Book Review: The Business of Aspiration
Book Review: The Business of Aspiration by Ana Andjelic, 2020, Routledge
The book under review describes the modern aspiration economy by flipping Veblen's »conspicuous consumption« logic and argues that today, we are witnessing the rise of inconspicuous consumption where a class is decoupled from money and money is decoupled from class.
Ana Andjelic is one of Forbes's World's Most Influential chief marketing officers. She has a doctorate in Sociology and worked at the world's top brands and advertising agencies. In the course of her career, she developed a methodology to help companies build brand-driven businesses. Right after the start of the Covid-19 lockdown, she published a book, The Business of Aspiration.
Using the sociological lens, she describes her methodology and modern aspiration economy (i.e. what today's customers aspire to). The book could be read in two ways. On the one hand, it is a business and marketing handbook aimed at business and marketing executives. We read about the 4Cs for successful brand strategy comprised of community, content, curation and collaborations. On the other hand, the book is a compelling economic sociology analysis, sociology of consumption to be precise, as her starting point is how economic phenomena are embedded in broader social structures in trying to understand what goods and services mean to people. By explaining the general recognizability of Tiffany blue with Durkheim, the success of Rihanna with Veblen and Glossier with Goffman, she uniquely captures the current zeitgeist and the dynamics of market transactions.
"With his idea of pre-contractual solidarity, founder of sociology Emile Durkheim proposed that there need to be some general conditions of exchange before and outside any specific interaction. Hermes orange, Louboutin red, Tiffany blue quickly signal a shared understanding of the general conditions of exchange" (2020: 71).
By combining classical sociological theories with twenty-first-century pop-culture and consumer phenomena, the book is intriguing for readers who are not necessarily interested in marketing and brand strategy.
Conspicuous Consumption
Description of modern aspiration economy is staged over five short chapters. The book's main argument is that we are witnessing reversal and even erasure of "conspicuous consumption". Sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term "conspicuous consumption" at the end of the 19th century to propose the logic that status is linked to wealth and desirability of a good to its price, namely, as price increases, so do the desirability and demand. According to Veblen, trends start among the upper class and then trickle down as aspirants mimic the affluence in their habits. Taste, in this context, acts as a social barrier, and the upper class uses it to distance itself from the lower class. When the lower class adopts particular tastes, the upper class abandons them and moves toward new ones. In this economic logic, goods serve to socially position the one that owns them. For example, watches, cars, wine, and travel experiences visibly and publicly convey the appearance of success, wealth and status.
…To Inconspicuous Consumption
Throughout the book, Andjelic flips Veblen's logic and argues that the modern aspiration economy is not anchored in accumulating and displaying possessions. Instead, the modern aspiration economy is about social capital, environmental credits and cultural savviness. It is about knowing obscure locations for travelling, vintage shops, and being part of farming and horticulture communities. She attributes reasons for the reversal of Veblen's logic in the rental and resale economy as everyone can wear designer clothes and accessories, travel extensively and be an art collector. Hence, modern aspirants, she argues, are increasingly involved in "inconspicuous consumption", buying post-Veblen goods that have nothing to do with price because status is no longer linked to wealth. For example, taking care of houseplants is an affordable activity, and people from a wide array of socio-economic backgrounds engage in it. The status of those engaging with it derives not from wealth (almost anyone can afford houseplants) but from their knowledge about botany and horticulture. However, taste is still a boundary-making mechanism and an engine of social difference, yet it is decoupled from class. Taste is not determined by price, but in the knowledge about, for example, coveted vintage and streetwear drops or where to find limited-edition objects that come with a story. Andjelic writes that "modern aspiration is not about having money to buy things, but having the taste to know what to buy" (2020: 35). Moreover, this means that class is decoupled from money as inexpensive goods, and activities like wearing clothes made of recycled materials, meditation or having a plant-based diet are modern status symbols. “Forget the latest Fendi bag, today's cult objects are pajamas, home leisure, sourdough bread, a Peloton bike, a yoga mat, a collection of plants” (2020: 10). Modern class distinction is thus created through our wokeness, not expensive goods. Hence, Greta Thunberg enjoys an elite status, not the one percent that owns almost half of global wealth. Wokeness, environmental credits and cultural savviness became status symbols. According to Andjelic, these serve as the new backdrop for a brand strategy that replaced the term "cooking" with "the power and pleasure of making food with your own hands", renamed buying a dress into "minimizing environmental impact" and buying plants into "boosting your creativity".
The Rise of Creative Class (by Richard Florida Ana Andjelic)
Throughout the book, Andjelic observes that the modern aspiration economy created a cultural class into its own. It is a class of self-proclaimed creatives oriented towards wellbeing. Secondly, the class mainly comprises the millennial generation, the first generation after the Second World War that experienced downward economic mobility. In cultural terms, they live the affluent lifestyle without owning the assets that underpin it, such as a home or savings account. They flipped the Veblen logic of conspicuous consumption because they can't afford expensive goods. They value knowledge, sustainability, handmade goods, horticulture and vintage shops instead. Growing up with consequences of neoliberal economic agenda such as the demise of public institutions and radical individualism, these creatives turn to brands and influencers for moral leadership. They demand from brands to fulfill their citizen role, become civic organization, provide inspiration, goods and socializing at the same time. By explaining the emergence of the cultural class of the modern aspiration economy, Andjelic offers sociological insight into how today's consumers have become comfortable mixing capitalism with social justice as they look for brands to implement social changes instead of governments and public institutions. Hence, Andjelic argues, “taste choices are valuable social signals, and in the post-everything world, perhaps the ones that matter most” (2020: 51).
