“Reading Consumer Culture”Project: Part I—SHOPPINGfrom NETWORKED A Project Approach to Writing

Pamela GayThis material may not be copied or distributed without permission from the author.______________________________________________________________

Shopping

America has changed from a country that makes things to a country that buys things.

Danny Schechter, journalist, media critic, and director of the documentary “In Debt We Trust,” which shows how “the mall replaced the factory as America’s dominant economic engine.

Shopping is My Cardio Barbara Kruger (1987) Mary Ciaramello, Editor

BUZZ entertainment guide Volume 3, Issue 20, p. 2

Hi, my name is Mary, and I’m a shopaholic. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I never realized the full extent of my obsession until recently when I was looking at a scrapbook of my wedding and I came across the speech that my sister-in-law/maid of honor gave at the rehearsal dinner. It was a modern fairy tale about a princess (presumably me) with magical shopping powers and who was felled by a knight from the realm of Xbox…not too far from the truth, really.

What really struck me about the story was that my loved ones see shopping as a big part of my identity, and it is.

I guess I learned it from my mother, who can shop for days without getting tired of it. For me, shopping was always more fun than going to the park. It was how my mother and I bonded, and it’s how I bond with most of my friends. If you haven’t hung out with me at the mall, then you haven’t met the real me.

And it’s not like I’m a spender, really. I’m totally fine about leaving a store without buying anything. I just like to walk around and look at all the stuff.

Chances are, if you’re going to bump into me somewhere out and about with my friends, it won’t be at a bar or coffee shop or any place like that. It would be at a place where I can shop.

See you at the mall, Mary

Where do you like to shop? E-mail me at editor@freebuzzonline.com

[Insert “Let’s SHOP!” cover from Oprah magazine.]

Much of the joy of holiday shopping can be traced to the brain chemical dopamine. Dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health….Dopamine can cause someone to get caught up in the shopping moment and make bad decisions.

This Is Your Brain at the Mall:Why Shopping Makes You Feel So Good 

Tara Parker-PopeWall Street JournalDecember 6, 2005

 When Wazhma Samizay and her friends have a bad day, they go shopping, a ritual

dubbed "retail therapy."

"When you are shopping to buy a gift or get something for yourself, either way it's kind of

a treat," says Ms. Samizay, who three years ago opened a Seattle boutique named

Retail Therapy. "The concept of the store was about finding things that made people feel

good."

Science is now discovering what Ms. Samizay and many consumers have known all

along: Shopping makes you feel good. A growing body of brain research shows how

shopping activates key areas of the brain, boosting our mood and making us feel better

— at least for a little while. Peering into a decorated holiday window or finding a hard-to-

find toy appears to tap into the brain's reward center, triggering the release of brain

chemicals that give you a "shopping high." Understanding the way your brain responds

to shopping can help you make sense of the highs and lows of holiday shopping, avoid

buyer's remorse and lower your risk for overspending.

Much of the joy of holiday shopping can be traced to the brain chemical dopamine.

Dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health. The brains of people

with Parkinson's disease, for instance, contain almost no dopamine. Dopamine also

plays a role in drug use and other addictive behaviors. Dopamine is associated with

feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, and it's released when we experience something

new, exciting or challenging. And for many people, shopping is all those things.

"You're seeing things you haven't seen; you're trying on clothes you haven't tried on

before," says Gregory Berns, an Emory University neuroscientist and author of

"Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment."

University of Kentucky researchers in 1995 studied rats exploring unfamiliar

compartments in their cages — the laboratory equivalent of discovering a new store at

the mall. When a rat explored a new place, dopamine surged in its brain's reward center.

The study offers a warning about shopping in new stores or while out of town. People

tend to make more extraneous purchases when they shop outside their own

communities, says Indiana University professor Ruth Engs, who studies shopping

addiction.

But MRI studies of brain activity suggest that surges in dopamine levels are linked much

more with anticipation of an experience rather than the actual experience — which may

explain why people get so much pleasure out of window-shopping or hunting for

bargains.

