Escape from Burdens of Ownership to Freedom of Access: A Conceptual Framework for Liquid Consumption

Abstract

This paper examines the changes in consumption in the context of liquid consumption in liquid modern times. In the paper, the notion of consumption is analyzed in two dimensions as solid and liquid. Liquid consumption, characterized with values such as flexibility, adaptability and fluidity, represents a more ephemeral and access-based consumption pattern. In the liquid modern world, where relations with consumption objects are more ephemeral and situational, consumers give more emphasis on the use value of objects. Thus, the main argument of the paper shapes around the idea that it becomes more important for consumers to have a temporary use that allows them to have access to the products without owning them. As consumers prefer accessing rather than owning the objects, access gradually becomes more important than ownership. In this respect, liquid consumption is considered to change most of the cornerstones of consumer behavior such as the importance of ownership and the nature of attachment to the objects. In addition, liquid consumption has also implications for conceptualization of consumer identity under liquid conditions. Thus, the paper revisits identity and consumption relation in liquid modernity. The paper suggests that consumers develop liquid identities such as instrumental self or networked-self with liquid consumption.

Keywords

• Liquid consumption,liquid modernity,access,ownership

Sahipliğin Sıkıcılığından Erişimin Özgürlüğüne Kaçış: Akışkan Tüketime İlişkin Kavramsal Bir Çerçeve

Abstract

Bu makale akışkan modern zamanlarda tüketimde meydana gelen değişimi akışkan tüketim kavramı bağlamında incelemektedir. Makalede tüketim kavramı katı ve akışkan olmak üzere iki boyutta analiz edilmiştir. Esneklik, uyumluluk ve akıcılık gibi değerlerle karakterize edilen akışkan tüketim, daha geçici ve erişime dayalı bir tüketim biçimini yansıtmaktadır. Tüketim nesneleriyle kurulan ilişkilerin daha geçici ve durumsal olduğu akışkan modern dünyada tüketicilerin önem atfettiği şeyler de daha çok nesnelerin kullanım değeri olmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, bu makalenin temel tezi tüketiciler için ürünlere sahip olmaktan ziyade onlara diledikleri zaman erişebilmelerini sağlayan geçici bir kullanım hakkı edinmenin daha önemli olduğu fikri etrafında oluşmaktadır. Tüketicilerin mal ve hizmetleri sahiplenmekten ziyade, ihtiyaç duydukları an onlara erişmeyi istemeleri, erişimin giderek mülkiyetten daha önemli hale geldiğini göstermektedir. Bu açıdan akışkan tüketimin tüketici davranışında mülkiyetin önemi ve nesnelere yönelik bağlılığın doğası gibi temel taşların çoğunu değiştireceği düşünülmektedir. Ayrıca akışkan tüketim, akışkan modern koşullarda tüketici kimliğinin kavramsallaştırılması açısından da bazı çıkarımlara sahiptir. Bu nedenle bu çalışma akışkan modernitede tüketim ve kimlik ilişkisini de yeniden değerlendirmektedir. Çalışmada tüketicilerin akışkan tüketimle birlikte araçsal benlik ya da ağ tabanlı benlik gibi daha akışkan kimlikler geliştirdikleri ileri sürülmektedir.

Keywords

• Akışkan tüketim,akışkan modernite,erişim,mülkiyet,kullanım değeri,kimlik

References

1. Algesheimer, R.A., Dholakia, U.M. & Herrmann, A. (2005). The social influence of brand community: evidence from European car clubs, Journal of Marketing, 69 (3), 19-34.
2. Arnould, E. J. & Thompson C. J. (2005). Consumer culture theory (CCT): Twenty years of research, Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (March), 868-882.
3. Arvidsson, A. & Caliandro, A. (2016). Brand public: Louis Vuitton on twitter. Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (5), 727-748.
4. Bardhi, F. & Eckhardt, G. M. (2017). Liquid consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 44 (3). http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/17014/
5. Bardhi, F. & Eckhardt, G. M. (2012). Access-based consumption: The case of car sharing. Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 39, 881- 898.
6. Bardhi, F., Eckhardt, G. M. & Arnould, E. J. (2012). Liquid relationship to possessions. Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (3), 510-529.
7. Bauman (2007). Liquid times: Living in an age of uncertainty, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
8. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

