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Chapter
18
Consumption Meanings
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Explain why meaning is an important issue for marketers.
 Describe the basic process of semiosis and the semiotic
triangle.
 Have a working knowledge of the meaning transfer model.
 Appreciate the role of advertising and fashion in linking
meanings to products.
 Describe both ordinary and ritualized processes through
which consumers transfer meaning from products to
themselves.

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Learning Objectives (continued)
Explain why spokespersons are important and describe the
link between spokesperson selection and marketing
success.
 Recognize the kinds of meanings that consumers value.
 Know why questions of meaning are important in cross
cultural contexts.
 Recognize the significance of collecting for consumers and
marketers.
 Identify a variety of techniques through which consumers
derive meaning and value from consumption.

Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Overview
Consumer motives for purchase, consumption and
possession stem from the meaning of consumption acts
and objects and the value that meaning provides.
 Some consumption activities are primarily about the
evocation of important meanings and values.
 Goods and services are media of interpersonal
communication; they are social phenomena conveying
meanings that are shared by at least some others.

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Consumer Meaning
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Sources of meaning for the products and services that people
consume - marketing communication
Source of meaningful possessions: marketed consumer products.
Many of people’s most meaningful possessions are not
marketplace commodities but things without much monetary
value, such as heirlooms received from parents, photographs of
family and friends, exchanges of dinners and parties, gardens and
collections.
Loss of Meaning: Success of global markets system tends to
homogenize meaning and value of products.
Both marketers and consumers face the problem of unsatisfactory
meaning
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What do we Mean by Meaning?
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Semiosis is the science of meaning; process of communication
by any type of sign.
 A sign is anything that stands for something else.
The semiotic triangle reflects the three-part system of semiosis
involving a sign, some object, and an interpretant.
Relationship between the three parts are conventional;
meanings are relative to particular communications
communities responding to them.
 Members of a communications community agree, more or
less, on meanings because they share significant cultural
capital.

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Exhibit 18.1
Semiotic Triangle
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Understanding Consumer Meanings
 First

approach:
examines the role of possessions in defining the self and
creating a sense of identity.
 Second
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emphasizes the use of goods within a culture’s social
communication system.
 Third

approach:
approach:
looks for particular meanings of goods and possessions that
give them value.
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Product Meaning is Changeable
 Product
meaning changes with time.
 Product meaning is unstable across market
segments.
 Product meanings are contested by social
groups and market segments.
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Types of Meanings
 Utilitarian

meaning
perceived usefulness of a product in terms of its ability
to perform functional or physical tasks.
 Functional value derives from functional or physical
attributes.
 Attributes generally relate to performance, reliability,
durability, number and type of product features, and
price.
 Functional meanings are important for both product
category and brand-choice decisions.
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Types of Meaning (continued)
 Sacred
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and secular meanings
sacred meaning: adheres in those things that are designed or
discovered to be supremely important.
Secular meaning: secular properties of things are the reverse of
sacred ones.
 Hedonic
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meanings
products that are associated with specific feelings or facilitate or
perpetuate feelings.
consumers’ brand equity involves the accumulated history and
sentiment attached to particular brands.
negative emotional meanings of consumption include addiction,
compulsive consumption, terminal materialism (greed).
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Exhibit 18.4
A Model of Hedonic Meaning
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Types of meaning (continued)
 Social
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meanings
reflexive relationship between social relationships and the
goods individuals consume.
Reflexivity means that in consumer society, people
intentionally communicate statements about who they are,
what groups they identify with, and those from which they
are different primarily through consumer goods.
Others tend to see what people consume as expressions of
who those people are.
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Movement of Meanings:
Origins of Meaning
 Meaning
transfer model (Exhibit 18.5)
Consumer meanings move between three locations:
 the culturally constituted world,
 the good (product, service or experience), and
 groups of consumers.
 Meaning moves in a trajectory between world and
good, and good and consumer or consuming unit.
 Cultural categories segment time, space, nature, and
the human community.