Dopamine can cause someone to get caught up in the shopping moment and make bad

decisions. Dr. Berns of Emory says dopamine may help explain why someone buys

shoes they never wear. "You see the shoes and get this burst of dopamine," says Dr.

Berns. Dopamine, he says, "motivates you to seal the deal and buy them. It's like a fuel

injector for action, but once they're bought it's almost a let down."

Dr. Berns and his colleagues have devised studies to simulate novel experiences to

better understand when and why the brain releases dopamine. In one set of studies

volunteers reclined in an MRI scanner while a tube trickled drops of water or sweet Kool-

Aid into their mouths. Sometimes the Kool-Aid drops were a predictable pattern, while

other studies used random drops. Notably, when the Kool-Aid was predictable the brain

showed little increased activity. But the scans showed a high level of activity when the

Kool-Aid was given at random. This indicates that the anticipation of the reward —

whether it's Kool-Aid or a new dress — is what gets our dopamine pumping.

Because the shopping experience can't be replicated inside an MRI scanner, other

researchers are using electroencephalogram, or EEG, monitors that measure electrical

activity in the brain to better understand consumer-shopping habits. Britain's Neuroco, a

London consulting firm, uses portable monitors, strapped on to shoppers, to produce

"brain maps" as a way to understand consumer buying habits. The brain maps show a

marked difference in the brain patterns of someone just browsing compared with a

consumer about to make a purchase.

"Shopping is enormously rewarding to us," says David Lewis, a neuroscientist and

director of research and development. But Dr. Lewis also notes that stressful holiday

crowds, poor service or the realization that you've spent too much can quickly eliminate

the feel-good effects of shopping.

Knowing that shopping triggers real changes in our brain can help you make better

shopping decisions and not overspend while in a dopamine-induced high. For instance,

walking away from a purchase you want and returning the next day will eliminate the

novelty of the situation and help you make a more clear-headed decision.

Dr. Engs of Indiana has compiled a list of dos and don'ts to help people make better

shopping decisions. Although the steps are aimed at people with compulsive shopping

problems, they are useful for anyone caught up in the holiday shopping frenzy.

Buy only the items on your shopping list to avoid impulse purchases.

Use cash or debit cards. Financial limits keep you from buying things you can't afford in

the midst of shopping excitement.

Window-shop after stores have closed or when you've left your wallet at home. You'll get

the pleasure of shopping without the risk of overspending.

Don't shop when you're visiting friends or relatives. The added novelty of shopping in a

new place puts you at higher risk of buying something you don't need.

______________________________

*NOTE: The following 3 articles will be provided in print!

*Self-Help for Shopaholics: How to Cut Your Cash Consumption in Half in Just One Week!

Sophie Kinsella

Sophie Kinsella, a former financial journalist, is the author of the bestselling ‘Shopaholic’ series published by Black Swan (London). In this selection from The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic (2000: 64-67), Rebecca Bloomwood, a journalist who spends her working life telling others how to manage their money and her leisure time shopping tries cutting back.

*Learning Diderot’s Lesson: Stopping the Upward Creep of Desire

Juliet B. Schor

Labor economist Juliet B. Schor is currently Professor of Sociology at Boston College. She has written extensively on work and consumption patterns of Americans and has received numerous awards. The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer, from which this selection is taken (148, 158-160), received the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language from the National Council of Teachers of English. In this chapter, Schor outlines nine principles to help people get off the ‘consumer escalator.’ The following includes the introduction (Diderot’s Lesson) and Principle 6.

