Chapter 7 consumers

South Africa - where non-store retailing accounts for half of the country’s infor­mal economy and provides employment for an estimated 900,000-1,200,000

Figure 7.9 Informal retailing: (a) street vendors in Hanoi, Vietnam and (b) a spaza shop in Cape Town, South Africa Source: the authors.

provides a compelling case study of informal retailing. There are two P⁰⁰'¹1 ._)tj_{s ()}j informal retail in South Africa: street traders who sell goods such as ^01:11 (' tuffs handicrafts, anti traditional herbs either in temporary markets or at *°^lU|^S sites in the street; and home-based enterprises that sell a wide range of -)_s - including cooked foods, cakes, sweets and snacks, clothes, fruit and vege- jewellery, furniture, live chickens, crafts, paraffin, and cosmetics - and are _;1S spazas or tuck shops in the South African context (see Figure 7.9b). The I _e|._irj_vc importance of these two kinds of informal retailers varies between differ­ent places. In the inner city of Johannesburg and Durban, for example, street trad­ers dominate, while in township areas spazas are the most common form of operation- Different forms of regulation have been implemented across South Africa in response to the continued prevalence of informal retailing. In Johannesburg, lor city leaders the estimated 8,000-10,000 street traders sit uneasily with the stated goal of being an established world city by 2030. Markets have been con­structed to try to concentrate traders in particular areas, but the policy has been largely unsuccessful due to the out-of-the-way locations chosen for the markets.

In Cape Town, an arguably more progressive approach has been adopted in which spazas have been targeted for business support in an effort to make them more efficient and sustainable small businesses. The regulatory approach also changes through time. For example, since 2000, Durban has had an informal economy policy that seeks to liaise with, and provide support to, street traders, but in recent years there have been severe police clampdowns on unlicensed trad­ers, a process that is common across many developing world cities (Eidse et al. 2016). It is also important to note that formal and informal retailing are not insulated from one another but rather coexist and compete with each in complex and spatially variable ways. The ongoing formalization of South African retailing and the movement of chain stores into township areas, for example, have put increasing pressure on poorly resourced spazas in certain districts.

To summarize the arguments of this section, retail geographies are restless and continually changing. These changes reflect both the growing size and power of retailers, and wider societal dynamics such as patterns of urban decay/ renewal and the movement of high-income segments of the population. Due to the acute sensitivity of retailing to planning and regulatory conditions, the tim­ing, nature, and extent of change varies substantially between different territo­ries, and from place to place. Moreover, the tangible geographies of stores, and the logistics and distribution systems upon which all forms of retailing depend, increasingly coexist and intersect with a range of online retail spaces. In turn, a variety of informal retail activities and places exist alongside these formal retail operations. The importance of such activities varies geographically: in some contexts they will be relatively insignificant, filling particular market niches in a largely formal retail sector, while in others they form the mainstay of the urban economy, representing the only way for millions of poor urban inhabitants to make a living.

4. 
   Uneven Geographies of Consumption
   

We now move on to consider how, as consumers, we interact with the evolv' retail geographies outlined above. While these clearly serve to constrain and str'i^ ture our consumption choices, in returning to the sociocultural perspective out lined in Section 7.2, we are reminded that consumers can also usefully be though of as active agents, constantly making informed decisions about which comniodi ties to buy in order to construct their particular identities, or senses-of-self. Thj_s is particularly true of certain kinds of highly visible symbolic goods - such as clothing, jewellery, and cars - that are often taken to signify a certain standing or position within society. Other consumption activities, including the choice of res­taurants, bars, and holiday destinations may be part of the same process. Equally purchases may be used as markers of difference, to indicate a position outside, or towards the margins of, the mainstream of society (e.g. buying a car that runs on vegetable oil or wearing distinctive designs of clothing). In terms of clothing, jew­ellery, make-up, and the like, the body itself becomes a site of inscription through which key elements of individual identity are communicated (see Box 7.4).