9. Bauman, Z. (2003). Liquid love, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
10. Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid life, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
11. Bauman, Z. (2011). Akışkan modern dünyadan 44 mektup (Çev. P.Siral). İstanbul: Habitus.
12. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity, London: Sage Publications. Belk, R. (2007). Why not share rather than own? Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611 (May), 126-140.
13. Belk, R. (2013). Extended self in a digital world. Journal of Consumer Research, 40 (3), 477-500.
14. Belk, R. (2014a). You are what you can access: Sharing and collaborative consumption online. Journal of Business Research, 67, 1595-1600.
15. Belk, R. (2014b). Digital consumption and the extended self. Journal of Marketing Management, 30 (11-12), 1101-1118.
16. Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 139-168.
17. Binkley S. (2008). Liquid consumption. Cultural Studies, 22 (5), 599-623.
18. Bocock, R. (1993). Consumption, London: Routledge
19. Botsman, R. & Rogers, R. (2010). What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption. New York: Harper Collins.
20. Carter, T. J. & Gilovich, T. (2012). I am what I do, not what I have: The differential centrality of experiential and material purchases to the self, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (6), 1304-317.
21. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (Second ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
22. Chen, Y. (2009). Possession and access: Consumer desires and value perceptions regarding contemporary art collection and exhibit visits, Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (April), 925-940.
23. Cheshire, L., Walters, P. & Rosenblatt, T. (2010). The politics of housing consumption: Renters as flawed consumers on a master planned estate. Urban Studies, 47 (12), 2597–2614
24. Cova, B. (1997). Community and consumption: towards a definition of the linking value of product or services. European Journal of Marketing, 31 (3/4), 297-316.
25. Denegri-Knott, J., R. D. Watkins & J. Wood (2013). Transforming digital virtual goods into meaningful possessions, In M. Wolesworth, and J. Denegri-Knott (Eds.), Digital virtual consumption, (pp. 76-91) New York: Routledge.
26. Duman, Z. (2017). Zygmunt Bauman’ın sosyolojik tahayyülünde özgürlüğün modern sürümü olarak akışkanlığın ve tüketimciliğin inşası. YDÜ Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 10 (2), 127-147.
27. Eckhardt, G. M. & Bardhi, F. (2016). The relationship between access practices and economic systems, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1 (2), 210-225.
28. Edbring, E. G., M. Lehner & Mont, O. (2016). Exploring consumer attitudes to alternative models of consumption: motivations and barriers. Journal of Cleaner Production, 123, 5-15.
29. Elliott, R. & Wattanasuwan, K. (1998). Brands as symbolic resources for the construction of identity. International Journal of Advertising, 17, 131-144.
30. Ferguson, H. (1992). Watching the world go round: atrium culture and the psychology of shopping, In R. Shields (Ed.), Lifestyle shopping: The subject of consumption (pp. 21-39) London: Routledge.
31. Fırat, A.F. & Venkatesh, A. (1993). Postmodernity: The age of marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 10, 227-49.
32. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. California: Stanford University Press.
33. Gill, R. & Pratt, A. (2008). In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work. Theory, Culture and Society, 25 (7-8), 1-30.
34. Grimshorn, C. & Jordan M. (2015). Qwnership- a challenged consumer ideal- A study of two collaborative consumption practices: Clothes swapping and clothing libraries. (Master Thesis, Lund University, School of Economics and Management). Retrieved from http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=5468892&fileOId=5468905
35. Gümüş, B. ve Gegez, E. (2017). Değişen tüketici kültüründe yeni trend: Ortak tüketim. Pazarlama ve Pazar Araştırmaları Dergisi, 20, 155-177.
36. Haythornthwaite, C. A. & Wellman, B. (Ed.) (2002). The internet in everyday life, Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
37. İlhan, S. (2013). Akışkan toplumda kimlik inşası: Geçişken, eklektik, ben odaklı kimlikler. Fırat Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 23 (2), 233-246.
38. Kaplan, A.M. & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53 (1), 59-68.
39. Karaduman, S. (2010). Modernizmden postmodernizme kimliğin yapısal dönüşümü. Journal of Yasar University, 17 (5), 2886- 2899.
40. Lamberton, C.P. & Rose, R.L. (2012). When is ours better than mine? A framework for understanding and altering participation in commercial sharing systems. Journal of Marketing, 76(7), 109-125.
41. Laroche, M., J. Bergeron & Goutaland, C. (2001). A three-dimensional scale of intangibility. Journal of Service Research, 4 (1), 26-38.