*Haggling on the Net: Negotiating with Online Clothing Retailers

Cheryl Lu-Lien TanWall Street JournalJune 23-24, 2007, pp. 1 & 3

Shop with Eileen Shopping Mall: e Shops Galore

For those shoppers who like a variety of stores that malls have to offer but can’t stand fighting the crowds, your obvious alternative is right in front of you. Here at Shop with Eileen Shopping Mall you will find everything you need!!! We provide you with easy access to top online merchants with thousands of products. You can order from companies like Overstock, eBay, Wal-Mart, Petsmart, and many more!

http://www.sitemapdesigns.com/960265/index.html

Three-story Wal-Mart Could Give Urban Malls New Lease on Life

Tim Craig, Washington Post staff writerFebruary 10, 2003DSN Retailing Today (magazine)

Inside, there are sleek new escalators equipped with parallel tracks, one for shoppers and another for their carts._____________________________________________________________________________

Just about every trade show I attend these days contains some sort of seminar about the death of

mall retailing. And the recurring theme many pundits love to espouse is that mall retailing has

fallen out of favor with the U.S. consumer. In its place, they add, the stand-alone big box has

taken over the industry.

While that would be a convenient explanation for a lot of developments in retailing in the last few

years, I have to say I really don't buy it--not entirely anyway. I don't believe the fundamental

argument that malls are any less capable than stand-alone stores of creating excitement and

drawing traffic. I don't believe in the "paradigm shift" theory that says consumers have changed

the way they shop. And I definitely don't believe that the mall is beyond the point of revival.

And now I have the proof.

On a recent trip to sunny Southern California--a welcome respite after two weeks straight of

below-freezing New York weather--I stopped in on a Wal-Mart grand opening in urban Los

Angeles. Far from its marquee supercenter and Neighborhood Market concepts, there wasn't a

whole lot of buzz surrounding the opening of this discount store. The write-ups in the local papers

made no mention of food offerings. In fact, there was nothing particularly special about its

merchandise mix at all.

One novelty that did catch my attention was its three-story structure, a brand new, experimental

concept for Wal-Mart. Aesthetically, there are many intriguing features at the new Baldwin Hills

store, including its art deco exterior signage (see story, page 3). Housed in a former Macy's, the

store is a stately street-level location flanked by towering palm trees that create a setting

reminiscent of a bygone retailing era. Inside, there are sleek new escalators equipped with

parallel tracks, one for shoppers and another for their carts. The store also has multiple

entrances--at least one on each floor--along with multiple checkouts scattered throughout.

But the real layer of intrigue to this new location lies well beyond the surface. By positioning this

discount store as a mall anchor in a dense urban environment, Wal-Mart is entering a realm of

retailing it has traditionally avoided. For a company founded on the principle of massive, stand-

alone footprints in mostly rural locations, the new Baldwin Hills store is uncharted waters for the

world's largest retailer--which is exactly what makes this a must-watch venture.

Despite all the industry talk of dead malls and depressed economies, Baldwin Hills was

absolutely abuzz with activity during opening week. And if Wal-Mart can sustain that activity--

which I'm sure few analysts would refute--it would not only provide an entree into select markets

like Baldwin Hills, but it could open an entirely new growth channel for the company.

Because if there's one thing this store stands to prove it's not the success of a new signage

package or escalator experiment. Rather, Wal-Mart's newest test in urban mall retailing may just

prove that the decline in the American mall over the last decade may have less to do with the

economy than it did with the quality of the anchor tenant.

As Los Angeles Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas put it in an interview with the Los Angeles

Times, "This is a market that is not a wasteland, this is an emerging market"--which may prove to

be the understatement of the next decade.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FNP/is_3_42/ai_97727796

Sweatshops, fair trade, organic food….shopping can sometimes feel like a moral minefield. Which companies and products should we support or avoid? And which claims of social responsibility can we trust? Do boycotts work? Is buying local better? How can we reduce our impact on global warming? The Rough Guide to Shopping with a Conscience (2007)

Eco-shopping: Buying Into the Green Movement Alex Williams, New York Times, Section 9, pp. 1, 8July 1, 2007

HERE’S one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt.

Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.

Drive to the airport, where you settle in for an 8,000-mile flight— careful to buy carbon offsets beforehand — and spend a week driving golf balls made from compacted fish food at an eco-resort in the Maldives.

That vision of an eco-sensitive life as a series of choices about what to buy appeals to millions of consumers and arguably defines the current environmental movement as equal parts concern for the earth and for making a stylish statement.

