Package it, slap a label on it and sell it for $4.99 a pound. It’s as simple as that when you’re selling groceries, right? Hardly. Food, meat in particular, is tied to cultural sensibilities about production, cleanliness, family values and a host of other topics.
Meat, like Norman Rockwell images of the American farm, is myth. We’ve been conditioned to turn away from the origins of our food and respond to blood and death with repulsion. Or have we?
With wealth comes the desire to learn about where our food comes from, how it’s produced and what exactly is in it. The point is that shopping for food is an increasingly complex process as has less to do with securing calories than it does with symbols and meaning.
Tag Archives: consumption
Liminality and Shopping
You will not find the term “liminality” in many dictionaries. For instance, at last check it is not in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary does, however, have an entry for “liminal,” the adjectival form, which it lists as a rare usage: “Of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process.” Both liminal and liminality are derived from the Latin “limen,” which means “threshold”—that is, the bottom part of a doorway that must be crossed when entering a building. And it is this notion of a doorway, or passage from one space to another, and the consequences of doing so, that matters to consumption and shopping, because in a world where the procurement of goods is increasingly simple the act of transforming a person from one state of being to another is more and more important. We no longer sell just goods, we sell something much more profound – or we hope to, at least.
As a brief refresher, it was not until the second half of the 20th century, that the terms “liminal” and “liminality” gained popularity through the writings of Victor Turner. Turner borrowed and expanded upon Van Gennep’s concept of liminality, ensuring widespread usage of the concept in anthropology.
In 1967, Turner noted that “the subject of passage ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not physically, ‘invisible’” (1967: 95). That is, the status of liminal individuals is socially and structurally ambiguous. From this he further developed the idea. “Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967: 97).
Fundamentally, the idea is relatively simple. When a person is in a liminal state, she or he is betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony. Their roles in the cosmic order are ambiguous. He then goes on to name this state of non-structure or anti-structure through such concepts as the “realm of pure possibility” and structural invisibility. He chooses the Latin term “communitas” to express this idea of anti-structure, and refers to social structure and communitas as two major models for human interrelatedness.”
The first model is of society as a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation, separating men in terms of “more” or “less.” The second, which emerges recognizably in the liminal period, is of society as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders.
Yes, yes. All very interesting, but what does it have to do with consumption and shopping? Shopping is, at a functional level, about getting things we need – food, clothing, shelter, etc. But if it were as simple as that we wouldn’t have specialty stores. We wouldn’t spend hours rummaging around a bookstore when we could simply order the product online. As the outlets for acquisition have expanded with the growth of broadband, the nature of shopping has changed. It is as much about fulfilling social, cultural and psychological needs and desires as it is anything else, perhaps more so. Which means it is often a transformational act of a transitory nature that takes us from one state of being to another, if only for a short while. And it is at the gateway that we find the symbols that successfully transition of from one state to another. Retailers who do this well (Abercrombe, Anthropologie, Swatch) become points of destination and alter the nature of interaction, both with the store and with fellow shoppers, at the point of entry into their space. They set the stage where shopping becomes akin to a rite of passage. It signals that we have entered a special place and while we’re there, we are not the same person we were on the street.
The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a new sphere of reconfigurement of who and what we are is symbolized by the gateway and harkens back to the worldwide womb image of myth. It is the hero entering the belly of the whale and emerging transformed, carrying special knowledge or objects that can only be found by going through the passage. This is why the approaches to temples are flanked by guardian symbols – dragons, angles, sword-wielding demon slayers. These are the threshold guardians used to ward off those incapable of encountering the higher silences within. They illustrate the fact that the devotee at the moment of entry into the temple undergoes a metamorphosis. Similarly, in a cultural construct where shopping and consumption have taken on the role of defining personal meaning, the threshold at the store signals a metamorphosis into the stylistically elite. Those entering the space understand that they are unlike those outside the space and have entered a place that is beyond the confines of the mundane, daily life. And like the hero, once having crossed the threshold, the postmodern shopper moves into a dream landscape of often curiously fluid, ambiguous forms. It is here that shopping becomes something bigger than consumption. It is here that the trial, the hunt, the act of self-becoming takes place, turning shopping into an expression of self-worth and of profound worth to the tribe (the family, the peer group, etc.).