KEY CONCEPT

Box 7.4 В our (lieu's cultural capital

in his now famous 1984 book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu outlined a the­ory of cultural capital. His analysis focused on the symbolic value of com­modities and how social differences were produced through the consumption of goods. Based on a study of class-based distinction in 1960s French soci­ety, he argued that an individual’s position in society was linked to certain forms of consumption practices and processes of self-identification relat­ing, for example, to the arts, education, cuisine, and fashion. From this perspective, social difference or‘distinction’ was based less on wealth itself, and more on the ability of different groups to display wealth through investing in symbolic goods. Hence, dominant fractions of society derived their status and prestige from their ownership of cultural or symbolic capi­tal. Cultural capital, in turn, was conferred through the ability to imple­ment judgement or taste with relation to the consumption of commodities (e.g. what is fashionable or what constitutes a high-quality bottle of wine). For Bourdieu, education was critical to the acquisition of cultural capital and the distinctions between different social groupings. These distinctions were seen to be reproduced through routinized and often unconscious

I ,^1 p_racriccs which Bourdieu termed ‘habitus’. Overall, his work has Iaade a crucial contribution to consumption research by linking the soci- 'tal position® of groups and individuals to the symbolic meanings of the grioiis commodities chat they consume. Moreover, Bourdieu’s emphasis ,ii the importance of local social context has made his work particularly appealing to geographers.

These dynamics exhibit very uneven geographies, however, as we explore in the Hollowing two sections. First, we look at how the ability to engage in symbolic consumption is far from ubiquitous across the world. Second, we explore how i'COBSUinption processes are inevitably place-specific and how those places, in turn, niaybe be influenced by transnational connections of different kinds.

Segmented Spatial Patterns of Consumption

It is important to appreciate that the ability of consumers to engage in symbolic forms of consumption varies hugely, both socially and spatially. Socially, it may only be certain groups within the population, and particularly middle- and upper- class consumers with the necessary disposable income, that choose to take part in symbolic consumption. Spatially, such consumption will be more widespread in wealthy countries than in poorer countries, where simply meeting basic needs requirements (water, food, shelter, etc.) may be the only priority. Even within wealthier countries, poor urban or rural dwellers with low-income levels, limited local retail provision, and poor access to transportation may effectively be excluded from the consumption of symbolic goods. These factors intersect to cre­ate a segmented spatial pattern of consumer types.

At the risk of simplification, it is perhaps useful to think of three broad groups of consumers that are unevenly distributed across the global economy. First, we can profile a high-end, luxury segment involving an estimated 330 million consumers worldwide and worth US$1.1 trillion in 2014 (data from Economist 2014a). After luxury cars (US$440 billion), the next biggest seg­ment was branded personal luxury goods (US$280 billion) such as accessories, clothing, jewellery, watches, and perfume. Purchases of these goods are driving the rapid growth of European luxury firms such as LVMH (owner of the Louis Vitton and Bulgari brands, among others), Richemont (Cartier and Piaget), and Kering (Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent). LVMFI, for example, accrued US$50 billion of revenues in 2017, while Europe as a whole exported US$400 billion worth of personal luxury foods, accounting for 17 per cent of total goods exports. After the United States - by far the largest market for these goods - Asia is home to the most rapidly expanding national markets for these goods, namely China, Japan, and South Korea. Two-thirds of China’s purchases of

US$19 billion in 2014 were actually made abroad as Chinese consumers son l-1 lower prices, greater choice, assurance of non-counterfeit goods, and were ab| to benefit from burgeoning cross-border e-commerce flows. At the global l_ey|| then, consumption of ‘cultural capital’ goods is expanding and its geography are shifting.

Second, the emerging middle class we introduced in Box 3.2 is a disparate group Towards the higher income end of the range, it clearly overlaps with the luxury consumption we have just described. The bulk, however, may exhibit different con-! sumer preferences, with price being an overwhelming consideration, and produce variation mattering less. Thus, while millions are reaching broad middle-class sta­tus, they do not yet have the same levels of income as their counterparts in more developed economies and price sensitivity remains of paramount importance. [_n such contexts, the product differentiation (i.e. highly priced products based on vari­ety and quality) characteristic of post-Fordist consumption in developed markets (see Table 7.1) gives way to Fordist-style product commodification (i.e. standard­ized, low-cost products based on mass production). The potential of tapping the consumer power of the newly emerging consumer class has been popularized through the notion of the ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ (see Box 7.5). The commodification and standardization of existing goods to push down prices is often led by developing country firms. For instance, the Indian consumer electronics company Videocon has pioneered low-cost washing machine models attuned to the needs of the Indian consumer; for example, they automatically finish the wash cycle after a power outage, and they do not have a drying option as it is not required in India’s climate. Cheap netbook computers are another emerging market innovation. These market conditions can be challenging for foreign transnational corporations who have to learn how to reformulate their goods and services to meet the specific needs of such markets. Such markets are, however, central to the global expansion plans of consumer goods giants Proctor & Gamble and Unilever.

