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Changing buying habits

Brands, Consumer, Symbols & Research by Sidney J. Levy

Publishers: Sage, Thousand Oaks

Price: Not mentioned.

IN this the author using Amphisbaena as a symbolic representation says, ``to symbolise our time-ranging awareness and the consequent complexities of our life and the study of them, I chose mythic animal, the amphisbaena. It is a legendary two headed crea ture that stand for our ability to look in all directions, to see where we have been and where we are going.''

The Amphisbaena is an animal and the keeper of the `Great Secret', according to a 16th century Italian manuscript, which belonged to Count Pierre V. Piobb. It is a symbol, which occurs with some frequency in heraldic images, marks and signs. It was known to the Greeks, and it owes its name to the belief that, having a head at both ends, it could move forward or backward with equal ease. Sometimes it is depicted with the claws of a bird and the pointed wings of a bat. (Piobb, 1950). Like all mythical ani mals, it exhibits the ability of the human mind to reorder aspects of the real world, according to supra-logical laws, blending them into patterns expressive of man's motivating psychic forces.

Brands, Consumer, Symbols & Research is a collection of 54 articles written in the course of lifetime of the author, the first article having appeared in 1955. Editor of the book Dennis W. Rook, has divided this book into six sections: A Life in the mark etplace; Marketing; Products and brands; The symbolic nature of marketing; Consumer analyses and observation and Qualitative methods of marketing study.

Just as our style of living is segmented by social status, if you look around, we recognise the extension of the social segmentation to everything around us. Not long ago apples were considered as a rich man's fruit, so also vegetables such as radish, ca bbage, brinjal, etc. were preferred by the middle class.

Levy points out modern preferences in that while we grab a can of fresh orange juice as an essential grocery purchase, fresh oranges which are neatly-God-packaged juice, is not so much sought after. The book is full of similar interesting observations.

According to Levy, ``Consumers, generally strive by various methods to elevate themselves toward being less animal and more human. Consumers gain greater distance from `private' eating, drinking, dressing and housing by getting older and more sophisticat ed and by gaining higher status. Their experiences become less spontaneous and more ritualistic, more intellectual and deliberate; they read about doing things rather than doing them, or they do them with flair and imaginative elaboration.'' Levy while s uggesting that smoking might be an aberrant kind of eating continues, ``Putting cigarettes in one's mouth is an odd form of ingestion and inhalation. On the one hand, to smoke is a strange and singularly human thing to invent doing, while also being crud e, dangerous, and physiologically enslaving. Its symbolism is engaging, elaborated early in its history with ideas of mysticism, spirit life, and peace pipe; and later as being sophisticated and virile. High status cigarettes were made longer, tipped, an d filtered to show one's distance from the base tobacco and fire. Handling burning cigarettes is also a subtle kind of violence, shown in the movies of 1930s and 1940s as elegant and mannered, part of a tradition that says violence in entertainment is ok ay if it is esthetically and exquisitely portrayed by a director and intense actors such as Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart.

In the film Smoke, smoke seems life, the human soul made visible, as the actors struggle with the implacable vicissitudes of life. Now, our society has turned against smoking as part of a wave of virtue enhancement and an obsession with health and fitnes s that is inconceivable in any other species (except perhaps for fastidious cats).''

As a reviewer I recommend that this 600-page book should be on the desk of every advertising and marketing professional, personality management teacher, research scientist, and those in the manufacturing segment. Levy's lifetime experience in experimenta tion is ably compiled Dennis W. Rook who is a professor of Clinical Marketing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

I found this book often heavy for reading, even though written in non-technical English. One has to reread several passages to fully understand and appreciate the meaning implied by the author.

We live in a country where the social system till recently was based on the profession or the responsibility of a group of people. Similarly today's society is also stratified by marketing personnel on the basis of purchasing power. And surprisingly the author brings out the fact that preferences of the consumers straddle across several social segments. This naturally, stratifies the society, which is somewhat similar to the Indian system of societal segmentation. In early Indian society it was referred to as the caste system; now Levy's segmentation calls it the social system based on money power or purchase power.

Levy points out what are common and what we commonly take for granted, such as consumer preferences, physiology of buyers, social needs etc. One recognises the truth. The truth is that groups of people, depending on who they are where they live, how they live, what kind of education they have, what kind of knowledge they posses, what kinds of desires and aspirations they have, make important buying decisions.

Therefore, entire buying decisions including commonly used commodities such as rice, wheat or edible oil depends on the social status of the consumer and their brand preference. It is not surprising that Levy points out that aspirations of the consumers to improve their social status is recognised by the changing buying habits of the people.

For example, a person once buying unpackaged tea because he can afford only a small quantity, graduates to buying packaged tea. At that point, he is psychologically motivated to believe that he has `arrived' at a higher strata of society. The same group of consumers, when they buy a premium package tea believe that they `arrived further' in the society.

The behavioral pattern of consumers depends on their aspirations to reach higher and higher social status in the society. Paradoxically, the Western society segments the physical body, the social behaviors and mental state of consumers, on their ability to spend more and more money. For the same economic segmentation of the consumers, but named differently, we fight and quarrel and make a political issue of similar segmentation in our society.

This book in sum consists of profound writing which gently exposes every aspect of consumer behavior.

R. Desikan

The reviewer is former Chairman, Fedcot.