Thinking about a shopping space and the symbolic cues to which we respond at the outset of the shopping journey means taking a more subtle view of how we promote our wares. Rather than screaming “low, low prices,” it means thinking about shopping and spatial design as promoting a change in the people to whom we would sell. And it means putting as much though into the store front as it does the size of type on an end cap. It means thinking of both the entry and the space as transitional, transformational structures that compel the shopper to alter his or her sense of being. And this is where loyalty comes from. Just as most people do not hop from on hose of worship every week, let alone from faith to faith, so too should they feel compelled to return to your space again and again.
Liminality is almost always a temporary phenomenon. That is not to say that the temporal nature of liminality should be one of its defining characteristics. Rather, human nature being the way it is means that liminality cannot be permanent. Either we are absorbed into the social structure or we shun it all together—we cannot remain betwixt and between. But liminality can be something that draws people back to a retailer time and again. It turns shopping beyond the ordinary and signals that your space is beyond the daily grind. It signals a place of rebirth.
As Halloween Approaches (Even in September)
Halloween is more than two months away, but already I’ve seen products and displays going up in a few places. For better or worse, the holidays creep further and further out from their actual date as retailers see opportunities to sell their goods. And to add to the impending spookiness that awaits us, I spent part of my Friday night watching a scary movie with my children, fully aware that it would necessitate cramming four people into a single bed, somewhere around midnight – I was, of course, proven right. All of this has me reflecting on the socio-cultural significances of Halloween as a reflection of cultural transformation, even if it is a single night. Yes, even the simplest things start the mind wandering.
A few years back, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State’s Delaware County Campus, noted that parents need to realize that scaring our kids isn’t necessarily a way to mitigate kids’ fears of death and other things frightening. Rightfully, she contended that Halloween is a time when we expose kids to behavior that is not the norm and that children connect the holiday with death. The argument goes that we, regardless of who “We” are, typically distance ourselves from death and shield children from it, but in this case, young children encounter their fears when they face decorations of skeletons and tombstones. This can be scarring. This, of course, is bad. Or is it? Is it even accurate?
First, we expose our children to death regularly. What we shield our kids from is pollution associated with decay. In the case of Halloween, we are presenting our children with a sanitized, safe form of death that has none of the associations with contamination. Second, children are exposed to death when they play video games, tune in to the TV or deal with the loss of a grandparent. We may try to lessen the pain or deflect the underlying causality, but death itself is indeed part of a child’s upbringing, though it may not be as overt as it is at Halloween. I will concede that we expose our children to death less than we perhaps did in the past, when people worked the farm together and were accustomed to things like slaughter, but to assume children are shielded from death is fantasy. We’ve simply changed the medium.
And should we even be shielding kids in the first place? We often work under the assumption that it is somehow our duty as parents to protect children from any and all discomfort, but there is nothing out there to prove that doing so benefits the child. Fear teaches, particularly when it is safe. Discomfort teaches, particularly when it isn’t overwhelming. Children are, I would contend, smarter than we often think. To assume they can’t make the leap between the literal and the symbolic is a bit obtuse. While Halloween teaches children about death, it also teaches them about the nature of symbolism, rules of reciprocity, a sense of self-reliance, creativity and a host of other positive elements of personhood.
As my oldest daughter walked from house to house last Halloween with her friend from Egypt, getting treats from homes comprised of people from a wide range of nations (our neighborhood happens to have large south Asian and Middle Eastern populations) it struck me how important this holiday is, because it is so public and because it is wrapped up in a universal need to deflect the fear of death. It is a holiday that encourages parents and kids of other cultures to join in the fun and feel like they are welcome and integral parts of the adopted culture. It exposes the children and parents of the adoptive culture to people and worldviews they may not have otherwise interacted with. The experience can be thought of as enculturation, the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquiring values and behaviors that are appropriate or necessary in that culture. This has often been conceived to be a unidimensional, zero-sum cultural conflict in which the minority’s culture is diminished by the dominant group’s culture, but it’s not that simple. There is an exchange of sorts going on. There are a couple of ways a person learns a culture. Direct teaching of a culture is what happens when you don’t pay attention, mostly by the parents, when a person is told to do something because it is right and to not do something because it is bad. For example, when children ask for something, they are constantly asked “What do you say?” and the child is expected to remember to say “please.” A second conscious way a person learns a culture is to watch others around them and to emulate their behavior. But in doing so, they often alter elements of it and reshape the culture – culture isn’t fixed, after all, it is a matter of practice, negation and shared invention.