Third, and very importantly, we can think about low-income consumers whose consumption practices are dominated by meeting basic needs on a daily basis. While poverty levels have fallen significantly at the global scale over the past two decades, it is salutary to note that estimates suggest that some two-thirds of the world's population earn less than US$10 per day and are therefore deemed to be ‘low income’, while 10 per cent earn less than the international poverty line of US$ 1.90 a day (half of this latter category reside in sub-Saharan Africa). In short, the majority of the world's consumers are со a greater or lesser extent excluded from many consumption practices and yet they are not often the focus of investiga­tion. As the economic geographer Eric Sheppard (2016: 57-58) powerfully states, for many ‘consumption is dominated by...a politics of necessity and desperation as much as identity and choice. Our understanding of these aspects remains impover­ished’. Overall, we clearly need to recognize the profound social and spatial varia­tion in the degree of consumer agency with respect to identity formation.

KEY CONCEPT

Box 7.5 Bottom of pyramid markets

The notion of rhe market at the bottom (or base) of the pyramid (BoP) was first pi^|r forward by business scholars C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart in the late 1990^s ‘^uu* ^was popularized in the early-to-mid 2000s. In their initial formulation, they made the simple yet powerful observation that 4 billion people were living outside the global market system (the figure is undoubt­edly much lower now) and that they offered huge untapped market potential for global businesses. Investing in the specific requirements of these markers was argued to offer different sources of opportunity for TNCs: some BoP markers are huge in their own right (e.g. India); local innovations could be transferred to other BoP markers; some BoP innovations could be transfer­able ro developed markets; and there might be management lessons that benefit the firm as a whole. Prahalad (2005) argued that the key to success lay not simply in ‘tweaking’ global products and services, bur in really understanding the needs of low-income consumers. One often-quoted example is how Hindustan Unilever Limited (Unilever’s Indian subsidiary) responded to local competitor Nirma in developing an eco-friendly washing detergent (called ‘Wheel’) that suited an Indian market with low water availability. Importantly, this process involved not just reworking the prod­uct itself but also adopting a more decentralized and labour-intensive production and distribution system. The lessons from India were, in turn, transferred to other markets - for example, sales of’Ala’ detergent in Brazil. While the theory originated in the domain of business strategy, it has subse­quently become part of a wider debate about the extent to which market mechanisms can be used to lift people out of low income and poverty situations.

Consumption in and Across Places

In addition to these geographic patterns of consumer segmentation, the nature of the relationship between consumption and identity works out differently in differ­ent places - in other words, it is place-specific. Put another way, even within the same types of consumer identified above, there will be great place-to-place varia­tion in their consumption practices (e.g. luxury consumers in China versus Italy, or BoP consumers in India versus Nigeria). This is because of the social and cultural specificity of consumption practices such as shopping and eating. This variation will reflect the intersections of a consumer’s unique individuality, their

membership of particular groups in society (e.g. youth or ethnic cultures) their position within particular regional or national cultures.

Consumer preferences always emerge in a particular geographical cont therefore, and are heavily conditioned by interpersonal networks and soeietj norms. Think, for example, of a basic cosmetic product such as lipstick - the nia ket for which is worth an estimated US$8 billion each year. What it means to _US(. lipstick is clearly associated with certain gender and age norms but also varies geographically as different forms of‘youthful feminities’ are created in different societal contexts. In the West, lipstick resonates with a well-established ‘beauty myth’, propagated through media and advertising circuits, that sustains a huge and highly profitable cosmetics industry. In central and eastern Europe, lipstick may indicate different forms of female participation in ‘capitalist’ labour markets after the collapse of state socialism. In the Middle East, wearing lipstick may be a marker of rebellion against prevailing social norms. In cities across China, lipstick may signify participation in a globalized form of urban modernity associated with a broad range of conspicuous consumption practices. In contexts like the Philippines, it may infer a post-colonial desire to achieve certain attributes of ‘whiteness’. What these examples suggest is that even if the lipstick is produced by the same cosmetics firm, its use as a bodily marker carries high variable meanings across different social contexts as ‘young women appropriate, adapt and subvert globally marketed versions of femininity’ (Kehily and Nayak 2008: 339).