Brand = Imagined Community
The third chapter further explains how consumers look for brands to fulfil their citizen role and explains the importance of taste communities by bringing together Benedict Anderson and modern brands. The latter willingly stepped in as the social constructs of belonging left vacant by traditional institutions such as religion, civil society and mass media. Drawing on Anderson, she claims we are going through the imagined community renaissance. Anderson explained imagined community as people bound together in a nation by a horizontal comradeship who do not know each other but have similar affinities, beliefs, interests and attitudes. In the past, members of an imagined community were willing to fight in wars in the name of the nation. Andjelic argues that today, brands have replaced nation as the construct around which an imagined community is bound together. Hence, brand fans are willing to fight for it in terms of cancelling the opponents or going to consumer war with the brand competitors. In short, nationalistic wars were replaced with the call-out culture, where a brand can be quickly forgotten if it does not comply with principles and norms of wokeness. Chapter 3 offers an intriguing line of argument: branded communities have replaced imagined communities formed around nations. However, this argument remains under-explained, and the author jumps to strong conclusions without offering justifications or examples from empirical reality.
On Self-Quarantine
The book is full of insights into how macro structures shape micro behaviour. In chapter four, Andjelic writes that people are increasingly turning into niche communities and micro enclaves due to the post-growth age, in which »climate emergency, global epidemic, aging population, and the new cultural, social and environmental capital create new sources of value« (2020: 49). In the past, operating according to the Veblen logic of conspicuous consumption, more was always more. Brands promised we would be more attractive, more accomplished, more affluent if only we bought more of their products. Bigger was always better, and people aspired for bigger houses, bigger cars, and brands offered bigger logos. Today, we are witnessing a general shift to micro in our relationship with the world. We have micro-attention, micro-experiences, micro-focus and micro-expectations. Consequently, Andjelic observes that modern status looks a lot like self-quarantine. This is especially present among millennials, who are unable to succeed economically, turning their attention to everyday things with an almost obsessive focus: »Can't afford a home? Get a great mattress. Cook with nice cutlery. Don't have a retirement account? Enjoy looking at your sill filled with plants. Invest in a beautiful spatula« (2020: 59).
Sociological Imagination of Netflix
Turn to micro has consequences for business strategy, and Andjelic shows how it can borrow from sociology. Brands had to appeal to as many people as possible in the traditional economy and cater to a generic taste. In the modern aspiration economy, characterized by niche communities, brands can grow through taste clusters and take niche consumer collectives as the new audience units. In this context, Andjelic suggests the best approach for business strategy is to go beyond individual buyer persona and build taste profiles of communities individuals belong to:
“We understand individuals better if we understand the complexity of their social networks” (2020: 57).
She gives Netflix's taste communities as a variation of this idea. Its global viewers are divided into 2000 »taste clusters« that group people based on their movie and TV show preferences. At the same time, Netflix content is tagged and based on these tags and connections, divided into micro-genres. Micro-communities and micro-genres are then matched up. Andjelic argues that Netflix's success is not about its shows but personalization and sociological understanding of its customers as social creatures and members of influence networks they belong to.
From Theory to Practice
Chapter 5 applies sociological insights from the previous chapters to the brand strategy and proposes 4Cs (i.e. community, content, curation and collaborations). In this chapter, she is critical of the venture capital model of investment, mainly their lack of sociological imagination, as »VCs rarely seem to think about how ideas they fund fit within the existing social and economic infrastructures« (2020: 67). For example, Amazon's two-day shipping was welcome until it started clogging streets and landfills, and Airbnb turned cities into picture-perfect destinations not suitable for its actual inhabitants. Couple this with the decrease in science funding over the last decades, and it is clear we need a new model of investment and innovation, she argues.
The Business of Aspiration is a book worth reading to anyone interested in economic sociology and consumer culture. The book's biggest strength is that Andjelic excellently captures the current zeitgeist and reads the mood of the times. However, her sociological insights at times lack empirical grounds and remain under-explored. What is the post-everything world? Do millennials represent the most significant buyers of plants, yoga mats and Peloton bikes? However, this is not a downside per se and could be taken as a source of exciting research questions and hypotheses that need to be put to refutations on empirical grounds by researchers and scholars of consumption. In short, empirical research is needed to assess her major arguments precisely and specify the processes underlying the modern aspiration economy.
In the last five decades, immersed in identity politics, social sciences mainly operated by isolating one social group and studying them in detail. By doing so, they often neglected what is happening in the world of consumption and what patterns transcend specific (often marginalized) communities. The Business of Aspiration compellingly describes the consequences of these identity politics in the market transactions by explaining imagined communities embedded in brand, creating what economic sociologists claim to be woke capitalism in which brands advocate for human rights and marginalized groups. Secondly, the book announces a new, post-neoliberal era in which business strategy will borrow from sociology. Andjelic suggests that if brands want to succeed, brand professionals should look at the communities individuals belong to and shift focus from an individual to their network of relationships as people are communities they belong to.