What this means is that Halloween becomes a way of learning and exchanging. Day of the Dead decorations find new uses, costumes come to reflect the sensibilities of the minority population and new ways of defining and interacting with the world emerge. And there are very real, very meaningful results. Businesses alter their merchandise, retailers decorate differently and new modes of shopping arise. People develop new interests and curiosity about their world. So, yes, Halloween may indeed scare the children, but the benefits of being scared outweigh a night of belly aches and spooky dreams.
Snack Time
In it’s simplest definition, a snack is a small portion of food meant to hold one over between meals. In contrast, a meal is typically comprised of multiple items, has higher caloric content and is usually tied to rituals of time and location.
Historically, snacks were prepared from ingredients commonly available in the home. This has changed considerably over time with the new norm existing today as pre-made foods that are conveniently packaged and last seemingly forever.
But snack foods are not just treats anymore. They have to become part of the larger ingredient mix along with potatoes, carrots or butter. Frito Pie is on the menu alongside the $25 dish of shrimp etouffee. This may not seem important to the producer as long as products are selling at the store. But it validates a fundamental element of consumer behavior – the end user decides how to use any product he or she purchases. The challenge for the producer is to recognize the innovative ways consumers use their products and facilitate strategies that will help keep the trend going. This means understanding the underlying cultural processes that have allowed this transformation to take place and how to capitalize on it in order to grow sales.
Some credit to the changing role of snack foods must of course be attributed to the inventiveness of snack producers. Restaurateurs and chefs have also been and will continue to be tremendous influencers. Consumers, rather than turning to manufacturer websites and cook books are looking to the Food Network and local chefs not just for ideas, but also for validation of their culinary choices. Even subculture icons like Lux Interior of The Cramps (a rockabilly/punk fusion band founded in the 1970s) have helped shape the use of snacks in cooking – Mr. Interior had a deep penchant for Doritos Quiche.
To be sure, the snack is the inspiration. We see evidence to support this notion starting back in the 50′s with the introduction of recipe ideas for everything from corn flakes to Cheetos. But what accounts for the resurgence of using snacks in cooking in an age dominated by “healthy” foods, “quality” ingredients and of haute cuisine in the home? And what does this mean for a marketer or product development team? The simple is answer is that by understanding the deeper issues driving the transformation of how snack foods are used, it is possible to better innovate and drive sales over time. We have identified several areas that deserve special attention.
Snacks as Symbols
Meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities that serve as systems. Rituals associated with food represent a deeply ingrained structure by which meaning is propagated within a culture. In other words, a potato chip is more than food; it is representative of childhood memories, concepts of being a good or bad parent, regional affiliation and other symbolically charged concepts.
The brand itself is equally symbolically charged. This explains why a generic brand of corn flakes to top your tuna casserole may not be “good enough.” Only Kellogg’s communicates that the cook cares enough about the people eating. This also explains, in part, the reluctance of many to buy store-branded products (although other factors come into play as we see, for example, in times of economic crisis).
Flavor is less the issue than the need to create a dish that fits within the symbolic framework in which it is constructed and consumed. The implication is that it recipe ideas aren’t enough. These ideas must be tied to richer symbols. Package design, shelf positioning, etc. must all reflect greater symbolic structures and lead to the construction of new and unique traditions that work within the existing framework.
The Invention of Tradition
Traditions exist to preserve a wide range of commonly held ideas, practices and methods used by distinct populations. Food joins other elements like music, folklore and clothing to create culture. Beliefs or customs are taught by one generation to the next and actions are reinforced over time. The preservation of culture, however, becomes much more difficult in a postmodern world.
