Shopping, Place and Identity

Citation

Moore, C.M. (2000), "Shopping, Place and Identity", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 1003-1006. https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm.2000.34.8.1003.2

This text is not so much a tale of two cities, but is instead the story of two shopping centres; Brent Cross Shopping Centre and Wood Green Shopping City, both located within London. But in the similar Dickensian tradition, the setting of the two shopping centres, while important to the story, serves more as a backdrop to an exploration of the diverse and contested meaning of these shopping places and their relationship to the identity of those who shop there. The book is the product of an ESRC‐funded study undertaken in the period 1993‐1996, and the essence of the book’s argument is that shopping does not merely reproduce personal and collective social identities that are forged elsewhere, but instead provides an active and independent component of personal and social identity construction. As such, through the grounded understanding of consumption in the lives of ordinary customers, this text provides a lucid, rigorous and, dare I say, entertaining account of the social meaning and significance of shopping and of the formalised places of shopping, (in this case, the two shopping centres), within contemporary British society. Bringing together the varied perspectives and research methodologies of anthropology, sociology, economics and geography, the text offers an important and much needed extra dimension to the study of retailing, in that it is less to do with analysing the act of shopping but instead is concerned with understanding the meaning both of the shopping act and context.

The study’s theoretical context is drawn from the literature on consumption and one chapter provides a competent account of the evolution of the theories of consumption; from the theorists, Bocock, and Bowlby, to contemporary commentators, including Campbell and Slater. The contribution here is the consideration of the shopping mall’s role in the creation and projection of self‐identity. The mall maketh the man, (or women), as it were.

As is common and apparently expected in such texts, a full consideration is given to the various data collection techniques adopted. While there is little of inherent interest in the reporting and justification of the methodology used, this chapter is nevertheless of value in that it shows at close quarters the benefits of adopting a variety of research methods, (here, in the form of questionnaires and ethnographic observations), not least for the fact that these provide research results of a welcomed depth and richness.

Personally, one chapter in particular, made this book worth the read. Two stores, John Lewis and a coterie of down‐market stores, that merge to be identified and discussed as if these were a single store, and collectively identified as Cheap Jacks, are examined. Here the intent is to show the development of a status hierarchy within which people relate themselves to specific shopping malls and, within which, specific stores. With a prior and fully established sense of class, shops are shown to have become an additional medium through which social classifications are clarified and given further meaning. Shopping at John Lewis in the Brent Cross Shopping Centre enhances many middle class shoppers’ ideological premise about the positive elements of being middle class. The market positioning of John Lewis Department Stores is founded upon explicit rationalism, utilising knowledge and research as part of the process of product selection, and enhanced through the provision of efficient and appropriate service delivered by knowledgeable and effective members of staff. Details of middle class visitors to Brent Cross who only use the John Lewis car park and enter the Centre through John Lewis doors, exhibit the John Lewis consumer’s desire to assert their social positioning. The John Lewis experience, founded upon modernist notions of common sense, rational compromise and functionality, assists the shopper in the objectification of self and the construction of their own possibilities as actual (and potential) members of the middle class.

Polar opposite to the decorum of John Lewis are the “Cheap Jack” stores, housed within Wood Green Shopping City. Stock selection for these stores is based upon the cheapness of the stock, and as such, the ranges typically comprise of plastic photograph frames, plastic flowers and plastic anything, presented in a primitive way. The Cheap Jacks are a world apart from John Lewis stores, and serve, in fact, as a parody of the department store. The values of John Lewis are inverted: John Lewis has stability and order, the “Cheap Jack” stores survive on chaos, transience and a lack of order. While John Lewis offers not the cheapest but always the best price, the “Cheap Jack” always offers the cheapest price, but not necessarily the best value price. And where John Lewis is characterised by spaciousness and good light and ventilation, the “Cheap Jack” equivalent is dark, crammed and uncomfortable. Like the lives of their customers, the “Cheap Jack” is based upon unpredictability, instability and uncertainty.

However, while a clear sense of the identity and values of the John Lewis customer clearly emerges in the narrative, the authors do not provide as clear an insight into the values, attitudes and experiences of the “Cheap Jack” shoppers, and as such the final account is one‐sided, middle‐class centred and somewhat unbalanced. The economic condition of the “Cheap Jack” shoppers inevitably limits their access to product choice, competitive pricing and assured product quality. In effect, their exclusion from John Lewis serves as an allegory of the wider social and economic exclusion that these must face. Certainly, this specific dimension is worthy of a fuller research consideration.

Shopping Place and Identity is an eclectic, yet coherent work, and these features serve to illustrate the reality of the activity, meaning and significance of consumption within advanced economies. The text successfully interweaves the shopping mall with the process of consumption and the processes inherent to the constructing of social identity and, perhaps more importantly, the formation of social hierarchy. As such, Shopping, Place and Identity, in the true Dickensian way, shows how social and class distinctions are apparent in the examination of the ordinary, in this case the shopping mall, at once a most complex and mundane construct of modern living.