Taste Regime in Consumer Practices in the Context of Home Decoration
Our guest lecturer Cameron Tonkinwise talked about taste regime and social practice with the example of coffeemakers. It reminds me of the similar case of home decoration while I am working on the interior of my new apartment recently. Home decoration has already become one of the prevailing aspects of our life today. People arrange their domestic spaces based on their needs and perceptions of beauty, style, and comfort. Current attention to home decoration originates in the 19th century, when “home” became one of the indicators for identity and social status, as it was central to socialization and entertainment. Middle-class housewives occupied themselves in endless arrangements of domestic spaces to express their taste and social and financial status of the family. At the same time, “home” had a bit different meaning for men: it became a shelter, where they could escape from harsh workspace and have a rest. I think that is the reason why comfort became a central dimension in home decoration.
The perception of home decoration has not changed drastically. It is more transformed into new meanings and dimensions. The idea of family financial and social status realization through their home is still visible in today’s society, but it is also turning into self-realization. People present their personalities and values through home decoration so that every piece of interior design constructs the customers’ personal uniqueness. This idea is also connected to the recently depicted concept of aestheticization of everyday life — one of the “strongest characteristics of post-modern societies”, which implies turning everyday life into art. People tend to surround themselves with beauty, which is especially visible in the field of home decoration. Therefore, style, taste, and aesthetics are subject to huge attention in the post-modern society and become important for consumers. Societal changes, the transformation of consumption, the perception of art and design result in increasing consumer power of choice. Interest and high involvement in home decoration make customers develop their own taste, which then guides their choices and behavior.
Many researchers in sociology, such as Bell & Hollows, Gronow, Hennion and Manzo have been studying taste effects on people. It was defined as an activity, or a mechanism, which regulates our everyday choices. So forth, it is integrated into our actions and influences the way we perceive beauty and aesthetics. Manzo discusses taste as a social phenomenon that functions as an aspect, a characteristic of a particular group of people. Sociologists agree that, historically, the taste was used as a barrier between the upper and the lower classes, and “the upper classes used taste to outdistance the lower ones”. Taking this into account, the cultural changes in the society were related to taste migration between different classes. Once the current taste standards were adopted by lower classes, the taste-making class turned away from them towards the new ones. Nowadays, taste is no longer a “class” thing, but it still helps to create different independent subgroups and subcultures in societies.
Such focus on taste in sociology resulted in a deep understanding of this phenomenon and its importance in society, discussing people as social players, at the same time ignoring other fields of research. As the world has never had such a diversity and volume of consumption, as before, the gap in the research on taste from the market perspective has become vivid recently. The phenomenon of consumerism is currently expanded across the globe and implies high significance of the consumption in peoples’ lives. It is not just satisfying the basic needs, consumerism is a leisure experience that helps people socialize, show their identities and distinguish from others.
Therefore, only now it is getting more discussable in the form of the theory of taste regimes created by Arsel and Bean. These researchers inserted the idea of taste regimes into consumer practices and depicted taste regime as actually a mechanism, that directs our consumption activities. It becomes sort of a pile of rules that guides customers through the consumption practices (for example, what to buy and how to use) and fill products with meanings.
Understanding the taste regime mechanism and its expression in consumer practices becomes more valuable for market actors, especially retailers, pursuing a deep understanding of their customers because it gives them an idea of the consumption, customer goals and perception of the goods. For example, the influence on consumers can be both direct and indirect. If the taste is socially constructed, it means that there is a process of determining criteria that define whether the object fits the taste or not. As a result, retailers get a chance to participate in “aura production” around the product through external communication and/or collaboration with designers and influencers, add to the construction of taste and manipulate consumer decisions. Additionally, consumers justify their taste through building beauty and joyful experiences around them. So forth, they come to the stores lead by hedonic and utilitarian reasons, looking for products that would fit their taste and add positive emotions. Under this condition, knowledge about how exactly the taste frames consumption activities creates an opportunity for tailored store organization and design.
From the theoretical point of view, taste regime theory has not been studied in terms of markets and consumption profoundly, which creates a gap in the research area. The taste regime model of Arsel and Bean shows that taste is incorporated in daily practices and shapes our abilities to evaluate and choose products. They also emphasize that consumer taste regime is influenced by the marketplace by investigating the links between an online blog and domestic consumption, and then explore taste and consumption from a new perspective by doing an overview of taste regime mechanism in consumption context. However, Arsel and Bean only describe that taste regime guides consumers, and state that taste and consumer practices are influenced by external factors, such as the market and communities. I wonder how taste is formed, and if this taste changes with time. And in what ways is taste expressed in consumer practices? Are there any patterns of consumer behavior in practices that are related to taste regime?
