association of self identity with consumption of lawn-suiting

1. Association of
Self Identity
with Symbolic
Consumption of
Lawn-Suiting

2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
 To highlight the lawn fashion suits trends.
 To find out the fashion’s influence in creating female consumers’ identity.
 To examine the psychological influences of lawn marketing on females in light of
Self Identity theory.

3. Emerging Fashion Industry of
Lawn Prints in Pakistan
 57% of Pakistan’s population
 Women getting influenced by designers, lavish prints, exhibitions, brand outlets,
catalogues and advertisements
 Influence the consumers’ choices and
decisions about dressing

4. experiencing accelerated growth
the cultural heritage of Pakistan projected by
talented designers.
targeting the youth and catering to their
demands
Continued….

5. What is Brand?
“promise, the big idea, and expectations that reside in
each consumer’s mind about a product, service or
company.”
Central tenet for consumer research: use of brands to
express consumer identity
 Emblems of identity and vehicles for expression for
consumers.

6. Lawn Business
 a large number of international and local apparel brands sprung up all over
Pakistan in last ten years.
 One of the most flourishing segments: Lawn Industry
 Prêt wear brands women
 western-wear, prêt- wear and branded lawn elite and upper-middle
class youth.
 the middle and lower middle class

7. Middle class females: targeted by cloth
manufacturers (industry suffering.. Energy crisis)
Cloth industries producing designs inspired by
elite designer-wear which suits middle class and
lower middle class.

8. a phase of cultural and social change
On the one side, we are witnessing increased religiosity
and on the other fashion industry is re-shaping life styles
Fashion shows in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and to some
extent in Faisalabad

9.  Images on billboards
 women in liberal attire
 men and women posing together comfortably in eastern as well as western
clothing.
 Females from rural and urban areas exposed to current trends through television,
internet and outdoor media
 success of advertising campaigns: brands are gaining more popularity and
business

10.  advertisements stimulate their consumerist instincts
 Try to make an existence in ideological space created by designers, celebrities and
elite class.
 women as consumers of all profiles love to spend on apparel, accessories and
branded clothing, particularly on lawn prints.
 Women follow blindly that stardom, glamour and high status profiles to identify
themselves with all those personals ideologically.
 self-esteem needs, social approval needs, or cognitive consistency needs

11. SELF IDENTITY
THEORY

12.  Tajfel (1979) estimated that the
factions (e.g. social class, family,
football team etc.) which people fit in
are the key foundations of pride and
self-esteem.
 Groups give us a feeling of social
identity with impression of belonging
to the social world. In order to raise
their self-image, people boost the
status of that certain group to which
they belong.

13. For example, England is one of the
best countries on the globe so
English amplify their self-image by
selective thoughts and holding
prejudiced views hostile to the out
group like the Americans; French
etc.
As a result, people have separated
the world into “them” and “us”
owing to a practice of social
classification (i.e. we put people
into social groups).

14. The fundamental
proposition of social identity
theory is that “group
members of an in-group will
seek to find negative aspects
of an out-group, thus
enhancing their self-image”.

15. Tajfel and Turner (1979)
anticipated that there are
three psychological processes
involved in evaluating others
as “us” or “them”.
Categorization
Social identification
Social comparison

16.  The first of all processes
is categorization.
 According to both theorists’ people
categorize things in order to comprehend
them and make sense out of them.
 In a very alike way they categorize people
(including themselves) in order to
understand the social environment like
black, white, Australian, Christian,
Muslim, student, and bus driver etc.

17.  In the succeeding stage, social identification.
 People take on the identity of the group which they
have categorized themselves as belonging to.
 For example one has categorized himself/herself as a
student, then probability he/she will adopt the
personality of a student and begin to perform in the
ways students are supposed to act.

18.  The last stage is social comparison.
 Once categorization is done then people tend to
evaluate that group in comparison to other groups.
This is crucial to understanding prejudgment,
because once two groups recognize themselves as
competitors; they are enforced to struggle for the
members of those groups to maintain their self-
esteem.

19. History Review
• Here we see a fractional review of the historical expansion
of consumption and consumerism.
• It puts forward that the development of consumerism has
been compelled up with the development and illustration of
more individual identities.
• The growth of consumerism was tightly linked to the
industrialization of the economy, creating the larger markets
necessary to sustain high employment.

20. • consumerism is equated with individual freedom.
• But consumption is also implicated in development of identity formation,
social distinction and identification and meaning creation.
• Some authors make a case that these processes are determined by
evolutionary requirement of status and sexual selection.
• Such evolutionary imperatives are perhaps intensified by the ranks of inequity
in modern societies.
• In early stage of consumerism it was obvious that status and identity were
vital.

