Paul Hawken, an author and longtime environmental activist, said the current boom in earthfriendly products offers a false promise. “Green consumerism is an oxymoronic phrase,” he said.
He blamed the news media and marketers for turning environmentalism into fashion and
distracting from serious issues.
“We turn toward the consumption part because that’s where the money is,” Mr. Hawken said. “We
tend not to look at the ‘less’ part. So you get these anomalies like 10,000-foot ‘green’ homes
being built by a hedge fund manager in Aspen. Or ‘green’ fashion shows. Fashion is the
deliberate inculcation of obsolescence.”
He added: “The fruit at Whole Foods in winter, flown in from Chile on a 747 — it’s a complete
joke. The idea that we should have raspberries in January, it doesn’t matter if they’re organic. It’s
diabolically stupid.”
Environmentalists say some products marketed as green may pump more carbon into the
atmosphere than choosing something more modest, or simply nothing at all. Along those lines, a
company called PlayEngine sells a 19-inch widescreen L.C.D. set whose “sustainable bamboo”
case is represented as an earth-friendly alternative to plastic.
But it may be better to keep your old cathode-tube set instead, according to “The Live Earth
Global Warming Survival Handbook,” because older sets use less power than plasma or L.C.D.
screens. (Televisions account for about 4 percent of energy consumption in the United States, the
handbook says.)
“The assumption that by buying anything, whether green or not, we’re solving the problem is a
misperception,” said Michael Ableman, an environmental author and long-time organic farmer.
“Consuming is a significant part of the problem to begin with. Maybe the solution is instead of
buying five pairs of organic cotton jeans, buy one pair of regular jeans instead.”
For the most part, the critiques of green consumption have come from individual activists, not
from mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Rainforest
Action Network. The latest issue of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, has articles hailing an
“ecofriendly mall” featuring sustainable clothing (under development in Chicago) and credit cards
that rack up carbon offsets for every purchase, as well as sustainably-harvested caviar and the
celebrity-friendly Tango electric sports car (a top-of-the-line model is $108,000).
One reason mainstream groups may be wary of criticizing Americans’ consumption is that before
the latest era of green chic, these large organizations endured years in which their warnings
about climate change were scarcely heard.
Much of the public had turned away from the Carter-era environmental message of sacrifice,
which included turning down the thermostat, driving smaller cars and carrying a cloth “Save-aTree” tote to the supermarket.
Now that environmentalism is high profile, thanks in part to the success of “An Inconvenient
Truth,” the 2006 documentary featuring Al Gore, mainstream greens, for the most part, say that
buying products promoted as eco-friendly is a good first step.
“After you buy the compact fluorescent bulbs,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the
Rainforest Action Network, “you can move on to greater goals like banding together politically to
shut down coal-fired power plants.”
John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, argued that green
consumerism has been a way for Wal-Mart shoppers to get over the old stereotypes of
environmentalists as “tree-hugging hippies” and contribute in their own way.
This is crucial, he said, given the widespread nature of the global warming challenge. “You need
Wal-Mart and Joe Six-Pack and mayors and taxi drivers," he said. “You need participation on a
wide front.”
It is not just ecology activists with one foot in the 1970s, though, who have taken issue with the
consumerist personality of the “light green” movement. Anti-consumerist fervor burns hotly among
some activists who came of age under the influence of noisy, disruptive anti-globalization
protests.
Last year, a San Francisco group called the Compact made headlines with a vow to live the entire
year without buying anything but bare essentials like medicine and food. A year in, the original 10
“mostly” made it, said Rachel Kesel, 26, a founder. The movement claims some 8,300 adherents
throughout the country and in places as distant as Singapore and Iceland.
“The more that I’m engaged in this, the more annoyed I get with things like ‘shop against climate
change’ and these kind of attitudes,” said Ms. Kesel, who continues her shopping strike and
counts a new pair of running shoes — she’s a dog-walker by trade — as among her limited
purchases in 18 months.
“It’s hysterical,” she said. “You’re telling people to consume more in order to reduce impact.”
For some, the very debate over how much difference they should try to make in their own lives is
a distraction. They despair of individual consumers being responsible for saving the earth from
climate change and want to see action from political leaders around the world.