Some 35 million Americans regularly buy products that claim to be earth-friendly, according to one report, everything from organic beeswax lipstick from the west Zambian rain forest to Toyota Priuses. With baby steps, more and more shoppers browse among the 60,000 products available under Home Depot’s new Eco Options program.

Such choices are rendered fashionable as celebrities worried about global warming appear on the cover of Vanity Fair’s “green issue,” and pop stars like Kelly Clarkson and Lenny Kravitz prepare to be headline acts on July 7 at the Live Earth concerts at sites around the world.

Consumers have embraced living green, and for the most part the mainstream green movement has embraced green consumerism. But even at this moment of high visibility and impact for environmental activists, a splinter wing of the movement has begun to critique what it sometimes calls “light greens.”

Critics question the notion that we can avert global warming by buying so-called earth-friendly products, from clothing and cars to homes and vacations, when the cumulative effect of our consumption remains enormous and hazardous.

“There is a very common mind-set right now which holds that all that we’re going to need to do to avert the large-scale planetary catastrophes upon us is make slightly different shopping decisions,” said Alex Steffen, the executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability issues.

The genuine solution, he and other critics say, is to significantly reduce one’s consumption of goods and resources. It’s not enough to build a vacation home of recycled lumber; the real way to reduce one’s carbon footprint is to only own one home.

Buying a hybrid car won’t help if it’s the aforementioned Lexus, the luxury LS 600h L model, which gets 22 miles to the gallon on the highway; the Toyota Yaris ($11,000) gets 40 highway miles a gallon with a standard gasoline engine.

It’s as though the millions of people whom environmentalists have successfully prodded to be concerned about climate change are experiencing a SnackWell’s moment: confronted with a box of fat-free devil’s food chocolate cookies, which seem deliciously guilt-free, they consume the entire box, avoiding any fats but loading up on calories. The issue of green shopping is highlighting a division in the environmental movement: “the old-school environmentalism of self-abnegation versus this camp of buying your way into heaven,” said Chip Giller, the founder of Grist.org, an online environmental blog that claims a monthly readership of 800,000. “Over even the last couple of months, there is more concern growing within the traditional camp about the Cosmo-izing of the green movement — ‘55 great ways to look eco-sexy,’ ” he said. “Among traditional greens, there is concern that too much of the population thinks there’s an easy way out.”

The criticisms have appeared quietly in some environmental publications and on the Web.

GEORGE BLACK, an editor and a columnist at OnEarth, a quarterly journal of the Natural Resources Defense Council, recently summed up the explosion of high-style green consumer items and articles of the sort that proclaim “green is the new black,” that is, a fashion trend, as “eco-narcissism.”

Paul Hawken, an author and longtime environmental activist, said the current boom in earth-friendly products offers a false promise. “Green consumerism is an oxymoronic phrase,” he said. He blamed the news media and marketers for turning environmentalism into fashion and distracting from serious issues.

“We turn toward the consumption part because that’s where the money is,” Mr. Hawken said. “We tend not to look at the ‘less’ part. So you get these anomalies like 10,000-foot ‘green’ homes being built by a hedge fund manager in Aspen. Or ‘green’ fashion shows. Fashion is the deliberate inculcation of obsolescence.”

He added: “The fruit at Whole Foods in winter, flown in from Chile on a 747 — it’s a complete joke. The idea that we should have raspberries in January, it doesn’t matter if they’re organic. It’s diabolically stupid.”

Environmentalists say some products marketed as green may pump more carbon into the atmosphere than choosing something more modest, or simply nothing at all. Along those lines, a company called PlayEngine sells a 19-inch widescreen L.C.D. set whose “sustainable bamboo” case is represented as an earth-friendly alternative to plastic.

But it may be better to keep your old cathode-tube set instead, according to “The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook,” because older sets use less power than plasma or L.C.D. screens. (Televisions account for about 4 percent of energy consumption in the United States, the handbook says.)

“The assumption that by buying anything, whether green or not, we’re solving the problem is a misperception,” said Michael Ableman, an environmental author and long-time organic farmer. “Consuming is a significant part of the problem to begin with. Maybe the solution is instead of buying five pairs of organic cotton jeans, buy one pair of regular jeans instead.”

