Tag Archives: price

It’s Not Just Price: The Role of Cultural Capital in Marketing

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It’s not always about the money.  Yes, the economy has driven people to be more thoughtful about how they spend their money, but it has equally driven people to think about how their purchases reflect on themselves, how they interact with the world and how positive experiences during the shopping act help them preference one location over another.  This isn’t always conscious – indeed, it rarely is.  People seek cultural and social capital when shopping and returning to our old friend Bourdieu can provides an interesting framework for our design decisions.

So what did Bourdieu have to say about these two concepts?  At the risk of being labeled a reductionist, the overarching themes are these: Cultural capital makes up the forms of knowledge, skills, jobs, education, and advantages that a person has, which give them a higher status in society. It can also be argued that the things we possess and the places we buy those things provide a form of material cultural capital.

Social capital are the non-tangible resources we possess based on group membership, relationships, networks of influence and support. Bourdieu described social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.”

In a nutshell, then, not all capital stems from economics and systems of direct exchange.  The car we drive, the stores we shop at, etc. provide a means by which we project and exchange social and cultural influence. In one context, Levis are a sign of middle class stability, in another they become a sign of blue collar chic for the wealthy.  So while economics, traditional economics, plays a part in the overall pattern of shopping, it is not as simple as unit price.

Cultural capital has three subtypes: embodied, objectified and institutionalized.

  • Embodied cultural capital consists of both the consciously acquired and the passively “inherited” properties of one’s self (with “inherit[ance]” here used not in the genetic sense but in the sense of receipt over time). Cultural capital is not transmissible instantaneously like a gift or bequest; rather, it is acquired over time as it impresses itself upon one’s character and way of thinking.
  • Objectified cultural capital consists of physical objects that are owned, such as our cars, works of art, or even our groceries. These cultural goods can be transmitted both for economic profit (as by buying and selling them with regard only to others’ willingness to pay) and for the purpose of “symbolically” conveying the cultural capital whose acquisition they facilitate. However, while one can possess objectified cultural capital by owning an object; one can “consume” the car, the painting and the groceries (understand its cultural meaning) only if one has the proper foundation of conceptually and/or historically prior cultural capital, whose transmission does not accompany the sale of the object.
  • Institutionalized cultural capital consists of institutional recognition, most often in the form of academic credentials or qualifications, of the cultural capital held by an individual. The institutional recognition process eases the conversion of cultural capital to economic capital by serving as a experience-based model that sellers can use to describe their capital and buyers can use to describe their needs.

It is typically the objectified cultural capital that is the focus of many retailers, and it is perhaps the easiest for them to identify. However, embodied and institutionalized cultural capital are equally important because they reach the intangible.  They reach those depths of the human experience that are the most enduring.

Screaming in Retail

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Human beings act toward the things they buy on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things. These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters. Shopping, then, can be viewed through the lens of how people create meaning during social interaction, how they present and construct the self (or “identity”), and how they define situations with others.  In other words, people need emotional connections as much as they need to know about the products you sell.  They may never admit it openly, but they do. Apple, after all, sells computers just like everyone else, but they’ve bridged the gap.

In terms of marketing materials and communication with your customers, this doesn’t mean using clichés and gimmicky messaging. It means conveying the things your products facilitate. By the time most customers actually consider making the move to finding a retailer, they have spent significant time researching specs, consumer reviews and feature lists – they don’t need more of that information from the retailer. Or, regardless of what your interests may be personally and professionally, they may not have cared enough to research a thing.  Consequently, marketing materials that convey how a brand will fit into their daily lives in a realistic way is far more likely to capture their attention than price listings and a list of technical information.

  • Incorporate references to how people might actually use the product in unexpected ways.
  • Don’t explain benefits in a vacuum, provide context and tie the product to other facets of their lives (. Subaru’s ads focusing on what a couple does on vacation rather than the car itself).
  • In addition to listing performance and feature information, list at least one direct connection between these things and an activity a consumer might be engaged in.
  • Limit the amount of text you plan to use and dedicate that text a conveying a story.
  • Talk about what the product is really for (e.g. the original iPod ads showed people dancing and enjoying life, they didn’t talk about the product directly).