Reviving consumer-alienation in the discourse of consumers’ negativity

A lone walker is both present and detached, more than an audience but less than a participant. Walking assuages or legitimizes this alienation.

Since the shift in marketing from a transactional to a relational outlook, researchers and marketing experts have usually emphasized the positive sides of the relationship between the consumer and the brand. Research on negative feelings concerning brands has been sparse (de Campos Ribeiro, Butori, & Le Nagard, 2018). In the face of current consumer brand relationship, one can see increasing signs of discontent that, if not discernible then in substance, apropos the phenomenon of alienation that is not an absence of relationship with brand but a relation of “relationlessness” where the alienated consumer has those contrasting desires to repel the brand, and to control and belong to it. Consumer-alienation as an association between brand and consumer proffers an enlightening link between liberty and alienation. The roots of this relationship can be retrieved in consumer sovereignty—each individual member of the market has the right to choose for himself and brands have no authority to dictate his preferences. The transformative consumer research movement also urges redress of consumers’ discontent by considering sovereignty, non-malfeasance, social justice, and stakeholder claims. The number of such consumers may well be higher than is immediately apparent because, at more progressive stages of alienation, alienated objects swallow their alienation (Marcuse, 1964) and may not look to be alienated. Efforts to patch the relationship between the consumer and the brand can lead to new forms of alienation but not to its eradication. Therefore, an investigation of alienation is essential to meet the needs of both researchers and practitioners.

Scarce attention to consumer alienation has led to vague and inconsistent conceptualizations of alienation, so articulating a conception of consumer alienation based on the classical approach to alienation may help to clarify the phenomenon itself, as well as its relationship with other phenomena. In Marx’s (1844/1961) view, the inability to identify meaningfully with something and the inability to exert control over it are the two central aspects of alienation. Seeman’s (1959) seminal article drew from the philosophical designs of Marx, Mannheim, Weber, and Durkheim to identify the five dimensions of alienation as powerlessness, meaninglessness, social isolation, self-estrangement, and normlessness. Consistent with Marx’s (1964) and Seeman’s (1959) views, Heidegger’s (1962) perspective includes aspects of misapprehension, inauthenticity, and existence. Against this backdrop, we may deduce that consumer-alienation refers to both, heteronomy at once and the thorough absence of purpose; furthermore, ineffectiveness and the loss of meaningful interest in consuming the brand are intertwined in it. Investigations of consumer alienation in its current form always concerns consumer choice and self-determination and the failure to realize them, as well as the justice and goodness of other brands, consumers’ freedom to choose, the degree of happiness gained from consuming the brand, and self-determination and self-realization achieved through brand interactions. An alienated consumer sees the brand as a powerful and oppressive object that provides consumers no space for the actions they want to perform, so consumers become strangers to the brand and no longer identify themselves with the brand. This kind of alienation results in fragmentation and reduction of consumers’ transactional and engagement activities. At a fundamental level, then, we may say that consumer alienation denotes a relationship that the consumer has with the brand that is characterized by the consumer’s sense of powerlessness, normlessness, indifference, meaninglessness, and isolation.

According to Hegel (1991), the core problem of consumer alienation lies in the connection between the individual and the brand, rather than consumer’s loss through brand only, so the problem of relationlessness cannot be addressed by scrutinizing the brand only but must include consideration of consumers as well. Sartre (1992) proposed that, for an entity to become part of one’s measure of self-identity, the consumer must be able to acquire it, create or make it, and learn about it. A consumer’s positive appraisal of the brand’s performance, combined with optimism and confidence in the brand’s intention to “do good” for its consumers, is central to a positive consumer-brand relationship. Consumer alienation reflects the consumer’s loss of freedom to choose, happiness from consuming the brand, and self-determination and self-realization through interactions with the brand. Thus, lower consumer efficacy, shrinking trust, and increasing cynicism result in negative opinions of the brand, poor contention, decreased consumption, defensiveness, and ultimately alienation. However, this situation can be skewed by the involvement of love. Similar to deontologists, who justify their decisions to employ different normative standards in different situations by means of their moral code, it is logical to conclude that a consumer’s brand love is likely to slow the process of alienation. Williams’s (1995) “thick ethical concept” suggests that a situation of alienation automatically implies an evaluation of it, or, lay otherwise, the assessment is not just added to description but is inextricably pledged with it. Marx (1964) described alienation as “double loss of reality,” of the consumer-brand relationship and consumer himself or herself, so consumer alienation affects the consumer’s wellbeing. Nagel’s (1989) “view from nowhere” suggests that consumers lose their point of reference in the consumption world in which they used to act, and suspend the consumption in which they were once absorbed. From Weber’s (1958) perspective, alienation is an iron cage in which alienated consumers perceive themselves to be trapped by a bureaucratic brand. This atmosphere of negative thoughts, disapproving feelings, and condemnation of the brand result in negatively valenced engagement and value co-destruction.

The development of the conceptualization and measurement of consumer alienation is not a linear path, so future researchers must develop and implement multiple perspectives and strands of the concept.