For the most part, the critiques of green consumption have come from individual activists, not from mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network. The latest issue of Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, has articles hailing an “ecofriendly mall” featuring sustainable clothing (under development in Chicago) and credit cards that rack up carbon offsets for every purchase, as well as sustainably-harvested caviar and the celebrity-friendly Tango electric sports car (a top-of-the-line model is $108,000).

One reason mainstream groups may be wary of criticizing Americans’ consumption is that before the latest era of green chic, these large organizations endured years in which their warnings about climate change were scarcely heard.

Much of the public had turned away from the Carter-era environmental message of sacrifice, which included turning down the thermostat, driving smaller cars and carrying a cloth “Save-a-Tree” tote to the supermarket.

Now that environmentalism is high profile, thanks in part to the success of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the 2006 documentary featuring Al Gore, mainstream greens, for the most part, say that buying products promoted as eco-friendly is a good first step.

“After you buy the compact fluorescent bulbs,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, “you can move on to greater goals like banding together politically to shut down coal-fired power plants.”

John Passacantando, the executive director of Greenpeace USA, argued that green consumerism has been a way for Wal-Mart shoppers to get over the old stereotypes of environmentalists as “tree-hugging hippies” and contribute in their own way.

This is crucial, he said, given the widespread nature of the global warming challenge. “You need Wal-Mart and Joe Six-Pack and mayors and taxi drivers," he said. “You need participation on a wide front.”

It is not just ecology activists with one foot in the 1970s, though, who have taken issue with the consumerist personality of the “light green” movement. Anti-consumerist fervor burns hotly among some activists who came of age under the influence of noisy, disruptive anti-globalization protests.

Last year, a San Francisco group called the Compact made headlines with a vow to live the entire year without buying anything but bare essentials like medicine and food. A year in, the original 10 “mostly” made it, said Rachel Kesel, 26, a founder. The movement claims some 8,300 adherents throughout the country and in places as distant as Singapore and Iceland.

“The more that I’m engaged in this, the more annoyed I get with things like ‘shop against climate change’ and these kind of attitudes,” said Ms. Kesel, who continues her shopping strike and counts a new pair of running shoes — she’s a dog-walker by trade — as among her limited purchases in 18 months.“It’s hysterical,” she said. “You’re telling people to consume more in order to reduce impact.”

For some, the very debate over how much difference they should try to make in their own lives is a distraction. They despair of individual consumers being responsible for saving the earth from climate change and want to see action from political leaders around the world.

INDIVIDUAL consumers may choose more fuel-efficient cars, but a far greater effect may be felt when fuel-efficiency standards are raised for all of the industry , as the Senate voted to do on June 21, the first significant rise in mileage standards in more than two decades.

“A legitimate beef that people have with green consumerism is, at end of the day, the things causing climate change are more caused by politics and the economy than individual behavior,” said Michel Gelobter, a former professor of environmental policy at Rutgers who is now president of Redefining Progress, a nonprofit policy group that promotes sustainable living.

“A lot of what we need to do doesn’t have to do with what you put in your shopping basket,” he said. “It has to do with mass transit, housing density. It has to do with the war and subsidies for the coal and fossil fuel industry.”

In fact, those light-green environmentalists who chose not to lecture about sacrifice and promote the trendiness of eco-sensitive products may be on to something.

Michael Shellenberger, a partner at American Environics, a market research firm in Oakland, Calif., said that his company ran a series of focus groups in April for the environmental group Earthjustice, and was surprised by the results.

People considered their trip down the Eco Options aisles at Home Depot a beginning, not an end point.

“We didn’t find that people felt that their consumption gave them a pass, so to speak,” Mr. Shellenberger said. “They knew what they were doing wasn’t going to deal with the problems, and these little consumer things won’t add up. But they do it as a practice of mindfulness. They didn’t see it as antithetical to political action. Folks who were engaged in these green practices were actually becoming more committed to more transformative political action on global warming.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/fashion/01green.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Don't buy it!Stephanie Zacharek

Salon.com (p. 1)April 26, 2005

Mega-buzzed magazines like Lucky, Cargo and the brand-new Domino reduce readers to consumers without brains or a sense of style.

