Games Consumers Play: The Construction, Maintenance, and Defense of Elective Identity Through Play
Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Play is a means to express and explore an individual’s or a community’s identity.\nThe individual uses play to communicate meaning about who they are. People perform\nidentity when they meet role expectations (Goffman, 1959). Play involves accepting or\nrejecting the role expectations of the situation in which we find ourselves (Grayson,\n1999). We don’t have to play when there are role expectations, but we can if we so\nchoose.\nAll play has meaning (Huizinga, 1956). It points to and signifies other things. It\nreflects and rewards the values of the players’ community. If shopping is more than\nbuying things but the buying of identity (Clammer, 1992; Johnstone and Conroy, 2005),\nthen play is the demonstration and the performance of this purchased (and elective)\nidentity. The acquired ‘things’ become the props we use to make identity performances\nreal, visible, and readable by others. This research will look at the effort consumers go\nthrough to construct, maintain, and defend elective identities within the environments\nwithin which they are enacted—what I will refer to throughout this document as\n‘playscapes’. I ask the questions,\n1. “Why take the effort to construct, maintain, and defend an elective identity within\na playscape? (What are the payoffs?).\n2. “What role does the environment play in affecting elective identity consumption\nprocesses?” and\n3. “[How] do players differentiate between other players and spectators within a\nplayscape?”\nix\nWhat I show through this research is how the explicit recognition of play in\nthe elective identity process enables us to better understand how consumers approach\nconsumption. Once we are freed from the obligations of necessity—once we are free to\nplay—we can approach our consumption differently. Once we begin to play, we don’t all\nplay the same way.\nIdentities are not static; they are ongoing projects. They are a process. We can\nwork at these projects or we can play at these projects. We can make these projects a\ngame and, in doing so, they take on the characteristics and components of any other\ngame. They have a playscape—boundaries within which they are played. They have\nrules determining what you can and cannot do. They have pieces, props, and other\nparaphernalia. They involve the suspension of the ‘real world’ for the acceptance of an\nimaginary world that—while it is active—takes precedence over the outside world.\nFinally, games have other players.\nOne of the things this research makes apparent is that other players, in the form\nof spectators, are more important to play and games—especially elective identity\ngames—than we may at first realize. In consumer behavior and consumer culture\ntheory we tend to treat the observer as a given; as something that is fixed. As a result\nwe tend to see elective identity performances as one-sided communication—as\npresentations made to relevant audiences. What, in fact, my research shows is that\nelective identity performances are more like multi-sided games with both moves and\ncountermoves. Elective identity becomes a form of negotiation between the performer\nand an active audience who are also involved in the performance—or, in keeping with\nthis dissertation, a negotiation between players playing the same or similar games. As\nx\nan open game—one whose goal is to keep playing and not end the game—elective\nidentity games involve the creation, maintenance, and defense of different elective\nidentities within a playscape. Successful play means the creating, maintaining, and\ndefending playscape-compatible elective identities. It is through the ongoing play within\nthese playscapes that boundaries are tested and performances assessed. It is an\niterative process, a conversation, between presenter and observer in which a consumer\ncan choose to play either role. If we study just one side of this equation we cannot get a\nproper understanding of the role played by each—like hearing only one side of a phone\nconversation. We can try to piece some of it together, but we can be more confident in\nwhat we hear and understand if we have both sides of the conversation.
Source: Figshare
Author: John Hildebrand
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2279359730