How Blacks Use Consumption to Shape their Collective Identity

Abstract

This article develops a ‘social identity’ perspective to the study of consumption. It builds on Richard Jenkins’ distinction between internal and external definitions of collective identity and explores the interplay of these definitions in the realm of consumption. Evidence is collected from interviews with marketing professionals who specialize in the African-American market segment to show that this theoretical approach complements and improves on existing approaches. Marketing professionals’ interpretations of the black consumer’s distinctiveness are used to map the twin processes of internal and external definitions of collective identity for African-Americans. The interviews suggest that marketing professionals (1) actively shape the meanings of the category of ‘the black consumer’ for the public at large; (2) promote powerful normative models of collective identity that equate social membership with conspicuous consumption; (3) believe that African-Americans use consumption to defy racism and share collective identities most valued in American society (e.g. middle-class membership); and (4) simultaneously enact a positive vision of their cultural distinctiveness.