"What business have we with art at all, unless we all can share it?" -- 19th century craftsman, designer, writer and Socialist William Morris

"Design for all." -- advertising slogan for Target

"Don't just show me a nice console table; suggest unexpected mirrors that might look great hanging above it. Don't just offer me a selection of gorgeous wallpapers; give me ideas about where to hang them." -- Deborah Needleman, editor in chief of new Condé Nast magazine Domino

Not so long ago, when Americans wanted to shop at home, they picked up a catalog or hit the Internet. But shopping magazines -- or magalogs, a concept first introduced by Condé Nast several years ago with the women's shopping magazine-turned-juggernaut Lucky -- have changed all that. Like catalogs, magalogs allow us to shop vicariously, to spend our money a hundred times over in our minds without forking over a penny. But unlike catalogs, which are simply good old-fashioned pleas on the part of a given company to get us to buy its goods, shopping magazines are allegedly on our side: Seeing how puzzled and bewildered we are by the ever-increasing array of stuff to buy, these magazines, staffed by a host of hip, with-it editors, take us by the hand to offer guidance, insight and wisdom -- they're a kind of Consumer Reports for the shopping-mall set.

On the market for a pair of jeweled flip-flops? Lucky will scour the market to assemble the jeweled-flip-flop hall of fame, offering a selection of every type available for the given season, in a range of prices for all pocketbooks. The editors of Lucky appear on the magazine's pages like mini-celebrities, conspiratorially sharing their favorite finds of the month: "Just a touch of macram trim is a smart spin on the easiest trend of the season." Before you've expressed even the vaguest interest in jeweled flip-flops, the shopping magazine knows just what you want (macram -- but of course!) and clamors to be the first to tell you where you can get it.

On the surface, at least, the shopping magazine doesn't seem to be a particularly heinous invention: What harm can there be in a magazine filled with bunches of little pictures accented with helpful little text blips (to call them captions would be an overstatement)? Consumers have certainly taken the bait: Last year Condé Nast rolled out Cargo, a sort of Lucky for boys, offering guy-guidance on clothing, grooming products and gadgets. Other magazine-publishing empires have scrambled to produce their own portable mini-malls, among them Hearst's Lucky-alike Shop. And now Condé Nast reveals the third jewel in its tiara of shopaholism: Domino, billed as "the shopping magazine for your home," officially goes on sale Tuesday.

At first, one or two shopping magazines didn't seem to be too many: The universe of magazine publishing could certainly support them. But with the arrival of Domino, what used to be a refreshing novelty is now that ineffably dull thing known as a trend. And maybe now it's time to ask ourselves what we're shopping for when we pick up a shopping magazine: Are we really slaking a thirst to find out just how many kinds of garden benches there are out there? Do we really need a "smart chart" to learn how to layer the linens on our bed? When we spend 80 seconds scrutinizing a page full of door knockers, are we really shopping for door knockers -- or are we shopping for taste?

Now that Domino has dropped, the insidiousness of the shopping magazine takes a clear form: Why spend years building a personal aesthetic when you can just buy one?

Copyright © 2007 Salon Media Group, Inc. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc. http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/feature/2005/04/26/magalogs/index.html

BUY NOTHING DAY Spend a day without spending!

In the United States Buy Nothing Day is always the day after Thanksgiving. This demonstration took place in San Francisco (November 2000). Photo by Lars Aronsson.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/La2-buynothing.jpg

Analyze

Create an analytical framework to distinguish different kinds of shoppers (from recreational to compulsive) and another one for places for shopping (from shops and boutiques to big box stores and Internet shopping).

Reflect

What kind of a shopper are you? Do you go shopping with something in mind or a financial limit? Do you comparison shop? Do you shop for certain brands? Are you an “impulse buyer”? Do you shop recreationally? