DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-148

New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria

bankovk@gmail.com

Abstract

In this paper I shall examine the new forms of consumer rituals that have emerged after the advent of the world’s biggest social media. I use as a point of reference and a theoretical model the classification of the consumer rituals as “instruments for meaning transfer”, as describe in the famous book by Grant McCracken Culture and Consumption (1988). His classification includes four types of rituals for transfer of meaning from the goods to the consumer, namely rituals of possession, exchange, grooming and divestment (72 ff.). If we examine the expression of the consumer behaviour in Facebook we can, as a first thing, note that the whole process of consumption has entered a new phase, almost entirely virtual, i.e. with very week relation to the material, tangible phase of the consumption process. The whole platform encourages its users to apply their creativity in completely new forms with which they transfer meaning from their favourite goods, services, brands and lifestyles to their identity/profile. I am offering a list of the various options that Facebook offers for the consumer rituals, ordered by their semiotic impact in the process of the transfer of meaning. Such options are the name, the profile picture, the family state, the timeline, albums, etc.

1. The Rise of Brands

In the seventies and eighties of the XX century the companies (those with big brands) became the main semiotic mechanism for attributing symbolic value to goods and services. If traditional marketing paradigm started from the position that there are objective consumer needs and that companies using the marketing mix, compete to satisfy better and better, then after a certain saturation of the market supply in certain product categories, becomes clear that this is not enough. Brand management enters as a common practice in systematic creation of distinctive value to brands when the conventional tools of marketing are not enough anymore. There were many remarkable brands even before, but the new thing with brand management is not so much that the product works for the brand, but rather the brand, loaded with strong, unique and favourable associations, works for the product success. In the new phase brands begin to function as an autonomous cultural institution, they begin to put into circulation within the collective imagination themes and messages that rise consumption to the spiritual sphere (but with the same success we can say vice versa – throws spirituality in the field of consumption). Consumption began to be stimulated with messages that associate it with love, freedom, creativity, adventure, faith, madness, euphoria, etc. The advertising, the "armed wing" of consumerism, during those years begins to transfer to consumption meaning and messages from sociocultural areas, which had previously been occupied by religion, nation, history, literature, cinema and many others. The brand fetishism is born, some brands become icons of mythological value for their consumers-worshippers, the attitude towards them becomes religious in the full sense of the word – it is enough to mention only Apple, Harley Davidson and Chanel, although the list can continue for a long (Vincent: 2002). And that phenomena does not remain visible only for the cultural analysts. During the eighties begins the financial evaluation of the brand equity, completely independent of the fixed assets of the companies and their actual capitals in the banks and stock markets. For example, for 2014 the mere "sign" Apple is estimated by the agency Interbrand at about 118 billion (!) Dollars, followed by Google, Coca Cola, Microsoft, etc. with the value of the same order. Contrary to classical marketing logic, this fact means only one thing – the sign is more important than the product, the same product is sold in a different way depending on whether it is branded or not.

The extraordinary power of brands in the last decades of the XX century has overturned the interdependencies between brands and lifestyles. Originally companies needеd lifestyle/ psychographic segmentation of the market in order to formulate their messages according to the actual values ​​and attitudes. Later the way in which the companies were encouraging the culturally significant consumption begins to form a new type of values ​​and attitudes – new lifestyles already modelled by them. The very notion of "lifestyle" enters in crisis, as far as it means a long term belonging to a stable social group. The new patterns of behaviour presuppose the simultaneous combination of many styles. In this period from academia come new and more sophistication models, reflecting a much more dynamic social reality. For example, this is the model of the microtrends, introduced by Mark Penn (brilliantly applied to Bulgaria by Mila Mineva, 2009), which captures the emergence of small groups, destined to have a growing influence in society. If the number of lifestyles in the first model of Mitchell is 9 and in general this approach had reached no more than 15-16, the microtrends of Mark Penn are 100.

Another equally important approach for the analysis of the new forms of consumer society comes from the Italian sociologist Egeria Di Nallo (Di Nallo 1998, Bankov 2009: 175). She remains entirely in the sociological paradigm and her contribution is based on an observation of Gerd Gerken that already marketing people can not rely on stable consumer groups, but rather on consumers, grouped around certain consumer practices that could be permanent. Di Nallo suggests that it is a more appropriate research orientation not to see people belonging to a lifestyle, but rather to identify styles of consumption, a unifying (even temporarily) form of social interaction. It is based on many observations on the postmodern identity and thus likens the social function of consumption with a meeting points (or a bubbles of demand), which in any case are more durable than the individual whims of modern consumer. The contribution of Di Nallo mainly refers to the new consumer practices in Western Europe after the "rise" of the giant malls and shopping centres, real cathedrals of the big brands, but undoubtedly cyberspace and especially social media are as well "kingdom" of this type of logic of consumption.

