Consumer Behavior Models

List of Contributors

Conspicuous Consumption Approach: “Veblen’s Consumption Model”

Introduction

It is normal that individuals consume to fulfill their needs as much as they have needs to maintain their lives. The tendencies in consumption tried to be determined through a large number of scientific researches on the drives which affect the consumer behaviors, how the consumers react against messages and what their consumption patterns and habits are. These models are called traditional and modern consumer behaviors.

“Veblen Model”, which takes place among traditional consumer behavior models and which is the subject of this paper, deals with conspicuous consumption and attempts to define the behaviors of consumers. In his 1899 research, Veblen evaluated the consumer behaviors in the context of conspicuous consumption and he has presented many discussions and scientific researches on the model in the course of time. This study aims to present the features of Veblen’s model.

Although there are researches available on this subject, the aims of this research includes the following approach stated by Güleç (2015: 2) as; “Although Veblen explains the concept of “conspicuous consumption” very clearly with examples, the examples given by the philosopher are related to American lifestyle and culture. It is obvious that since the period Veblen lived, the world of society in general and more specifically the world of consumption have changed dramatically. However, to gain a perspective about the overconsumption of today, repeating Veblen’s ideas is an important reference point. Because, with the economic, cultural and technological changes came along with globalization, a period that changed the lives of people and will concern the whole humanity has begun and consumption has spread all over the world. It is possible to say that the world has become a global market place with the global marketing and exportation of communication, information technologies, media, tourism and popular culture. At this point, individuals have started to be interested in not only the products themselves but also the charming images and symbols of the products and started to consume more and conspicuously”.

Veblen’s research on the concept of conspicuous consumption focuses on new lifestyles. In the study, these new lifestyles are defined as a consumption chain. The chain rings are entertainment styles, clothes, ornaments and other ←13 | 14→similar types of shopping. By all means, consumption has become an important act for people in historical process. However, since the beginning of modern period, consumption has been a tool of individual expression, an indicator of social status and a way of gaining ground. Veblen has conducted a research about rich individuals who are a part of the group in which people try to show that they are different than the others, and according to the results he reached, he revealed that these individuals are imitating the European aristocrats. So, he has highlighted that, this emulative consumption of the rich part of the society is a way of expressing oneself and is in the shape of “conspicuous consumption”. In this context, the conspicuous consumption theory has developed in a similar way with the emergence of a class which “does not use their time effectively and productively” (Turan at al., 2015: 185).

Thorstein Bunde Veblen was born in Wisconsin, U.S.A. He is the son of a farmer family who newly immigrated from Norway to America and was living in a small rural town in Wisconsin. Veblen studied in Northfield, Carleton College Academy in Minnesota. He attended to and was influenced a lot by the classes of John Bates Clark (1947–1938), who was at the beginning of his academic career and would be famous as a neo-classical economist. After his graduation, he studied economics in Johns Hopkins University and Yale University and in 1884, he got his Ph.D., presenting his dissertation in Yale University. Until 1891, he could not find a position at the university and lived in his family’s farm and at that year, he started his job in Cornell University as a lecturer. He got his first academic job and title (as associate professor in 1900) in newly founded Chicago University. While working there, he did the editorship of “Journal of Political Economy”, which was a famous academic economics magazine and published his books The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), which criticize businessmen. As the ideologists did not like him due to his critical approach to businessmen and private businesses and his ←14 | 15→inappropriate domestic life, he left the university in 1911 and started to work in University of Missouri. During this period, he was continually subjected to criticisms and ridicules of ideologists in and out of the university. Because of those reactions, he left his job in 1918 and went to New York. He started to work as the editor of The Dial, which was an influential magazine in New York and from 1919 to 1926, he contributed a great deal to the foundation and development of a university called “New School for Social Research”, which is now called New School. During that same period, he published his book entitled “The Engineers and the Price System”, in which he predicted that the Soviet Russia revolution was done by “engineers” and as a new economic system, “State of Engineers” would be founded. He contributed in the developments like organizations of “Technology Alliance” and “Technocracy Movement”, which promote the development of those ideas. Veblen started to live in seclusion in his house in California in 1927 and he died in 1929, before the break out of great depression which he had predicted well in advance (Web_1).