Consumer identity is the consumption pattern through which a consumer describes themselves.
Analysis
One of the most prominent features of the modern era is the rise of consumerism which was made possible by the emergence of a major middle class and the availability of different varieties of merchandise in an open market. According to Nitha Mathur, a professor of Sociology at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, "Commercial brands and luxury commodities have come to serve as signifiers of identity in society and legitimized consumer culture that is made visible in terms of its referents: images, commodities and 'high-class' consumption as also their articulation in daily lives of people." Mathur further explained that, "by choice or by compulsion, people interpret and respond to it in different ways as they construct, deconstruct and reconstruct their social identities."
Theoretical background
The identity bestowed on consumers is understood to draw from themes that cut across the different symbolic boundaries that have consolidated in the course of modernity. Consumer research has extensively examined how interactions with products help consumers to shape their identities and selves. Product design, for instance, can elicit infatuation in object–consumer relations. Consumers may become attached and develop relationships to specific material objects, independently of these objects' brands.
A variety of commodities serves as an increasingly sophisticated identity toolkit for the celebration of one's identity. These do not only include unconscious somatic involvement. The idea that everyone in consumer societies is more open to acquiring the lifestyle and identity they desire runs the risk of painting an imaginary world made of equal opportunity and free self-realization. Instead, it is clear, even through observing advertisements which celebrate consumption as a sphere of human realization, that only a particular type of identity, a certain kind of look, a particular way of being in the world, and, apparently, only certain commodities are acknowledged as plainly positive, and that they all demand growing shares of economic and cultural capital.
Social identity
People's activities and possessions are organized around their social identities—the multifaceted labels by which their "me" is recognized by themselves and members of society. Identities differ from traits, such as aggressiveness or honesty, in that the latter characterizes how someone behaves within an Identity. Social identities (accountant, golfer, parent) are derived from social roles, but they are not the same. Roles are consensual prescriptions, behaviors expected of those occupying a particular position in society, and in that sense, they partition a society.
Social Identity Theory was developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979. Their theory was originally developed to understand the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. Tajfel et al. (1971) attempted to identify minimum conditions that would lead members of one group to discriminate for the in-group to which they belonged and against another out-group.
Henri Tajfel's greatest contribution to psychology was the social identity theory. Social identity is a person's sense of who they are, based on their group membership(s).
Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team, etc.), which people belonged to were a source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.
The social roles we ascribe to ourselves are the basis of our social identities and collectively, these identities form our global self—our overall sense of who we are. This identity-to-global self-path operationalizes social identity theory's guiding premise that one's overall sense of self, derives from the particular identities that one enacts and ascribes to one's self.
Consumer gender
Earlier gender identity and consumer behavior research suggests that gender identity plays a role in consumer behavior and the construction of consumer identity. Varying from assisting in information processing, to connecting individuals to the rest of the world, to orchestrating an individual's perceptions, to developing one's attitudes about appropriate social behaviors.
Regarding consumers' brand perceptions, it was explained that consumer brand consumption is congruent with consumer gender-image, and stated that the gender-self could generate strong gender-congruency effects with regards to brand loyalty. For example, consumers prefer goods or spokespersons that match their sense of masculinity and femininity.