Through the emergence of tribal subcultures along with the ease and means to communicate and cross-pollinate we see many using brands as badges of affiliation. In practice, people are “inventing” tradition by endowing products with rich symbolic meaning. Product, therefore, becomes a means by which people artificially establish a past and validate identity in the present. Mom may have never actually made Frito Pie, but it helps the consumer maintain a sense of identity to believe that she could have.
Food as Novelty and Play
Finally, using snack foods as ingredients speaks to the very basic need to invent and play. Snack foods used in a way different from their “intended purpose” is novel. At a psychological level, novelty speaks to four basic principle elements:
- Thrill Seeking: the pursuit of activities and objects that are exciting, unusual and potentially dangerous.
- Experience Seeking: the pursuit of unfamiliar and complex environmental stimuli, as through cooking.
- Disinhibition: Sensation-seeking through engagement with other people; searching for opportunities to lose inhibitions by engaging in variety in food, sex, alcohol, etc.
- Boredom Susceptibility: the tendency to be easily bored by familiar or repetitive situations or people, or by routine work.
Beyond the sensory benefits of novelty, there is the need to use experimentation as a means of establishing cultural capital. Snack foods have become a means by which people not only attain psychological stimulation but also display to friends and loved ones that they are inventive and interesting.
Implications
It may be interesting, but what does it all mean? Simply put, it means that whoever can tap into these unconscious motivations, symbols, and practices can increase sales, grow customer loyalty and develop brands that are synonymous with enjoyment. We often interpret our products through a self-limiting, narrow focus. Understanding snack foods from the vantage point of “ingredient” opens a new series of delivery systems, product possibilities and messaging strategies.
After all, the customer will always decide how to use your product.
Local Marketing, More Than Geography?
There is a belief current amongst marketing professionals that the mass market is starting to break down, and instead of an easy to target homogenous consumer groups in a mass market, the market for many products is dividing into large number of niches, that could make mass market products redundant. Now, I would be disinclined to agree with such a blanket statement (I think it’s flat wrong), but I would be inclined to agree that local marketing and hyperlocal marketing are increasingly taking center stage and will continue to grow in importance in the coming years. “Local” means a lot in marketing these days, from search rankings and profiles to location-based games and apps. Hyperlocal further refines this by defining itself as focusing on a very specific area, very close to home (or, your place of business.). But, what “very close” means is relatives and apps follow us everywhere. So what is the underlying feature, the truth so to speak, behind localization? I believe is has less to do with physical proximity than it does with social and cultural proximity.
For example, hyperlocality plays a large role in a homogeneous suburb, perhaps, but within that suburb, and spread across a metro, there will be subgroups that will travel fairly large distances to shop at a store, attend a church, etc. es, they are affinity groups, but with physical location becoming less a factor than social location, and with the advent of being constantly dialed into the network, local and hyperlocal marketing means rethinking demographic data and how we visualize the populations we are targeting.
The important feature is that if people feel a connection to the store, they are more likely to pay attention to its marketing materials. This is part of a social phenomenon that exists independently of any one individual’s perceptions or experiences. Such a feeling may be derived from the natural environment, but is more often made up of a mix of natural and cultural features in the setting, and generally includes the people who occupy the place. The point is that the stronger the bond at the local level, the more likely the customer is to buy.
When you’re trying to promote a business, regardless of size and reach, every little thing that you do needs to be thought out before hand. You are more than a business, you are part of the community and social fabric. Understanding the complexities of the communities you serve is central to establishing long-term relationships and sales.
Retail and Anthropology
Someone asked me the other day how anthropology fits into retail. Since it was a cocktail party I needed to be brief. And I think that brevity is sometimes our best friend. In short, we help retailers understand that shopping is about more than simply finding “things”.
Retail is growing increasingly complex. 70% of purchases are done on a whim. Anthropology is an inductive process that’s all about understanding the meaning behind our actions and our ways of interacting with the world. We try to look retail through that lens. Shopping is entertainment, it’s a teaching moment, it’s a way of establishing social bonds. Anthropology provides a real-world look at a problem or opportunity, applying social and cultural understanding to the topic, in this case the retail stage. It evaluates what people say, what they do and why they do it. Research has typically looked at individual shopper motivations. But people never really shop alone – they carry their culture and experiences with them. So, if you want to understand how and why people use, say, a clothing retailer you have to start by asking what kind of experience are they subconsciously looking for. What kind of interaction with the staff do they really want and expect? What kind of image are they trying to project at different points throughout the day and how does that shape their decision to use on retailer over another?