42. Lawson, S. J., M. R. Gleim, R. Perren & J. Hwang (2016). Freedom from ownership: An exploration of access-based consumption. Journal of Business Research, 69 (8), 2615-623.
43. Lillemose, J. (2006). Conceptual transformations of art: from dematerialization of the object to immateriality in networks. In J. Krysa (Ed.), Curating Immateriality: The work of the curator in the age of network systems, New York: Autonomedia, 113-35.
44. Magaudda, P. (2011). When materiality ‘bites back’: Digital music consumption practices in the age of dematerialization, Journal of Consumer Culture, 11 (1), 15-36.
45. Marcoux, J. S. (2009). Escaping the gift economy, Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (4), 671-85.
46. Matzler, K., Veider, V. & Kathan, W. (2015). Adapting to the sharing economy, MIT Sloan Management Review, 56 (2): 71- 77.
47. McCracken, G. (1986). Culture and consumption: A theoretical account of the structure and movement of the cultural meaning of consumer goods. Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (June), 71–84.
48. McLuhan, M. & Powers, B. R. (2001). The global village: Transformations in world life and media in the 21st century (communication and society), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
49. Möhlmann, M. (2015). Collaborative consumption: Determinants of satisfaction and the likelihood of using a sharing economy option again. Journal of Consumer Behavior, 14(3), 193-207.
50. Molz, J.G. (2012). CouchSurfing and network hospitality: It’s not just about the furniture. Hospitality and Society, 1(3), 215–225.
51. Muniz, A.M. and O’Guinn, T.C. (2001). Brand community, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 412-432.
52. Osbourne, H. (2015). Generation rent: The housing ladder starts to collapse for those under 40. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jul/22/pwc-report-generation-rent-to-grow-over-next-decade
53. Ozanne, L.K. & Ballantine, P.W. (2010). Sharing as a form of anti-consumption? An examination of toy library users. Journal of Consumer Behavior, 9(6), 485-498.
54. Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites, New York: Routledge.
55. Pine, B. J. & Gilmore, J. H. (2011). The experience economy: Work is a theatre and every business a stage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.
56. Poder, P. (2013). Relatively liquid interpersonal relationships in flexible work life. In A. Elliott (Ed.), The contemporary Bauman (pp. 136-153). London, UK: Routledge.
57. Rifkin, J. (2014). The zero marginal cost society, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
58. Rindfleisch, A., Burroughs, J. E. & Wong, N. (2009). The safety of objects: Materialism, existential insecurity, and brand connection. Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (1), 1-16.
59. Ritzer, G. (2010). Sociological theory. New York: McGrawHill
60. Ritzer, G. & Rey, P. J. (2016). From ‘solid’ producers and consumers to ‘liquid’ prosumers. In M. Davis (Ed.), Liquid sociology: Metaphor in Zygmunt Bauman’s analysis of modernity (pp. 157-76) New York: Routledge
61. Rosen, D., Lafontaine, P.R., & Hendrickson, B. (2011). CouchSurfing: Belonging and trust in a globally cooperative online social network. New Media and Society, 13(6), 981–998.
62. Schau, H. J. (1998). Discourse of possessions: The metatheory of Russell W. Belk. Advances in Consumer Research, 37-44.
63. Schemberi, S., Merrilees, B., & Kristiansen, S. (2010). Brand consumption and narrative of the self. Psychology and Marketing, 27 (6), 623-638.
64. Schouten, J. H. & McAlexander, J. A. (1995). Subcultures of consumption: An ethnography of the new bikers. Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (June), 43- 61.
65. Shaheen, S., Chan N., Bansal, A. & Cohen A. (2015). Shared mobility: Definitions, industry developments, and early understanding. Retrieved from http://innovativemobility.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/SharedMobility_WhitePaper_FINAL.pdf
66. Shankar, A., & Fitchett, J. A. (2002). Having, being and consumption. Journal of Marketing Management, 18, 501-516.
67. Shankar, A., Elliot, R., & Goulding, C. (2001). Understanding consumption: Contributions from a narrative perspective. Journal of Marketing Management, 17, 429-453.
68. Turkle S. (1998). At heart of a cyberstudy, the human essence. The NY Times, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/18/technology/at-heart-of-a-cyberstudy-the-human-essence.html
69. Weismann, J. (2012). Why don’t young Americans buy cars? The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont-young-americans-buy-cars/255001/
70. Weiss, L. & Johar, G. V. (2016). Products as self-evaluation standards: When owned and unowned products have opposite effects on self-judgement. Journal of Consumer Research, 42 (6).
71. Zwick, D. & Bradshaw, A. (2016). Biopolitical marketing and social media brand communities. Theory, Culture and Society, 33 (5).