2. Practices and rituals

With the contribution of Di Nallo the panorama of the evolution of consumer culture meets the evolution of the consumer practices. We may observe that the available literature on the consumer practices and the fieldwork is infinite, while the writers who construct theoretical models based on that practices are not many. In an in-depth review of these authors (Bankov 2009: 103-104, 177-178) I refer to Michel de Certeau, Mary Douglas, Colin Campbell, Bernard Cova and Grant McCracken. All these authors have modelled the consumers’ invention of everyday life; subject of a separate study would be tracking the evolution of the practices described by them in the social media. For the purposes of this study I shall base my analysis on the model of one of them - Grant McCracken and his typology of the consumer rituals.

What makes the model of McCracken (1988: 76 ff.) particularly suitable for the analysis of the consumer rituals in FB is its starting point, namely, how exactly happens the transfer of meaning from the goods / services to their consumer. According to my preliminary hypothesis that process is growing at an unprecedented rate in the age of social media.

McCracken lists four main types of rituals that live in the real life in many varieties and combinations. These rituals are possession, exchange, grooming and divestment. But in order to have the potential to emit meaning, goods and services are subject to other, more centralized transfer - this from the cultural space to them. While that is not limited to, the most emblematic "machine" for this stream of significance are advertising and the fashion system. The huge daily “cultural resource” that these two institutions emit in the cultural space is intended to fight the entropy of consumer culture. Entropy comes from the endless creative invention of everyday life, in which each of us uses the meaning of the components of his own "shopping cart" for his own identity or for the micro-strategies of self-affirmation in the social environment. Left only to those processes, consumption would have taken unpredictable directions of development, elusive from the control of the production system. Therefore, in the highly competitive and hyper mediatized social space more and more the basic effort of corporations is the transfer of discernible meanings in their brands (Rifkin 2001), which introduces into circulation fresh creative images/ideas served as a ready-made patterns on the market of identities. These images/ideas (or mimes) in the initial phase after their launch compete with the existing in the popular culture but already out of the control of the corporations meanings and influence consumer choice, and this cycle seems frenetically  repeated after each semiotic "wearing out” the new images/ideas.

Consumer rituals reflect precisely this phase – how in practice we "capitalize" on behalf of our identity the meanings (images/ideas), inscribed by the companies in their goods and services. The first and perhaps most important ritual in the system of McCracken is the possession. He carefully distinguished it from the actual legal ownership of the goods, which does not transfer any meaning. The ritual consists in the communicative act of publically announcing the ownership – stop at the restaurant with the brand new car, or inviting friends at home to show them the new home theatre system, walk the new branded sexy cloth in the shopping mall, and so on. Complementary ritual of possession is that of grooming. Tuning the car, working on it to refine some detail in front of the condo; upgrading home stereo in such a way that the neighbours understand thereto; having excessive care for cleaning the pipe, having previously attracted the attention of the visitors of the cafeteria with the smoke of the branded tobacco... and thousands of other practices with which we "declare" our relation with the goods and in consequence of this act the "gain", at least temporarily, of its symbolic value.

The ritual of exchange is based on no less basic archetype than this of possession. After the classic work of Mauss on the gift (Mauss 1954) is opened a whole research program, an important part of which is the exchange of gifts in a consumer society (McCracken 1988: 85). The gift is an extremely powerful tool for interpersonal influence and it is based entirely on the complex transfer of meanings, which connects the product to the giver and the recipient. Ritualized gift is the engagement ring, which act sanctions extremely important relations, but even the giving of a garment already projects а vision for the lifestyle of the recipient which is imposed in oblique way. Giving services is another inexhaustible semantic universe. People who have developed the art of the gift can practically “say” everything through this consumer ritual, not to mention that since the time of Mauss to this practice belongs also the feast.

The last and least relevant of McCracken’s rituals for the purposes of this study is the divestment. It reverses the direction of the transfer of meaning, or rather it is the ritual with which we weaken the already established relations between the user and the good. For example often functional reasons bring us to change part of our home furnishings. When it comes to pieces of furniture, for which we prove kind of affection and on which has passed important moments of our lives, it is normal that a person cannot easily separate with them, although the rational decision to do it. Ritual happens when we bring the respective item in the basement or the attic and so keeping possession, albeit without use. Thus comes a cooling of our relationship with the object and after varying periods of time we already see this piece of furniture as unnecessary and therefore we can throw it away. Another type of symbolic divestment is before we sell it to take away from the car all the customization we have done, as if we do not want that the new owner get access to our piece of life which took place there.

