1. BPMM 3073 SEMINAR MARKETING
GROUP MEMBERS :
1. SHO SIN HUA 205842
2. EVELYN TAN SUI LIN 206030
3. LEE HUI SHAN 206285
4. ABDUL RAHMAN B.ASWENDI 206965
5. SOON BEE LIAN 208627
2. Title of Journal
Who Are You Calling Old?
Negotiating
Old Age Identity in the
Elderly Consumption Ensemble
Author:
•MICHELLE BARNHART
•LISA PENALOZA
Journal of Consumer Research: Vol.39.April 2013. pp.1133-1153
Electronically Published November 5,2012.
All right reserved. 0093-5301/2013/3906-0001
5. Abstract
Method
• Qualitative
• Depth interview with older
consumers, family members
and paid caregivers in eight
ECE
Aim
• Illuminates ways in identity
construction is constrained in
interpersonal interactions
• Demonstrates old identity as
implicated in consumption in
relation to and distinction
from physiological ability and
old subject position
• Updates the final stages of
the Family Life Cycle model
6. Abstract
Discussion
• What does old means?
• What is elderly consumption?
• What are their buying power
behaviour?
Findings
• Meaningful distinction between
aging and getting old
• Positioning the older consumer
and identity construction in the
ECE
• Conflicts between subject
positioning and identity
• Strategies for negotiating conflicts
between identity and positioning
8. Introduction
Research on
how older people
continue to consume
when they no longer
consume independently
how consumption
fosters understanding
of what it means to be
old and who is old
Meaning of ensemble
A unit or group of
complementary parts
that contribute to a
single effect
9. Introduction
20% of
American over
age 75
required
assistance with
basic
consumption
ECE family
member,
friends,
neighbours
and paid care
providers
including
elderly
consumer
ECE job
improvise
ways to
continue the
older person’s
consumption
through large
variation
which exist in
the type,
frequency and
degree of
assistance
Assistance
with daily
activities
driving,
housekeeping,
meals,
shopping,
meds and etc
15. Identity Construction In Consumption
Identity does not exist before consumption
as an influence on the latter.
Consumption pattern that enact identity are
marked by consumer’s “conciliation of
existential desires for distinctive roots with
concerns of deracination”
Identity is contingent as consumers manifest
it in consumption within evolving macro
cultural fields of geo-socio-market
distinction and relations.
16. Market Agents
Positioning old people in commercials for
product like Viagra or senior vacation
service
Marketers continually redefine what
older people should want and what their
bahaviour should be.
Consumer’s positions are reproduced in
consumptions, peoples attempts to
change their consumption can change
these structures and produce alternative
position
17. Elderly Consumption Ensemble (ECE)
Family members, friends and service
providers also impose a position on the
elderly consumer that he or she does not
choose to claim or inhabit as his or her
identity.
19. Old Age As A Socially Constructed
Subject Position
• Negative stereotypes vulnerable to
illness, incompetence, physically and
cognitively deficient, helpless and etc
• Positive aging older people are
empowered by their growing economic and
demographic power and proficiency at using
new technologies
20. • How people position them even if the
white-haired person does not identify as an
old person, when subjected to infantilizing
talk or treatment, he constitutes his identity
in relation to the subject positioning imposed
on him by others
• How marketing scholars position them :-
- Marginalized (threat) and devalued subject
- Isolation and loneliness
- Singles or couples rather than group
members
22. Old Age Identity
• Old age identity :-
- Inconsistent and unpredictable
- Vary culturally and personally
• People are reluctant to identify as old even
after being positioned as an old person by
others but may induce a shift over time in
feelings and behaviour related to one’s
identity
23. • Old age identity in consumption :-
- Consumer tend to reject the discount unless
it is stated senior citizen discount
- Indicating that people may be more likely to
claim an old identity as their chronological
age increases
• Marketers Consumption may be more
fertile domain than labor for the construction
of old age identity although retired is an
indicator of old
25. Research Question
RQ1 : What does it mean to older consumers and ECE members
to be old and how are these meaning reproduced in the ECE?
RQ2 : How do ECE members position someone as an old subject
in their consumption discourse and practice?
RQ3 : In what ways do older consumers exercise agency to identify
with or reject this positioning?
RQ4 : How might their agency to successfully enact identity be
limited in their interactions with market agents and other ECE
members?
28. Method
Data collection consisted of depth
interviews
Two to three individuals from each of eight
different ECEs for a total of 20 informants
living
In California, Colorado, Texas, New York,
and Connecticut.