INDIVIDUAL consumers may choose more fuel-efficient cars, but a far greater effect may be felt
when fuel-efficiency standards are raised for all of the industry , as the Senate voted to do on
June 21, the first significant rise in mileage standards in more than two decades.
“A legitimate beef that people have with green consumerism is, at end of the day, the things
causing climate change are more caused by politics and the economy than individual behavior,”
said Michel Gelobter, a former professor of environmental policy at Rutgers who is now president
of Redefining Progress, a nonprofit policy group that promotes sustainable living.
“A lot of what we need to do doesn’t have to do with what you put in your shopping basket,” he
said. “It has to do with mass transit, housing density. It has to do with the war and subsidies for
the coal and fossil fuel industry.”
In fact, those light-green environmentalists who chose not to lecture about sacrifice and promote
the trendiness of eco-sensitive products may be on to something.
Michael Shellenberger, a partner at American Environics, a market research firm in Oakland,
Calif., said that his company ran a series of focus groups in April for the environmental group
Earthjustice, and was surprised by the results.
People considered their trip down the Eco Options aisles at Home Depot a beginning, not an end
point.
“We didn’t find that people felt that their consumption gave them a pass, so to speak,” Mr.
Shellenberger said. “They knew what they were doing wasn’t going to deal with the problems,
and these little consumer things won’t add up. But they do it as a practice of mindfulness. They
didn’t see it as antithetical to political action. Folks who were engaged in these green practices
were actually becoming more committed to more transformative political action on global
warming.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/fashion/01green.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Don't buy it!
Stephanie Zacharek
Salon.com (p. 1)
April 26, 2005
Mega-buzzed magazines like Lucky, Cargo and the brand-new Domino reduce readers to
consumers without brains or a sense of style.
"What business have we with art at all, unless we all can share it?" -- 19th century
craftsman, designer, writer and Socialist William Morris
"Design for all." -- advertising slogan for Target
"Don't just show me a nice console table; suggest unexpected mirrors that might look
great hanging above it. Don't just offer me a selection of gorgeous wallpapers; give me
ideas about where to hang them." -- Deborah Needleman, editor in chief of new Condé
Nast magazine Domino
Not so long ago, when Americans wanted to shop at home, they picked up a catalog or
hit the Internet. But shopping magazines -- or magalogs, a concept first introduced by
Condé Nast several years ago with the women's shopping magazine-turned-juggernaut
Lucky -- have changed all that. Like catalogs, magalogs allow us to shop vicariously, to
spend our money a hundred times over in our minds without forking over a penny. But
unlike catalogs, which are simply good old-fashioned pleas on the part of a given
company to get us to buy its goods, shopping magazines are allegedly on our side:
Seeing how puzzled and bewildered we are by the ever-increasing array of stuff to buy,
these magazines, staffed by a host of hip, with-it editors, take us by the hand to offer
guidance, insight and wisdom -- they're a kind of Consumer Reports for the shoppingmall set.
On the market for a pair of jeweled flip-flops? Lucky will scour the market to assemble
the jeweled-flip-flop hall of fame, offering a selection of every type available for the given
season, in a range of prices for all pocketbooks. The editors of Lucky appear on the
magazine's pages like mini-celebrities, conspiratorially sharing their favorite finds of the
month: "Just a touch of macram trim is a smart spin on the easiest trend of the season."
Before you've expressed even the vaguest interest in jeweled flip-flops, the shopping
magazine knows just what you want (macram -- but of course!) and clamors to be the
first to tell you where you can get it.
On the surface, at least, the shopping magazine doesn't seem to be a particularly
heinous invention: What harm can there be in a magazine filled with bunches of little
pictures accented with helpful little text blips (to call them captions would be an
overstatement)? Consumers have certainly taken the bait: Last year Condé Nast rolled
out Cargo, a sort of Lucky for boys, offering guy-guidance on clothing, grooming
products and gadgets. Other magazine-publishing empires have scrambled to produce
their own portable mini-malls, among them Hearst's Lucky-alike Shop. And now Condé
Nast reveals the third jewel in its tiara of shopaholism: Domino, billed as "the shopping
magazine for your home," officially goes on sale Tuesday.