Our work gets to those powerful, underlying drivers that really matter to people. If you understand how elements of behavior and worldview fit together in a system, you can develop complete strategies that convert shoppers into buyers and buyers into advocates. And I think that is the ultimate goal. It isn’t enough to hook people in the store, even if you leave them happy. Anthropological work is designed to engage people in the storyline of the retailer or brand. The goal is to produce a type of conversion that is devotional, almost religious, getting people not only to visit your store repeatedly, but to sing the praises of a brand to everyone they know, creating more devotees.
Speaking to Business, Not Academics
Why do ethnographers find their work dismissed in many business settings? Because we don’t always practice what we preach. Once we land projects, we often fail to do an assessment of the most crucial cultural sample of all – the client. Vast numbers of pages, complex discussions of theoretical frameworks, and jargon-laden language are understood as hallmarks of academic writing. Whether this actually improves our performance is contestable, but as we progress from undergraduate through graduate programs, through our careers, the length of our texts and the intellectual mass of specialized terminology as a rule grow in what seem to be exponential degrees. The most avid consumers of ethnographies have traditionally been people engaged in fieldwork (or who aspire to it), people who hold deep interests in the discipline and who are willing to read what we create. We learn to write and present for people that have the patience and frequently the need for lengthy, specialized, in-depth text, not for the fast-paced corporate world, where quick and to-the-point presentations are the expected norm.
Assessing the audiences can be thought of as an extended, ongoing mini-ethnography. Thinking in terms of an ongoing ethnography gives the researcher important insights into what it means to be a participant within a given context and allows him or her to begin formulating ideas about communicative tenets, power, and perceived sub-groups within the organization. The processes we would employ if doing fieldwork in a more “traditional” setting must be employed, particularly during the earlier phases of a project.
Of course, the criteria we construct for identifying a community can be extremely varied and range from power relationships, racial distinction, job type, or any number of other theoretical stances. The point being that the criteria we would employ for any field study must be used within not only the largest manifestation of the organization of which we are part, but also the multitude of other community divisions that occur throughout the organization in its totality. We assume that the people we find ourselves among constitute a “community” (with varying degrees and levels of situated identity and subgroup allegiances) and that community must be sustained by systematic observations. We look for and expect to find commonalities in behavior, mutually intelligible habits, social activities, and modes of communication, etc.
In terms of presentation styles in the corporate world, sociolinguistic models of adaptation and understanding apply themselves well to understanding what and what not to do. Learning the “local” meanings and methods of communication to the speech community is essential. This applies to the interdisciplinary team as well as the various client audiences. “The greatest value of learning the language of another people does not come from being able to interview informants without interpreters or from providing native terms in ethnographic writings; it comes from being able to understand what natives say and how they say it when they are conversing with each other.” (Witherspoon 1977, pp. 7) In short, learning the communicative norms and processes of the individual groups allows us to better grasp and define our audiences, adapting our methods of presentation to be understandable and, and perhaps more importantly, acceptable according to their world views.
In the business environment short, direct modes of communication with little or no embellishment are standard practice. This is not to say that a lengthy, detailed report is unnecessary. It frequently is an expected part of the package. However, the lengthy piece is often little more than window dressing for most of the people we address. It is meant to back up higher-level statements. This undoubtedly sounds cynical but it is not meant to diminish the detailed report or argue that analytical rigor and detailed information has no purpose. Indeed, analytical rigor and depth of information are precisely what separate us from simple interviewers. It is simply meant to point out that levels of detail serve different functions depending on who sees them. A “Just the facts ma’am” process of communication is most frequently the best way to get your foot in the door – hit them with the big points and get them to interact and ask questions.
Inevitably, understanding and navigating this change of audience from disciplinarily and/or the academically bound almost always means abbreviating the content or restructuring it so, for better or worse, the fine points and ambiguities of the information are lost or downplayed for the immediate consumers of the research findings. In most cases, the readers (or viewers of a presentation) are unfamiliar with our jargon, largely disinterested in the finer points of the theories involved in the data acquisition and the subtleties of human interaction that we often find so engrossing. This does not imply that the conclusions we draw be “dumbed down,” but rather that we must synthesize and distill the information so it can be readily applied to the needs of the consumers of that data.
