Tüketim Kültüründe Kadın Bedeninin İdealize Edilmesine Yönelik Kadın Algılamaları ve Tüketim Davranışlarıyla İlişkisi

Bu çalışmanın amacı, tüketim kültüründe kadın bedeninin idealize edilmesine yönelik kadın algılamalarınıtespit etmek ve bu algılamaların tüketim ile ilgili kendi davranışve tutumlarına nasıl yansıdığınıortaya koymaktır. Araştırma için Balıkesir il merkezinde toplamda 422 kadın katılımcıya anket uygulanmıştır. Elde edilen bulgulara göre araştırmaya katılan kadınlar, içinde bulunduğu tüketim kültürü unsurlarının daha zayıf beden yapısınıdayattığıya da özendirdiği yönündeki ifadelere önemli ölçüde katılmaktadır. Ancak bu beden yapısına kavuşmaya ya da sahip olduklarıideal beden yapısınımuhafaza etmeye yönelik tutum ve tüketimle ilgili davranışlara aynıölçüde sahip değillerdir. Buna rağmen, söz konusu algılamalar ile, ilgili tutum ve tüketim davranışlarıarasında pozitif yönlü, anlamlıbir ilişki olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca gelir düzeyi dışında, demografik faktörler itibari ile araştırma ölçeğini oluşturan pek çok ifadede anlamlıdüzeyde farklılıklar gözlenmiştir.

Consumption culture is globalising through media, fashion and advertisements and cause important transformations in cultures of societies with offering definite aesthetic values. Even some socities conserve their own cultural admiration and tastes, in most parts of the world certain aesthetic evalutaions offered by this global culture are well-accepted. These aesthetic evaluations that mostly focus on woman body mostly attribute to more slim body type. Futrthermore, it loads symbolic meanings to all consumer women related to things that they have got or not. More slim body types symbolised and idealised by media and fashion industry convert to measures that all women want to have got and in order to reach this desire; infinite options are presented from diets and sport products to aestehetic surgery to women. On the other hand these women that confront with delicious and high calorie food products presented by same media channels are forced to choose between the taste of eating pleasure and having a slim body. Most authors agreed on the fact that, women that consider their body measures are far from the ideal type are unhappy and their self respect is low. Because, body weight plays an increasing importance in whether she is considered physically attractive. Also, same authors emphasize that women learn from a very early age that spending enormous amounts of time, energy, and money to have a body that idealized by consumption culture. The aim of this study is to determine women perception through idealisation of woman body in consumption culture and determine how this perception reflect to consumption patterns and individual behaviours. It is thought that evidences will serve marketing acdemicians and directors as well as serves to disciplines of sociology, psychology etc. Also, it is expected that it will be a guide for future researchs. Field study was executed in Balıkesir city with 422 women over 17 ages between the periods of December 2009 and February 2010. Five statements used in this study that based on descriptive research model was utilised from Stephen Parker’s et all article of “The Marketing Of Body Image: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of Gender Effects In The U.S. and China”. These are the statements intended to expressions that whether social environment, cultural expectations, media or fashion sector impose an ideal body type to women or not. Other seven statements was formed after a literature survey and focus interview with a group of women formed with maximum sample variety. All expressions were icluded into survey form in 5 step Licert type. These are the expressions that clear whether women are anxious about their form for aesthetic or health reasons and expressions about how they display consumption patterns related to consumption of diet food, utilisation from sports products and services, following up diet programs or postpone shopping. As reliability of the questionnaire form is measured, it is find that cronbach α quotient that aimed to determine paticipators’ perceptions 0.783 and cronbach α quotient of the statements representing the attitudes and behaviours 0.727 are at sufficient reliability levels. Findings of the study are supporting the statement that consumption culture elements like media and fashion impose the slim body type to women. In fact, participators most agree on attitudes like as “Fashion sector adresses mostly on slim women” or “Media advertisements, tv programs, films, pres, internet show favor on slim type women and makes slim women popular”. Nevertheless, participators are seem as anxious about their body types related to health and aesthetic issues but they do not show related consumption patterns in the same extent. Notwithstanding, a positive oriented meaningful relationship is determined between attitudes towards related perceptions and consumption patterns Basic hypothesis in the study is like as; H1 = There is a significant relation between perceptions and consumption behaviours of the respondents through the idealisation of woman body. According to the corelation analysis, relation between attitudes towards related perceptions and consumption patterns was found as positive oriented but relatively weak so, related hypothesis is accepted at the confidence level of 0.01. This result confirms the claim that women are influenced internally from the impositions of consumption culture and reflect this situation to their attitudies and behaviours. It is tried to determine that scale expressions are differntiated with respect to demographic factors. Independent groups t test and ANOVA analiysises are utilised for this reason. According to findings, there are so much expressions that have meaningful differences concerning demographic factors age, marital status, education level, employment status except income factor. Non married, young and working participants more agree to the statement that consumption culture imposes slim bodies than the married, middle aged, non working women and student women. On the other hand this first group exposes less efforts to maintain their body form according to other group. According to education levels, high school graduates participated at most low levels for all scale expressions and differ from other participants of various education levels. Choice of an easy sample for this research makes difficult to make generalisations about the findings. But, this research results will give important ideas to marketing managers and academicians about the subject. In future researchs about the subject, according to socio cultural and economic development of research area, new expressions can be added like “I think to have an aesthetic operation to attain ideal body type” In this respect, it can be possible to reach broad based data. Besides, researchs on different cultures will be helpful to put forward the universality of the findings