Wine and cheese or Chuck E. Cheese: social class and consumer behavior

Varied economic classes are normal and nothing out of the ordinary for a capitalistic economy. What is most interesting, however, is how social classes are formed.

Of course there are going to be people who live in different income groups in this country. Somewhere along the way we broke these groups down into lower-class, middle-class, and upper-class.

Just like race, social class is the result of a created system where people categorize themselves or others.

Social class defines the culture and way of life for individuals in certain income categories. Social class tries to predict what certain people do for fun, what they wear, who they hang out with and even what kind of bread they purchase (this one in particular will be discussed later). Social class is a structure people live by according to their economic situation. It is a way for others to identify what their financial status may be.

In my journalism 4250 class, we watched a documentary on social class. People from various upbringings spoke about their behaviors and ways of life.

Much of the documentary featured consumer behavior. An upscale kitchen appliance store was featured at the beginning of the film. One man spoke about some of the brand names and labels on cooking oils. The man said people belonging to higher social classes will be more likely to buy something when it has a fancy sounding Italian name on the bottle, even if they don’t know what it says. The reason behind this, the man explained, is to make them appear more sophisticated or wealthy.

Consumer behavior goes both ways. A food shelter employee in the film received boxes of sourdough buns to give out to needy families and individuals. He said he could not get rid of them because the people who came to the food shelter preferred regular white bread over the sourdough buns. The documentary gave a statistic which showed a strong link between lower-class families purchasing white bread over wheat bread.

Social class is impactful. This was shown in those two examples. Social class influences how we act and what we choose to buy. There are underlying reasons for why an individual may want to buy a bottle of olive oil with an Italian name on it even if the price is significantly higher. Multiple reasons exist as to why we may follow the norms of our social classes. Maybe we want to fit in. Maybe it’s what we were born into and all we know.

For whatever reason we live within our social classes, it gives us an identity and is alive and well in our society.

 

Picture: http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/the-health-benefits-of-olive-oil-ga-4.jpg