In the end, we are writers and interpreters of the complexities of behavior and culture, romantic as that may sound. The principal tools in our “tool kit” are theory, pen, and paper (or camcorder and PC). Culture is created by the construction of text, the video, etc.; it is not a distinct object of scientific inquiry though we often assume that this is the case.
Several points should also be made very clear. First, each business community (and each company as well) will have their own specific patterns of communication. However, as a whole businesses generally expect presentations that are succinct and short.
Second, communication styles, communities of practice, and expectations will differ from place to place. The presentation expectations in Paris are significantly different from those in the Omaha. While it is possible to think of Business as a distinct cultural process, it is important that this is a construct we impose to make our lives simpler, but business culture, such as it is, is subject to the historical, economic, and sociolinguistic realities of the larger culture in which it is couched. Ultimately, this means doing yet another internal ethnography even if it only touches on surface-level communication practices.
Finally, while we do explore it in great depth here, external perceptions of a researcher’s professional experience, expectations about how a scientist “should” sound, and division of power all work to influence how we present our findings and how readily they will be received. Suffice it to say, when determining audience needs and accepted norms of communication, it is important to reflect on the nature of power and expectation based in the local folk taxonomy, e.g. what is a “scientist” or an “anthropologist” and how does that impact expectations of what we present.
The fact that anthropologists are increasingly in demand leaves us holding at least some of the cards. The fact that business people are coming to understand that disciplinary training is in fact necessary to effectively perform and interpret data (in the sense of all acquired knowledge), that expertise is in fact more than a catch phrase, gives us some degree of clout and places anthropologists in a better position to redefine the emerging lexicon of business, of which words like “ethnography”, “culture”, and “anthropology” are an undeniable component. But it means learning to communicate these ideas in a language that fits their context, not ours.
Social Media Monitoring, Black Friday and the Why We Buy
There is a wild-west mentality that dominates the corporate conversation about social media. Like the cavalier approach to the internet at the close of the 20th century, strategy appears secondary as we scramble to find meaning behind numbers and attempt to generate capital out of something that is still in its infancy. This approach is mirrored in social media monitoring, which more often than not stops with just providing data. Numbers are gathered around an area of interest, a few correlations are run between data points and the findings are handed off to the client without any emphasis what any of if really means. As we come off of Black Friday and prepare for Cyber Monday, companies are sifting through mounds of data gleaned from social media monitoring in hopes of uncovering something that will give them the absolute edge over the competition, but it means precious little if we don’t understand the deeper issues behind shopping, gift giving, consumption, etc.
Granted, data provides an answer to “what is happening,” but it fails to address “why it’s happening.” The “why” comes from anthropological analysis to data to uncover connections between data points that are normally overlooked, which provides new business opportunities and ways of messaging to customers. Anthropology works from an assumption of the inherent interconnectedness of people, focusing on culture as the starting point of investigation. People and cultures are so complex, and anthropology strives to make sense of that complexity.
Similarly, digital anthropology seeks to connect dots and uncover relationships between data points by going beyond the search for statistical significance and focusing on producing valid, actionable insights. Loosely speaking, “reliability” is the extent to which a measurement procedure yields the same answer, however and whenever it’s carried out – it’s the data in their purest form. “Validity,” is the extent to which it fives the correct answer. Imagine a spike in negative Twitter conversations in late December about your company. While the information may be statistically reliable, it lacks meaning. It doesn’t even begin to approach an understanding of “why” with any kind of depth or understanding.
All too frequently, the questions we ask and the metrics we assign to them have very little to do with the subtleties of human behavior. The data doesn’t address whom these numbers represent, what social and cultural conditions are motivating the commentary or how independent variables influence the date. The result is that we make assumptions and ask questions that are simply wrong.
