Young hedonists and rational grown ups? A closer look at consumer identities in Norway

Abstract

Abstract The evidence in this paper is from a nationwide representative survey in Norway where 1008 respondents between 18 and 80 years old were interviewed by telephone in February 2005. In relation to shopping, four consumer types are revealed; the political, the economic, the hedonistic and squanderers. The first two types are instrumentally oriented, while the hedonistic and the squanderers may be seen as expressively oriented. These types are correlated with gender, education and age. Women are more often hedonistic and/or squanderers than men. However, there are no gender differences as regards the political or the economic orientations. This is interpreted as women having a wider “competence” in shopping than men. Education has minor effects, showing that the higher educated are more politically oriented than the lower educated, and squanderers are more often found among the lower educated than among the higher educated. Age is the factor that explains most and shows that the older one gets, the probability of being expressively oriented declines, and the probability of being economic increases. This is interpreted as a life course effect; you change identity as well as your social situation during the life course. The middle aged are more politically oriented compared to the younger and older groups. This can be interpreted as a generation effect as these people grew up in the 70s in a historical period with high political engagement and political activism.