We should remember in analyzing the ways in which a radical of consumers' instinct of individualism has become linked to the products of a incident company (in this case Vans) that a core of the dynamics of this circumstance lies in the verities of trade. It is as true for cool sneakers as it is for anything else that the complex body part of any particular marketplace is fundamentally determined by the specific (if always changing) ways in which the flock who be participating in that market as consumers select product as being preferable over other(a)s. In other words, companies are affected by the ways in which masses choose products as markers of (and creators of) identity - even as consumers desire on companies to produce those products that become the tangible markers of identity.
Vans is an especially provoke case study in this regard because it is adept of the hardly a(prenominal) companies whose products provide an al near instantaneous and most absolutely apprised in-group status to its wearers. The creation of identity through consumption in this particular case is thus much more unmixed than in most cases. Scanlon argues that the identities created through acts of consumerism
The reason that athletic shoes are one of the most important consumer items as markers of self-identity is that they can be worn almost anywhere and give birth thus come to serve as a sort of secret handshake to let others who are part of the in-group know what a person's real identity is.
Vans: horseshoe Company. Retrieved online at: http://www.vans.com, 2003.
This is why the major focus of marketing by Vans is on the "authenticity" of its products. This is an analogous strategy to the one that Macintosh uses in selling to people who are federal official up of being rolled under the Microsoft juggernaut. Many people want to have the "in" product, the thing that everyone else wants. But a lot of people want products that give them a sense of exclusivity. They don't want to be like Mike: They want to be like Geoff Rowley.
It is this kind of consumer that Vans is counting on - and is trying to habitus up through its endorsements, the most obvious method that companies have of encouraging people to identify their inner selves with whatever product it is that the company makes. And it seems to be working, because people buy its products in an taste to create integrated identities that are both rebellious and as yet also slaves to fashion.
Vans has current customers who are surfing and skateboarding oriented. (Alternatively, we business leader say that surfers and skateboarders have Vans as a means to indicate their sense of identity.) As the current, narrowly defined age-set grows out of their Vans identity (and into perhaps their Amalfi identity, or - heaven forfend - their Nike identity) the company will adjudicate out new generations of those who want to be known as participants in youth sports.
The key dynamic involved in the creation of identity-through-consumption is based on the ways in which consumers pursuit both products and identities make choices. In some markets for some products in that location is in fact a high degree of discrimination amongst those products in any given category. This is certai
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