At first, one or two shopping magazines didn't seem to be too many: The universe of
magazine publishing could certainly support them. But with the arrival of Domino, what
used to be a refreshing novelty is now that ineffably dull thing known as a trend. And
maybe now it's time to ask ourselves what we're shopping for when we pick up a
shopping magazine: Are we really slaking a thirst to find out just how many kinds of
garden benches there are out there? Do we really need a "smart chart" to learn how to
layer the linens on our bed? When we spend 80 seconds scrutinizing a page full of door
knockers, are we really shopping for door knockers -- or are we shopping for taste?
Now that Domino has dropped, the insidiousness of the shopping magazine takes a
clear form: Why spend years building a personal aesthetic when you can just buy one?
Copyright © 2007 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written
permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a
trademark of Salon Media Group Inc. http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2005/04/26/magalogs/index.html
BUY NOTHING DAY
Spend a day without spending!
In the United States Buy Nothing Day is always the day after Thanksgiving. This demonstration
took place in San Francisco (November 2000). Photo by Lars Aronsson.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/La2-buynothing.jpg
Analyze
Create an analytical framework to distinguish different kinds of shoppers (from
recreational to compulsive) and another one for places for shopping (from shops and
boutiques to big box stores and Internet shopping).
Reflect
What kind of a shopper are you? Do you go shopping with something in mind or a
financial limit? Do you comparison shop? Do you shop for certain brands? Are you an
“impulse buyer”? Do you shop recreationally? Use these questions to get started and
QuickWrite for five minutes.
How do products you have bought (clothing and accessories, music, technology,
furnishings, a car, for example) help identify you? How do these “things” tell others
about you, in other words? Perhaps start with a list under categories and then
QuickWrite for 5 minutes.
Discuss
Get into a small group. Perhaps go around the group addressing these two questions to
help identify you: What kind of a shopper are you? Where do you tend to shop?
Then move on and talk about shopping places. Use the following questions to prompt
discussion. Do you think that mall retailing is on its way out—or that more malls will need
to become “lifestyle” malls to accommodate shoppers whose lifestyles have changed?
Do you think downtowns can be revived as centers for shopping? Do you think Internet
shopping will eventually become the norm?
Learn More
Learn more about the state of malls today. Are “lifestyle malls” on the rise? Are big-box
stores such as Wal-Mart and Target displacing malls? Are some big-box stores
becoming anchor stress in malls? To what extent do issues like working environments
for the production of goods (sweatshops, for example) or treatment of sales personnel
(wages, health insurance) affect shoppers? Learn more about outsourcing. Has
outsourcing increased? Learn more about eco-shopping. How green is “green”? Has
the demand for green products continued to increase? Learn more about activist
movements like “culture jamming,” which launched Buy Nothing Day. Learn about the
“Unswooshing America” campaign to resist Nike. Learn more about branding and logos
and brand name shopping. Browse through some journals (Journal of Consumer
Culture, for example) and magazines that feature news and stories about shopping (ecoshopping, for example) or shopping guide magazines like Lucky or Cargo (a sort of
Lucky for guys). In 2007, 150 million Americans went shopping on Black Friday, the day
after Thanksgiving. How many went shopping this past year on that day? What about
Cyber Monday (for online sales)?
Write
Write a short essay or a 750-word blog about shoppers or shopping. Shop
around for some possibilities. Based on the reading and research you have done
and informal writing and discussion, you could QuickWrite to learn about what
interests you. You may change your mind when you do more research and
come across another topic of interest.
Offer an informed viewpoint or position. In other words, demonstrate that you
have done some research and critical thinking about the topic. You are not just
writing “off the cuff,” so to speak. Your “reading” should be a considered
response to some issue or concern related to shoppers and shopping.
Do not write a strictly informative piece (kinds of shoppers, for example) or
basically a summary of various articles on a topic. Use research to inform,
explain, and support your critical reading of an issue or concern.
Think about your audience. Where would be a good place or space to “go
public” with your writing? Whether you’re writing an entry in your blog (like
MadHatterMommy, p. 0-00) or an essay, your writing should be appropriate for
your audience. Leave your readers something to think further about based on
your research and reflections.
Depending on your topic, you could include yourself as an example. You could
also do some micro-ethnographic research and interview different consumers
and include some relevant quotations along with references to more formal or
second-hand research.
After you have done some research and re-thinking, you could meet with a small
group and try out your focus and initial reading. It’s helpful to have a writing
network to talk through your ideas. Articulating your thoughts to an interested
group can often move you further along.