To overcome these issues, an anthropologically-trained researcher (or research team) filters data through a system of questions that tie each data point back to what we know about cultural patterns and trends. For example, if there is a spike on conversations about bacon, it might be tied to agricultural conditions, but it might also be tied to the fact that Anthony Bourdain talked about bacon martinis on his show the night before. Add that the fact that people who self-identify as “foodies” have doubled in the last few years and you start to realize that the conversation isn’t so much about the product but how the product fits into the larger pattern of people living their lives. This hypothetical spike in discussion reflects the need to be part of a special group with extensive knowledge or expertise that makes them extraordinary in the eyes of other people. And that is the place real opportunity lies.
These same principles can be applied to all social media and online activity. Whether your company is selling soap or helping people make multi-million dollar transactions, human behavior is usually more complex than the numbers alone would suggest. Discovering these connections are where the real opportunities reside.
Keep in mind, other companies have the same data you do and they too are searching the web with the hope of uncovering some hidden insight. In fact, they face the same dilemma of not being able to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated topics. Uncovering these connections and understanding the reasons behind them means uncovering new revenue streams, new avenues of messaging and new business opportunities before the competition can act. Digital anthropology helps move social media monitoring from “what” to “why” to “what next.”
The Sacred Passage: Liminality and Shopping as Transformation
You will not find the term “liminality” in many dictionaries. For instance, at last check it is not in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary does, however, have an entry for “liminal,” the adjectival form, which it lists as a rare usage: “Of or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process.” Both liminal and liminality are derived from the Latin “limen,” which means “threshold”—that is, the bottom part of a doorway that must be crossed when entering a building. And it is this notion of a doorway, or passage from one space to another, and the consequences of doing so, that matters to consumption and shopping, because in a world where the procurement of goods is increasingly simple the act of transforming a person from one state of being to another is more and more important. We no longer sell just goods, we sell something much more profound – or we hope to, at least.
As a brief refresher, it was not until the second half of the 20th century, that the terms “liminal” and “liminality” gained popularity through the writings of Victor Turner. Turner borrowed and expanded upon Van Gennep’s concept of liminality, ensuring widespread usage of the concept in anthropology.
In 1967, Turner noted that “the subject of passage ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not physically, ‘invisible’” (1967: 95). That is, the status of liminal individuals is socially and structurally ambiguous. From this he further developed the idea. “Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967: 97).
Fundamentally, the idea is relatively simple. When a person is in a liminal state, she or he is betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony. Their roles in the cosmic order are ambiguous. He then goes on to name this state of non-structure or anti-structure through such concepts as the “realm of pure possibility” and structural invisibility. He chooses the Latin term “communitas” to express this idea of anti-structure, and refers to social structure and communitas as two major models for human interrelatedness.”
The first model is of society as a structured, differentiated, and often hierarchical system of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation, separating men in terms of “more” or “less.” The second, which emerges recognizably in the liminal period, is of society as an unstructured or rudimentarily structured and relatively undifferentiated comitatus, community, or even communion of equal individuals who submit together to the general authority of the ritual elders.
Yes, yes. All very interesting, but what does it have to do with consumption and shopping? Shopping is, at a functional level, about getting things we need – food, clothing, shelter, etc. But if it were as simple as that we wouldn’t have specialty stores. We wouldn’t spend hours rummaging around a bookstore when we could simply order the product online. As the outlets for acquisition have expanded with the growth of broadband, the nature of shopping has changed. It is as much about fulfilling social, cultural and psychological needs and desires as it is anything else, perhaps more so. Which means it is often a transformational act of a transitory nature that takes us from one state of being to another, if only for a short while. And it is at the gateway that we find the symbols that successfully transition of from one state to another. Retailers who do this well (Abercrombe, Anthropologie, Swatch) become points of destination and alter the nature of interaction, both with the store and with fellow shoppers, at the point of entry into their space. They set the stage where shopping becomes akin to a rite of passage. It signals that we have entered a special place and while we’re there, we are not the same person we were on the street.