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Exhibit 18.5
Meaning Transfer Model
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Linking Cultural Meanings and
Product Meanings
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Marketing communications are a vehicle for connecting cultural
meanings to consumption objects.
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persona: the spokesperson depicted or implied within the
advertisement itself.
Advertising Texts and Consumption Meanings:
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Advertising Model of Meaning Transfer
Advertising serves as a kind of culture/consumption
dictionary
Ads often use:
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Similes - figures of speech that explicitly use a comparative term such
as “like” or “as”
Metaphors - like similes but with the comparative term omitted
Symbols - omit any explicit expression of comparison between sign
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and object
Linking Cultural Meanings and
Product Meanings
 Pictorial
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Conventions and Consumption Meanings
selection and combination of visual symbols to
achieve persuasive effects.
 Characters
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and Consumption Meanings
Meaning movement and the Endorsement Process

Research shows that the meanings attributed to previously
unendorsed products changed dramatically when they were
linked to celebrity endorsers.
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Linking Product Meanings and
Consumption Meanings
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Consumers provide products or their advertising images with
meaning through their recognition of what they stand for, what
they symbolize, at least within the space of an ad.
By using particular products, consumers differentiate
themselves from other people who consume different products
with presumably different meanings.
There is a sense in which consumers allow themselves to be
created by ads and products.
Apostrophe is a technique of direct hailing.
Consumers derive meaning from both ads and consumption by
actually creating themselves via particular products.
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Models and Rituals of Meaning
Transfer
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The final step in meaning transfer involves temporary or
permanent acquisition of goods and services.
There are four main categories of ordinary consumption modes:
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Hedonic activities: experience, playing
Utilitarian activities: integrating, classifying
Special behaviors consumers use to transfer meaning include
possession, grooming, exchange, and divestment rituals.
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Possession rituals: customizing, decorating, personalizing, cleaning,
discussing, displaying, and photographing.
Grooming behavior: form of body language communicating specific
messages about an individual’s social status, maturity, aspirations,
conformity, and morality.
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Malleability and Movement of
Meanings
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The meanings of products and services are highly malleable.
There is considerable variation in the extent to which consumers share
meanings.
Product meaning is a multilevel construct, with four types of
meaningful associations:
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tangible attributes
cultural associations
subcultural associations
unique, personal associations
Special possessions are those regarded as extensions of life.
Marketers work to change meanings at each of the four levels to align
their products with the desires of target markets.
Marketers seek to exploit the unique, personal meanings that develop
between people and products.
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Collecting and Museums
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Collecting is the selective, active, and longitudinal
acquisition, possession, and disposition of an interrelated
set of differentiated objects (material things, ideas, beings,
or experiences) that contribute to and derive extraordinary
meaning from the set itself.
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What do collections mean to consumers?
 control, magical power, evocation of other times,
people, places, legitimization for materialism, an
expanded sense of self, hedonic pleasure.
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Collecting and Museums
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Collecting is a behavior characteristic both of individuals
and institutions.
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Institutions/Firms reinforce the social and economic
significance of collecting behavior by pre-packing the
experience for consumers and providing the comforting
assurance of authenticity.

Museum shops and catalogs are an important part of the
growing collecting industry.
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Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the
Meanings of Possessions
Dimensions along which consumer researchers can
expect to find differences in meaning between
cultural areas include:
Underlying meaning of consumer goods
 Identity of goods that are the focus of consumption
meanings
 Quantity of meaningful possessions in circulation
 Stability of consumer meanings

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Key Terms
apostrophe
 brand equity
 collecting
 communications
communities
 compulsive consumption
 culture/consumption
dictionary
 functional meaning

reflexive relationship
 sacred meaning
 secular meaning
 singularized
 sign
 similes
 semiosis
 semiotic triangle
 special possessions

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Key Terms (continued)
hedonic meaning
 indexical role
 meaning
 meaning transfer activities
 metaphors

persona
 symbols
 terminal materialism
 textual meanings
 utilitarian meaning

Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.