Consumer Recognition In The Society

Starting with the concept of identity, the paper analyses three possible meanings of identity under different contexts:1) identityâ… :it refers to the attribute of the Being that suggests sameness and oneness, which includes the real identity and the logical identity; 2) identityâ…¡:it refers to a relatively stable membership that symbolizes the individual's social position according to a certain attribute; 3) identityâ…¢:it refers to the individual's subjective attitude towards one's relatively objective social position, which includes personal identity and social identity. The paper further argues that due to the diversity of identity under the condition of (post)modernity, the possibility for identity crisis increases. As a result, either possessive membership or existential membership must constructe its identity. And the main ways to the construction of identity are through signified attribute, opposite others and the carrier of identity.Focusing on the construction of identity in the consumption society, the paper points out that with the consumption behavior being publicated and signified, the construction of identity made by consumption becomes possible. As a matter of fact, consumer identity is becoming a dominant form of identity construction. On the basis of that, this paper puts forward the model of value creation in construction of consumer identity. The sign value of commodity is the basis for consumer identity and it is produced in a two-way process of the signification of commodity and commoditization of signs. It argues that through the action of possession, representation, alteration and resistance, the consumption behavior transforms the sign value of commodity into its own attribute and thus constructs the identity that belongs to a certain consumer community.The paper also recognizes that when the consumer identity serves to power domination, it becomes a kind of ideology. This ideology has its own peculiarity, which is characterized by the control of the sameness and difference. On the one hand, there is a creation of variety of differences that makes the simulacrum of free choices; on the other hand, there is also a creation of simulacrum of everybody being equal and the same. That will leads to, as the paper puts in the end, the confusion of authenticity and representation and the paradox of sameness and difference, which could possibly be the end of identity.