The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a new sphere of reconfigurement of who and what we are is symbolized by the gateway and harkens back to the worldwide womb image of myth. It is the hero entering the belly of the whale and emerging transformed, carrying special knowledge or objects that can only be found by going through the passage. This is why the approaches to temples are flanked by guardian symbols – dragons, angles, sword-wielding demon slayers. These are the threshold guardians used to ward off those incapable of encountering the higher silences within. They illustrate the fact that the devotee at the moment of entry into the temple undergoes a metamorphosis. Similarly, in a cultural construct where shopping and consumption have taken on the role of defining personal meaning, the threshold at the store signals a metamorphosis into the stylistically elite. Those entering the space understand that they are unlike those outside the space and have entered a place that is beyond the confines of the mundane, daily life. And like the hero, once having crossed the threshold, the postmodern shopper moves into a dream landscape of often curiously fluid, ambiguous forms. It is here that shopping becomes something bigger than consumption. It is here that the trial, the hunt, the act of self-becoming takes place, turning shopping into an expression of self-worth and of profound worth to the tribe (the family, the peer group, etc.).
Thinking about a shopping space and the symbolic cues to which we respond at the outset of the shopping journey means taking a more subtle view of how we promote our wares. Rather than screaming “low, low prices,” it means thinking about shopping and spatial design as promoting a change in the people to whom we would sell. And it means putting as much though into the store front as it does the size of type on an end cap. It means thinking of both the entry and the space as transitional, transformational structures that compel the shopper to alter his or her sense of being. And this is where loyalty comes from. Just as most people do not hop from one house of worship every week, let alone from faith to faith, so too should they feel compelled to return to your space again and again.
Liminality is almost always a temporary phenomenon. That is not to say that the temporal nature of liminality should be one of its defining characteristics. Rather, human nature being the way it is means that liminality cannot be permanent. Either we are absorbed into the social structure or we shun it all together—we cannot remain betwixt and between. But liminality can be something that draws people back to a retailer time and again. It turns shopping beyond the ordinary and signals that your space is beyond the daily grind. It signals a place of rebirth.
Brand As A Personal Adjective
In the minds of many running businesses, particularly those related to luxury and fashion goods, brand choices are driven by what we make. Wealth equates to capital. And there is some truth in that, but there is more to capital than Dollars, Euros and Yen. There is social capital, cultural capital, psychic capital. The general presumption is that the increasing shift towards brands, as opposed to a focus purely on goods, reflects our culture’s assumed obsession with displays of wealth and status. The bigger the name brand, the more you can afford and the more you want to show that wealth off. Indeed, there is some truth to that notion, but it’s not a simple as it seems. First, a little history.
The rapid rise in importance of brands in the 80’s coincided with a social and political landscape at odds with the counter-culture movements defined, in large part, by a questioning of wealth for its own sake. Punks carried this over starting in the 1970s. Antiestablishment rhetoric and symbolism became ingrained in pop culture, but there was a response to it. Amongst what would come to be termed “Yuppies” brands had the capacity to signal power and economic clout. So began a reversal of the previous two decades.
The catch was that in a postmodern world where brands could be used to signal identity and affiliation with a host of cultural sub-groups, brands began to be associated with lifestyles as much as wealth. Doc Marten’s were symbolically repurposed by punks and took on a meaning unrelated to the display of wealth. As another example, Benetton began a series of advertising campaign that demonstrated an understanding a growing number of their consumers were gravitating toward brands which aligned with their social and political beliefs. While Doc Martens were appropriated by several subcultures, Benetton redirected their brand image and message to reflect a specific worldview.
The rise of the lifestyle parallels the rise of social fragmentation and communication breakdown which lies at the heart of our postmodern condition. While only a generation or two ago one’s identity was prescribed according to traditional groupings of class, religion, nationality, region, race, etc., the world has today rapidly become one enormous, undefined and unstructured mass where identity is more problematic. Brands have become badges, controlled as much by the buyers we don’t understand as the ones we do.
What brand today do is signal systems that reflect personal values and objectives. A brand’s strength is semiotic in nature. It provides a messaging tactic for an individual as much as a product, retail setting, service, etc. A shopper isn’t just buying a hammer or a pair of shoes. He is buying an adjective, a sense of self, a membership pass into one of several “tribes” to which he belongs.
That means thinking beyond economic clusters and age cohorts. It means learning what a brand says in a range of contexts and thinking about its value to the consumer on a cultural and social level that is often fluid. It means thinking about what current and potential consumers wish to say about themselves in a given cultural context, rather than reducing them to a pile of statistics.