21. • Stearns
• 18th century consumerism
• as a result of the Enlightenment with its more secular thinking, and the
Romantics praising individualism and beauty.
• This similar array of impacts or feature can be seen in present day.
• A second chapter of the consumerism emerged from 1850 with the
emergence of the Department store, mass production, and the maturity of
mail-order catalogues for distribution, including to rural areas.

22. • By 1900 adverts had changed from describing utility and price
to adopting language such as “tempting, bewitching and
captivating”.
• McIntosh (4) illustrates how advertisers, who learnt from the
successful propaganda efforts during World War 2, skillfully
and determinedly flocked forward consumerism based upon
augmented products, or products that had more than utility.
• He quotes Dichter, who said “To ladies, don’t sell shoes. Sell
them sexy feet.”

23. • It was necessary in the eyes of retailers and manufacturers,
he says, because there was detection of the diminishing
returns of utility of more products.
• Psychological tools were used to drive consumption.
• The implications for marketing and fashion are
indistinguishable.
• Belk (11) describes the historical shift from shared or group
identities to more personal identity.

24. • The rise of individualism, the importance of advertising in pressurizing people
into ever greater consumption, the fostering of consumption as a status
symbol, etc. can all be seen as aspects of the expansionary force of the
capitalist system of wealth construction.
• The individual must attach a high personal desirability to the image.
• While religion and economic status still have a function to play, group
affiliations and identities are potentially much more disjointed in the modern
world. But the predominant reason is consumption.

25. • A more positive explanation would suggest that people
successfully preserve multiple identities, including
identities related to of ethnic, gender, class, sexuality and
other statuses, as well as an affiliation to the relevant
nation state.
• The possibility of supplanting consumerism in the latter
frame would appear more conceivable, even given the
substantial current efforts of businesses and states to
legitimize consumer identities.

26. • A wide range of goods and consumption practices offer tools for the
construction of individualistic identities, and demonstration of group
identities and status.
•
• Sociologist Anthony Giddens argues that “everyday consumption
choices in today’s world are increasingly ‘decisions not only about
how to act but who to be’” (p173).
• products that are not for display (for example, underwear, religious
garments) are still important to building self-identity and how in
public one may not necessarily be displaying one’s true self.

27. • Individualism encompasses four elements: dignity, autonomy, privacy
and self-development.
• Lipovetsky’s argument that fashion shows that ‘we can afford to be
wasteful’! (p30).
• high status identity comes not from association with specific products,
but from the demonstrated capacity to have the newest, most
fashionable products at any given time.
• it hints at the potential for alternative non-material sources of status
demonstration.

29. Consumerism is economically
manifested in the chronic purchasing
of new goods and services, with little
attention to their true need, durability,
product origin or the environmental
consequences of manufacture and
disposal.

30. Consumerism is driven by huge sums
spent on advertising designed to
create both a desire to follow trends,
and the resultant personal self-reward
system based on acquisition.

31.  Materialism is one of the end results of
consumerism.
 Consumerism interferes with the workings of
society by replacing the normal common-
sense desire for an adequate supply of life's
necessities, community life, a stable family and
healthy relationships with an artificial ongoing.

32.  It is an often stated that the economy would
improve if people just bought more things,
bought more cars and spent more money.
 Financial resources better spent on Social
Capital such as education, nutrition, housing etc.
are spent on products of unconvinced value and
little social return. In addition, the purchaser is
robbed by the high price of new things.

33.  Consumerism sets each person against himself in an endless
quest for the attainment of material things or the imaginary
world conjured up and made possible by things yet to be
purchased.

34.  Weight training, diet centers, breast reduction,
breast enhancement, cosmetic surgery,
permanent eye make-up, liposuction, collagen
injections, these are some examples of people
turning themselves into human consumer
goods more suited for the "marketplace" than
living in a healthy balanced society.

35. Methodology
and
Findings

41. Method
Frame work : Social Identity Theory
Tool: interview
Questions:
1. What brand or designer lawn you like to wear?
2. How you come to know about Lawn collection, its seasons
and its significance?
3. Why you wear certain or specific designer or branded
lawn?

42. Brand/designer Customer
khaadi 49%
Gul Ahmed 35%
Mausammry 15%
Maria.B 62%
Sana Safinaz 25%
Asim Jofa 11%
Vaneeza Ahmed 2%
57 (female) Students, !9-24 age

43. 1. Source of information : 84%TVCs, 16%Friends & University
Culture
2. Reasons: delight, pleasure, 78% part of up to date urban
culture & celebrity crush

44. brand and designer culture has influenced women to define themselves.
forecast of an impossible lifestyle to keep up with.
Expenditure of thousands and thousands of rupees in trying to recreate
these ideal images.
Competition To to identify themselves with one class or group
psychological false consciousness and random aimless life leading to
financial problems, psychological, and social problems.
Embarrassment to of identities
young women into battle of fashion and modernism rather being a more
creative, productive and useful citizens and women.