Depth Interviews
29. Process of Depth Interview
Select
ECEs
Recruit
Informants
Screen
Out the
Candidate
Get the
Information
Record the
Information
30. Depth Interview
ECEs
Informants
15 5 20
16 = by phone
4 = in person
8
4
Gender, living situation,
marital status, type of
degree assistance
provided, length of
employed & paid
provider
Recruited
through craigslist &
via phone.
2 cognitive
illnesses older
consumers with
family members &
paid providers
serving as
informants
Interviews twice (6-5 month after 1st)
2-3 individuals
Interviews only once.
31. Analysis
Early in the analysis we derived key
categories (Lofland and Lofland 1995) of
consumption activities that elderlyconsumers
regularly received help with and that
informants anticipated the older person would
need help with in the future.
34. First identified characteristics and
behaviors that informants attributed to or
associated with old people
Identified characteristics and behaviors that
informants associated with not being old
Clustered similar characteristics and
behaviors
Traced informants’ meaning making as it
related specifically to the consumption
practice and discourse of the older
consumer(s) in each ECE
Compared meanings produced by older
consumers
35. Data Collection
Experience
• 8 years of professional experience
selling personal emergency
response services and personal
experience with elderly family
members
Depth Interview
• With two to three individuals from
each of eight different ECEs for a
total of 20 informants living in
California, Colorado, Texas, New
York, and Connecticut.
38. FINDINGS Meaningful Distinctions between
Aging & Getting Old
Positioning the Old Consumer &
Identity Construction in the ECE
Conflicts between Subject Positioning
& Identity
Strategies for Negotiating Conflicts
between Identity & Positioning
39. FINDINGS Meaningful Distinctions between
Aging & Getting Old
Positioning the Old Consumer &
Identity Construction in the ECE
Conflicts between Subject Positioning
& Identity
Strategies for Negotiating Conflicts
between Identity & Positioning
42. Physiological meaning continua
Cognitively able to unable : Brain’s ability
to reason and remember as needed to
successfully perform consumption activities
Physically able to unable : Body’s ability to
see, hear, speak, manipulate objects, and
ambulate as needed to successfully perform
consumption activities
43. Closely related to biology and are
described by informants as the essence
of aging
Physiological
44. Social meaning continua
Control to deference : Degree to which authority
in a consumption event is exercised by the older
person or yielded to others
Integration to isolation : Degree of social contact
one experiences in consumption
Independence to dependence : Degree of
assistance one receives from others in a
consumption activity
Reciprocation to unilateralism : Degree to which
provision of assistance is reciprocated
46. FINDINGS Meaningful Distinctions between
Aging & Getting Old
Positioning the Old Consumer &
Identity Construction in the ECE
Conflicts between Subject Positioning
& Identity
Strategies for Negotiating Conflicts
between Identity & Positioning
47. Positioning the Older Consumer and
Identity Construction in the ECE
Consumption
Activities Reveal
Agedness
Positioning the
older Consumer
Older Consumer’s
Construction of
Age Identity
48.
49. From the diagram above
Is represent the process of positioning the
older person as an old or not old subject
and the construction of the older person’s
identity in relation to this positioning through
meaning making in the ECE.
50. Represent the older person’s consumption
activities as accomplished collectively in the
ECE through a dynamic and ongoing division
consumption.
51. Positioning the Older Consumer and Identity
Construction in the ECE
Consumption
Activities Reveal
Agedness
Positioning the
older Consumer
Older Consumer’s
Construction of
Age Identity
52. Which both reveal the older consumer’s
agedness and implicate the current division of
consumption as appropriate or inappropriate.
53. Positioning the Older Consumer and Identity
Construction in the ECE
Consumption
Activities Reveal
Agedness
Positioning the
older Consumer
Older Consumer’s
Construction of
Age Identity
54. Inscribe meanings either by themselves or with
other members who position the older
consumer.
Symbolize the influence that the older
consumer’s subject positioning has on the
division of consumption.
55. Positioning the Older Consumer and Identity
Construction in the ECE
Consumption
Activities Reveal
Agedness
Positioning the
older Consumer
Older Consumer’s
Construction of
Age Identity
56. FINDINGS Meaningful Distinctions between
Aging & Getting Old
Positioning the Old Consumer &
Identity Construction in the ECE
Conflicts between Subject Positioning
& Identity
Strategies for Negotiating Conflicts
between Identity & Positioning
57. Source of conflicts:
1. When older consumers
attempted to construct not-old
identities while their children
and paid providers positioned
them as old subjects.
2. When older consumers claimed
an old identity while others
position them as not old.
58.