3. E-consumption in Facebook

I will not dwell on the list of reasons for the phenomenal success of the social network Facebook, which gave the status of media of this category Internet platforms and which brought concepts as "society" and "human relations" to acquire a whole new meaning to new generations. There is enough literature on this topic, but I have not got yet an established list of accepted reasons. For us it is important that all the exposed above evolution of the consumer culture leads to an extended integration of the symbolic part of the goods and services in the interpersonal relations and for this reason inevitably enters a new phase with the rise of the FB. The aim of this study is to bring some level of systematic modelling of the processes of transfer of meaning from goods and services to consumers in FB, by analogy with the consumer rituals of McCracken. Purpose, which is proportional to the novelty of that matter and to the objective inability to follow what is happening in FB on a sufficiently representative level. For the pioneering nature of the study speaks the fact that I did not come across any previous study of this topic, and about the impossibility to reach enough relevant sample speaks the statistics that in FB, especially after the explosion of the selfies, has been uploaded about 90 billion photos![1] The 2-3 thousands of photos that I have seen as a "fieldwork" for this study are 1/10.000 of the percent of the available portfolio!

Yet we, academic scholars, are hunters of invariants in any spiritual and social reality, and we cannot remain indifferent to a universe such as FB. Although there are no studies on the consumer rituals in FB so far, there is one on the FB rituals in the new forms of romantic / intimate relationships. The study was based on an area of ​​seven semi-structured in-depth interviews among Irish students (Mod 2010), but this did not prevent the author to draw a typology of the rituals and some important generalizing conclusions. The analogy with the rituals of McCracken is visible at first glance, although there is no reference to his book. For example, the act of changing the publicly announced Relationship status has analogy with the ritual of possession. In debriefing the interviews becomes clear that for the partners in the relationship, after the act of public disclosure of the commitment, this has a lot in common with fencing of "own" territory (69). After this act, public flirting or sexual advances by third acquire quite another meaning. FB also gives conditions for the ritual of public displays of affection, completely analogous to the ritual of grooming in consumption. The ritual can be fulfilled verbally, with written messages, with images of tender moments of the couple, as well as through countless applications.

One of the most important conclusions of the author are related to what the specifics of FB publicity differs from that in life offline. The fact that after the communicative actions of the ritual remains a lasting example makes the disclosure of an engagement much more efficient than the usual ceremonies, which, in the words of the author, hardly will invite 150 people (67). Efficiency is not expressed in the momentary impact, which is certainly stronger in the living presence, but it is far more effective at quantitative level, as far as the act becomes known to thousands, and mostly because of the registered public feedback, which can visualize the scale of the impact and record a countless nuances of human relations, to account for the range of cultural and social capital of friends and relatives, taste, lifestyle and so on.

These findings make us propose a strong semiotic hypothesis on the consumer practices derived from the comparison of verbal speech and written text. Elsewhere I have developed a detailed theory (Bankov 2014), but here I would only stress that the difference in the structure of the building of possible worlds is radically different. Therefore, the structure of consumption rituals in their offline version, as described by McCracken, coincide with the statements of verbal speech, while the same rituals carried over FB become carriers of the structure of the written text. Like in the case of the engagement, also for the conspicuous display of the new car would be difficult to find a place which can gather all friends (and significant others), while posting an image in FB notifies the acquisition of the items to all major addressees and opens platform for the inevitable ritual greetings, wishes and all sorts of comments. Thus starts the "novel" of this remarkable event, which later everyone will be able to find in the archives of the profile.

Therefore we can conclude that the degree of s emioticity of the FB mediated consumption is higher than that of the standard offline practices, being this process partially offset by the supersaturation of updates to all sorts of consumer acts which at one point we stop to have the physical ability to respond adequately.

Another important conclusion at this phase of the study is that the narrative form of the feedback makes it impossible typologize FB rituals. We can certainly meet with samples identical to the types of McCracken (as publishing a photo of the receipt of the first purchased iPhone 5 in Bulgaria), but generally speaking social media, mobile communication and entertainment industry has long erased the clear boundaries that separate the consumption from work, communication and entertainment. By contrast, however, we can find semiotic invariants on the platform that concern the way it provides conventionalized tools for ritualized consumption. The list is in order of the power of the “semiotic” impact of each item.

