Sofia Christidi

Project description

My research is an interpretive consumer behaviour project in the area of consumer self-identity and change. A wealth of consumer studies have enlightened the relationship between how people consume and how they perceive themselves. This foundational consumer culture principle - encapsulated through the artist Barbara Kruger’s 1987 slogan ‘I shop therefore I am’ – informs current understandings of what consumers do with marketplace generated materials. However, much of this previous understanding on the role of consumption in people’s lives is based on an assumption of everlasting consumer choice and conditions of external stability.

Consumers in such previous studies appear to inhabit a place described by sociologists of consumption as a world of endless materialistic pursuits and possibilities to reinvent selfhood. However, in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, a world of ample consumer choice may not apply to consumers enduring a long-term economic recession.

Going back to Kruger’s slogan, the reverse question may arise in such consumption conditions: I do not shop (like I used to) therefore I am not (what I used to be)? Therefore, in order to shed light on the underexplored area of consumption during external instability, this thesis explores consumer meaning-making and self-identity transformation processes during an extended period of economic change. To this end narratives of Greek consumers that have experienced the post-2008 financial crisis are collected to understand how consumers’ stories of self-identity may shift during times of significant external change

Research grants

Partly funded by the University of South Wales (employer)