59. FINDINGS Meaningful Distinctions between
Aging & Getting Old
Positioning the Old Consumer &
Identity Construction in the ECE
Conflicts between Subject Positioning
& Identity
Strategies for Negotiating Conflicts
between Identity & Positioning
62. Older
Consumers
Reassert
Identity
against
Unacceptable
Positioning
1
1. Attempt to convince younger ECE
members of the validity of their
identity through discourse,
employing what one hopes will be a
compelling verbal argument.
3. Force other ECE members to continue
or change a practice.
4. Covertly exclude others from a practice.
2. Try to prove a not-old identity through
practice.
64. 1. Using strategies of convincing, proving,
and forcing.
2. Trying to prove the legitimacy of the
older person’s positioning as an old
subject by pointing out what they
considered unsuccessful attempts by
the older consumer to perform certain
consumption practices.
3. Try to forcefully change practice.
Younger
Members
Urge Older
Consumers
to Identify
with
Positioning
2
66. 1. Covertly excluding the older person.
2. Requested acquiescence from the older
consumer.
Younger
Members
Initiate
Changes in
Practice
While
Preserving
Identity
3
3. Strategically leveraging an older
consumer’s meaning making such that
the older consumer would voluntarily
change a practice in accordance with
the younger member’s wishes.
68. 1. Using convincing and proving
strategies in alliance with family
members.
2. Covert exclusion in alliance with paid
providers.
Older
Consumers
Form
Alliances
with
Younger
Members
4
72. Discussion key worlds
1. Old ? What the people thinking old, say
old, feel old ?
OLD: Less vigorous in action.
2. Elderly Consumption?
Age identity?
73. Discussion
Continued consumptions is possible by the
assistance of ECE members.
The buying power of the elderly person
does not based on their age .
74. •ECE memberships changes over time:
The roles & responsibilities in future.
The circumstances and needs and wants
of the elder persons in their daily
consumptions.
Changing in the effort in the power of
buying
Discussion
75. Elderly consumption ensemble ( ECE ) members
Depth interview:
Older Consumer
Family members
Paid caregivers in eight ECEs
FOCUS GROUP
76. Characteristics of the Division of Consumptions
Emerging from postmodern technical
development in service & information.
Consumer-centric.
Involved in meaning making &
identity const
78. This research emphasize on the identity
construction based on interpersonal relationship.
(ECE)
The Individual identity construction at the macro-
level of socio-cultural field.
Involve negotiation of identity with unsuitable
subject positioning imposed by the others.
Subject positioning
1. Enhance the identity Construction
81. The contribution of these research :
The elderly can negotiate their identity with:
Physiological ability
Subject Positioning
Old Identity
Age is just a number.
2.In-depth negotiation of identity in
consumption
82. At the final stage of consumptions, elderly move
from autonomy to dependence on the others.
3. Update the final stage of FLC models
40-60 years
84. Research Implication
• Prove that physiological inability
does no mean the loss of identity
and social position.
• Consumptions allow recognition of
physical inabilities.
Elderly
Consumer
• The importance of collective meaning in
subject positioning.
• Specified how and whom consumers are
classified.
• How such classification affect
consumptions.
Consumer
Researcher
• Enhance understanding about the
identity negotiation among elderly
consumer.
• Critical for the development &
improvement of public policy.
Policy
Makers
86. RESEARCHLIMITIATION
Research focus on white Americans.
Study centered around middle-class
and upper middle class.
Need to include other cultural,
socio demographic, and geographic
regions.
1. Variation in ECEs research elements
87. Interview the people who are
cognitively able.
Many variables when interview
those elderly with cognitive illness
such as Alzheimer’s disease.
RESEARCHLIMITIATION
2. Study aims on older people with
cognitive illness.
88. Spouse can be a primary and
good caregiver.
Treatment of gender is limited.
RESEARCHLIMITIATION
3. Its omission of ECEs ( Spouse)
91. Recommendation
Insert some quantitative statistic as
supporting data.
Select the research participants
appropriately or best suit the criteria.
Further research on other subject positions
and identity such as gender, ethnic or national,
and family distinctions.
Explore the dynamics of power among the
ECE members in the consumption activities.
93. Conclusion
Establish the possible of blue ocean.
Enhance the inner care of the elderly.
Know ourself and know other.
Age show is senility not old.
Age is just a number.
Inner looking of the need and want.
94.
95. Conclusion
“Feeling ”old is a product of “being” old.
Reflecting the cultural stereotypes and the stigma
associated with old age, a self-perception of old is
apparently linked with a sense of loss.