3.1. The Name

After the case of the football fan from the Bulgarian city of Svishtov who, after 15 years of legal proceedings, changed his name from Marin to "Manchester United", undoubtedly a taboo has fallen. This fact draws the attention to how huge is the potential for the transfer of meaning that a person's name can have. True is that in the above example we have a pathological case, especially after the guy has tattooed the logo of Man United on his forehead. But this event directs us towards another practice – without resorting to a court to replace our name in our FB profile with a brand, product or service name. Many people during political protests did this in a sporadic way with political messages and the efficacy of this communicative act of our identity has been proven. The strong semiotic effect is based also on the unusual nature of the change of this field of the FB profile, unlike the case with profile photo, cover, status and so on. In my research I came across a classical case from Sofia, a male, working at HP, with "Harley David" inserted instead of his real name. Another case – a person from the village of Peturch (near Sofia) wrote as a name “Мерцедес Бенз“ which is Mercedes Benz in Cyrillic letters. Actually, there are more than one profiles with different variations of the use of the legendary German brand, as well as “Тихомир Беемветоо” (Tihomir the BMW), “Пламен Ауди Стефанов” (Plamen Audi Stefanov), “Ники Найка” (Nikki the Nike), „Виктория Сикрет“ (Victoria Secret) „Ваня Версаче“ (Vania Versace), „Мис Диор“ (Miss Dior), etc.

3.2. Profile picture

Unlike the name, the profile picture is very actively used by a large number of users for acts of strong identification with all sorts of things, including brands. Perhaps the automotive industry holds the championship, but football is not much inferior. Among the female community was expected underwear and shoes to lead, but in the actual search the brand references were balanced in all sectors and relatively lower number of examples compared to the male audience. The profile picture is communicative medium that makes possible the transfer of meaning not only of the "classic" rituals of possession and grooming, but also various forms of worship, lifestyle, parody and more. The simplest form of ritual identification is when the user puts the logo of the brand without any modification. So the transfer of values ​​is complete and entirely in line with the corporate identity. However, the profile picture may explore the brand value in its capacity as representative of a certain lifestyle: playing golf with Lacoste, riding the favourite motorcycle (as in the mentioned profile of Harley David), and so on. Or self-ironic representations, with cheap bottle of beer Ariana among the ultra supporters at the stadium. Profile pictures are almost never used entirely for consumer practices, but at the same time they are seldom completely independent of them.

3.3. Family and relationships

One possible manipulation of the platform, about which I was suggested by students of the course “Culture and semiotics”, is to register a fake profile of your favourite brand and enter into marriage, engagement, kinship, love or friendly relations with it. Like the use of the name, such trick can have a strong impact if used successfully. This is a rarely used semiotic resource, whose creativity makes it difficult to be classified. Yet every woman would be impressed by a marital status "Married to Manolo Blanik" or “in Love with Christian Dior”!

3.4. Cover photo

This communicative attribute of FB was hardly adopted after its introduction 2-3 years ago, due to the unusual proportions of the image, but then started to be successfully integrated into the profiles. From the many examples reviewed, I have noticed that the cover is a space used to express the aesthetic attitudes of the users on the axis nature – culture. This means that in 90% of cases there are natural landscapes or tourist attractions, architecture or a work of art. In the few cases in which the cover is used for ritual homage to a brand, product or service, the latter is represented in a design or aesthetic light. If, for example, as a profile picture is placed the logo of Mercedes Benz, then on the cover is presented a magnificent model of the German corporation (the example is of an account of a colleague from New Bulgarian University).

3.5. Timeline / Status

Any change of our profile goes automatically as a live feed to the profiles of our friends, which is the purpose of the timeline, but still the very semiotic tool that is in our control is the status. Status most approximates FB to the verbal speech communication, but with the great advantage that instead of words there can be integrated any media. We share our life in real time precisely by the status. Therefore, there one finds the whole phenomenology of consumer practices, of course with much lower impact factor than the previous examples because of the high turnover of information. Food and drinks consumption, led by the relentless regularity of physiological needs, motivate millions of status-shares and posting food pictures has become a trend, comparable and partially overlapping with the selfie mania.

3.6. Likes

Like-ing is the most common FB ritual for universal use. That is why its semiotic potential is quite limited. Meanwhile the Like-s became a marketing industry in the e-economy and companies pay to those who can guarantee them a large number of likes. Companies pay for databases, containing people who have liked goods and services similar to theirs. This fact further devalue the semiotic impact of the ritual. Something that increases yet the importance of the Like-s for the consumer practices, is the sum of everyone’s likes, which is a separate chapter in the information in each profile (after Photos, music, places, films, books, etc.). As one usually Likes large number of things in this chapter typically remain those with commercial orientation. If one bothers himself to check how his likes are presented to the other users could rethink whether or not to likes commercial pages.

3.7. Albums

In the study of the influence of FB rituals on intimate relations, it turns out that the old albums with images from previous relationships are a strong premise for jealousy and discord in the couple (Mod 2010: 72). However, all photos with consumer practices that simply are somewhere in photo albums of the users in the logic of this review are semiotically the weakest medium for ritualized consumption.

References

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