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Some Sociological Dimensions of Consumer Spending*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Howard Roseborough
Howard Roseborough*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

In the study of consumer spending a wide variety of factors, ranging from age, sex, and family size, through occupation, religion, and class background, to future expectations, advertising and personal influence, and compulsiveness, have been shown to have some influence on consumer taste and demand. Yet the precise influence these factors have, and the value which they should be assigned are still largely unknown. This paper offers a theoretical framework as one possible way of treating factors involved in consumer spending in a systematic manner. The approach is still in the process of formulation so that only the general structure of the theory can be presented.

Two assumptions are made about factors which influence consumer spending. First, it is assumed that factors may be treated as aspects of social systems or sub-systems. They may be viewed as contributing to one or other of the problems which all social systems must solve, to what have been called the adaptive, the goal attainment, the integrative, and the pattern-maintenance-tension-management problems. Thus factors are related to one another, in the first instance, by means of their functioning for the solution of system problems. Secondly, it is assumed that all factors do not have the same order of influence on consumer spending. Rather, factors are related to one another in a hierarchical way so that some can be treated as more general in their influence than others, and as unifying the more specific factors in some way. This view is derived from the more general assumption that social systems are composed of a number of distinct levels of structural organization.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , November 1960 , pp. 452 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1960

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Saskatoon, June 4, 1959.

References

1 Cf. Parsons, Talcott and Smelser, Neil J., Economy and Society (Glencoe, Ill., 1956)Google Scholar, for a general discussion of this theoretical framework; on consumption see esp. pp. 221–32.

2 Cf. Parsons, Talcott, “General Theory in Sociology” in Merton, R. K. et al., eds., Sociology Today (New York, 1959), 3–38 Google Scholar, for a fuller account of this assumption. See also Parsons and Smelser, Economy and Society, esp. chap. III.

3 This concept, and the following three—consumption standards, plane of living, and consumption level—have been adopted from Davis, J. S., “Standards and Content of Living,” American Economic Review, XXXV, no. 1, 03, 1945, 1–15.Google Scholar My use of the terms differs from their use in that article.

4 Cf. Parsons, T. et al., Working Papers in the Theory of Action (Glencoe, Ill., 1953).Google Scholar

5 The terms “interaction” and “sentiment” are from Homans, G. C., The Human Group (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, and their meanings are close to those developed by him.

6 The present analysis of roles and the subsequent analysis of collectivities are based on theoretical considerations being developed by Professor Parsons.

7 Homans, The Human Group. See also Riecken, H. W. and Homans, G. C., “Psychological Aspects of Social Structure” in Lindzey, G. E., ed., Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, 1954), II, 786–832.Google Scholar

8 Riesman, D. and Roseborough, H., “Careers and Consumer Behavior” in Clark, L. H., ed., Consumer Behavior, II (New York, 1956), 1–18.Google Scholar