People are usually not very comfortable talking about themselves. It is not because they do not want to talk about themselves, it is largely because they are inarticulate or do not want to reveal themselves for fear of getting misinterpreted or judged. Researchers look for cues telegraphed by the words, emotions, and body language to understand people but they could also add people’s possession to this list.
Living in a highly materialist world as we all do today, we are surrounded with a wide spectrum of things. These things or objects enter at significant moments of our lives and get embedded in our biographies. Ohira Ken, a Japanese psychoanalyst (Yoshimi Shunya in Contemporary Sociology 21:1996), observed that people today talked more eloquently and assuredly about their material possessions than about themselves. They could talk not only about their own shoes and bags but also other person’s shoes and bags. In other words, they would use products to characterize everything including their lifestyle and personal relationships and through objects they could articulate their own identities.
Though anthropologists study objects to understand people and culture it is still not a common practice in consumer research, however, when applied it can yield rich insights as the three stories below indicate:
Plastic flowers symbolize progress
A researcher interviewed a 35-year-old mother of two kids who had at that time shifted to a city from her native village as the family could not survive with the meagre income from farming. The objective of the study was to understand mother’s attitude to child nutrition. The interview took place in her one – room apartment which had two gigantic vases filled with bright (and rather tacky) plastic flowers that just couldn’t be missed. The researcher got curious and asked her about the plastic flowers which helped her to understand why she preferred packaged nutrition to natural nutrition for her children.
Researcher: “I see a lot of flowers in your room, you must be very fond of them”
Lady “In my village home I had a patch of land and grew flowers but in city I don’t have it and now I like these plastic flowers more than the real ones”.
Researcher: “How interesting, what do you like about them”
Lady: “Real flowers reminds me of my village, and I don’t want to be reminded of it. We did not have a good time there. People think village life is very nice, but it wasn’t for us. But I like flowers and I like these ones, they are so nicely made, they look modern”
The lady was trying to embrace urbanization whole heartedly and she preferred giving packaged health drinks as she thought it would make her children smart like the city kids.
Stuffed toys are a man’s friends
A mobile telephony client was keen to understand the mindset of the youth to help them develop a compelling communication. We met young men and women in focus groups to get an overview of their attitude to life and lifestyles and later met few of them individually to know them intimately. A young man, who projected himself as a ‘macho dude’ in the group, turned out to be an innocent child at heart when we met him in his home. His room was quite nondescript but when he opened his cupboard to pull out some pictures, we got a glimpse of some stuffed toys closeted inside.
Researcher: “How interesting, we just saw some lovely toys in your cupboard”
Young man: “You saw them did you…. well these are my kid days toys”
Researcher: “So you have preserved them….do you still like them”
Young man (a bit abashedly): “Only my family and one friend know; I take them out in the night before going to bed and talk to them, they have names…. they are my oldest friends”
This was not an aberration, our visits to the homes of the youth and an examination of their possessions revealed multiple facets of their personalities.
The comfort of fire
We were doing a study for an automobile company to understand the desires and aspirations of mature men (40plus) which they could tap into while designing their new cars. We went to their homes and examined their favourite place in their homes to get an idea of what makes them comfortable and happy. One of the men we interviewed showed us his study room which had a fireplace which was actually of no use as he lived in a city which hardly experienced winter.
Researcher: “You have a lovely fireplace, but do you ever get to use it”
Mature man: “No never, when I got it built, I knew it will never be used. I enjoy a fire just like I enjoy being next to a river or the sea. So, when I read a book sitting here it makes me feel very good.”
The design agency of the automobile company had found this idea interesting and were inspired by it at the time of creating car interior themes.
Conclusion
Consumer research as a discipline acknowledges materialism as a powerful cultural force but underestimates the study of objects to understand people. Jean Baudrillard, the renowned French Sociologist in his seminal book ‘The system of objects’ commented: “Men of wealth are no longer surrounded by other human beings, as they have been in the past but by objects. Their daily exchange is no longer with their fellows but with the acquisition and manipulation of goods.”
People’s lives today are so intertwined with their material possessions that objects have not only become an integral part of their lives but also play a role in shaping their personas and attitude to life. For researchers the study of objects is a potent tool to unravel human needs, aspirations, fears and secrets.