Further mobilizing a sociocultural perspective on consumption, we can start to reinterpret shopping, a seemingly routine and everyday activity that was implic­itly an integral part of our earlier discussion of retailing. Shopping is clearly much more than a robotic response to the stimuli provided by retailers and shopping mall designers. Instead, it can be thought of as a culturally and societally specific set of practices. Shopping is a social activity as well as a simple exchange of com­modities, entailing, for example, interaction with shop workers, and discussions with friends about the relative merits of products both before, and after, the act of purchase. Social relations within the family are particularly important, as many purchases are made for other members of the family group. Consumers may also make decisions in the context of wider societal forces. In Japan, for instance, there is a very strong and long-standing preference for foreign brands. In China, how­ever, while foreign brands do well in segments introduced from outside (e.g. chew­ing gum and chocolate), that have heritage appeal (e.g. premium cars and luxury goods), and where local brands are nor trusted (e.g. powdered baby milk), for many other products local brands are strong competitors. Brand allegiances are quite volatile, and consumers partake in frequent ‘brand-hopping’ (Economist 2014b: for more on the geographies of branding, see Box 7.6). Consumers may also be influenced by debates concerning what might constitute ‘ethical’ or ‘envi­ronmentally responsible’ consumption (we will return to this topic in Chapter 14). Putting together these various elements, we can see that not all consumers will readily succumb to the ‘magic of the mall’ (Box 7.3) and other retail spaces.

FURTHER THINKING

Box 7.6 Geographies of branding

Branding seeks to add value to goods and services by linking positive associations to the brand name - for example, to do with quality, style, reliability» sophistication, or design - and thereby cultivating customer loyalty to that brand. Branding is a nonmaterial, creative element of the broader production process that seeks to differentiate products and services from those of competitors and make them more meaningful to consumers, in turn allowing firms to charge a premium. Branding often works through the use of symbols such as logos - think of Apple’s iconic logo, Coca-Cola’s swirling script, or Nike’s ‘swoosh’ - and/or people, for example, Lionel Messi (soccer) or Roger Federer (tennis). Recent research, however, has demon­strated how branding processes are also always geographical in nature.

Most importantly, branding has strong connections to the geographical origins of the goods and services in question, a process broadly known as origination. This is most often seen in terms of links to the country of origin, which may be either explicit - for example, Singapore Airlines or Nippon Steel - or implicit, for example, the ‘German’ quality and efficiency inherent in brands such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Equally, however, the geo­graphical component of branding may operate on other spatial scales such as the regional (Scottish whisky and Californian wine) or the local (Newcastle Brown Ale, Parmigiano Reggiano, and Beefeater Gin). Emphasizing the geographical origins of the product and associated qualities becomes an integral part of the brand-building process. The attachments created can be with a range of different elements of the ‘home’ environment: economic (e.g. Japanese design and innovation - Sony), social (e.g. Scandinavian design — IKEA), political (e.g. Swiss neutrality and discretion - Credit Suisse), cultural (e.g. Italian style and design - Prada), or ecological (e.g. small-town values and environmental commitment - Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). Branding processes are also highly geographical in the sense that they are unevenly implemented in social and spatial terms. Brands require a degree of adaptation to different consumer cultures, and some­times branding will be about trying to weaken the geographical associations the brand conveys (e.g. McDonalds’ links to unhealthy American fast food culture). It can also be argued that by spatially targeting brands at differen­tiated groups of consumers in different places, for example, promoting luxury brands to rich enclaves within global cities, branding processes actu­ally serve to reinforce patterns of uneven economic development. For more on the multiple geographies of branding, see Pike (2011,2015).

Instead, they will strategically and knowingly use them to undertake their ing consumption practices in ways that are highly geographically specific At the same time, while processes of identify construction predominantly _t place within local consumption cultures, we must not fall into the trap of _rc 'i ^ those cultures in static terms. Places are increasingly open to influences transmj J through transnational connections. Television, film, and new media technologic I for instance, form part of global circuits of culture that circulate a wide range f images about norms and aspirations of consumption. Consumption processes ■ also shaped, however, by links forged through migration and diasporic connec­tions. London and Mumbai, for example, are part of a transnational British-Asian domain of fashion that is constituted by intense exchanges of people, informal* images, commodities, and capital and which has been shaped by a long history of colonial and post-colonial relations (drawing on Jackson et al. 2007), These inter­connections serve to blur what is understood as authentic‘British’ or‘Indian’ fash­ion as a variety of hybrid forms of clothing emerge. These hybrid fashions are interpreted locally in both London and Mumbai, and those interpretations vary across consumers of different ages, genders, occupations, and educational level. The transnational domain should not be read, therefore, through simplistic notions about the Westernization of Asian’ dress or the imposition of a Western ‘moder­nity’. Instead, processes of change are spatially and socially uneven in both London and Mumbai. Indian consumers in Mumbai can resist or even reverse the com­monly assumed contrast between ‘Western’ modernity and‘Eastern’ tradition, with Mumbai being seen as a fast-paced consumption arena open to a broad range of global influences and with wide-ranging consumer choice. University students in Mumbai may feel that their overseas cousins are ‘behind’ in terms of dress because of the pace of change in Mumbai’s fashion circles. Equally, British-Asian students living in the United Kingdom may perceive themselves to be lagging the trends being set in Mumbai through, for example, the Bollywood film industry, itself an increasingly global cultural form. Overall, the persistent‘localness’ of consumption cultures should not obscure the ways in which places and their associated local cultures are increasingly interconnected transnationally.

5. 
   Consuming Places: Travel and Tourism
   

In Section 7.4, we looked at the ways in which consumption processes are given a distinctive‘flavour’ by the interconnected places in which they occur. But there is another angle we can take here, namely recognizing that a significant propor­tion of consumption activity is actually concerned with the consumption of places themselves. Tourism is centrally about the generation of different kinds of pleasurable and/or memorable in-place experiences. Tourist experiences are often about the combination of tangible elements (e.g. hotel and flight) and intangible experiential elements (e.g. sunset and mood). Tourism is a huge

accounting for an estimated 7 per cent of world exports, 10 per cent | | in |() jobs-and is increasingly global in scope. International tour- Is have grown strongly in recent decades, rising from 435 million in is^f ‘"^rlV 75 million in 2000, 950 million in 2010 and 1,235 million in 2016 ^{| l}' figures include business travellers). Table 7.4 charts the top 10 destination _countries for international tourists in revenue terms, with the United ^,IK _s Spain, and Thailand being the biggest recipients of international tourist while China, the United States, and Germany are the biggest sources. ,-ise of Chinese tourist expenditure has been especially spectacular: while in »i)]0 Chinese tourists spent US$54.9 billion overseas, or 6 per cent of the global I in 2016 it had rocketed to US$261.1 billion, an astounding 21 per cent of STtial (all data from UNWTO 2017).

Rut how have tourism, and the kinds of places it involves, evolved over time? JLrge-scale tourism dates to the second half of the nineteenth century, when first the middle classes and then the working classes in countries such as the United Kingdom took advantage of social change and improvements in transport to travel to coastal resorts, such as Blackpool and Southend, for rest and relaxation. International tourism flourished from the 1950s onwards, driven by increased disposable incomes and leisure time in developed countries, the rise of airline travel, and the entry of transnational corporations into the industry in areas such as hotels and travel agencies, thereby increasing the availability and affordability of so-called ‘package’ holidays combining travel, accommodation, and other tour­ist services. The 1960s and 1970s were the golden era of international mass tourism in Europe in particular, with large numbers of consumers purchasing standardized products. This period of strong growth was associated with the

Table 7.4 International tourism receipts and expenditure - top 10 countries in 2016

Rank	Country of destination	2016 receipts (US$bn)	Country of origin	2016 expenditure (US$bn)
1	USA	205.9	China	261.1
2	Spain	60.3	USA	123.6
3	Thailand	49.9	Germany	79.8
4	China	44.4	UK	63.6
5	France	42.5	France	40.5
6	Italy	40.2	Canada	29.1
7	UI<	39.6	South Korea	26.6
8	Germany	37.4	Italy	25.0
9	Hong Kong	32.9	Australia	24.9
10	Australia	32.4	Hong Kong	24.2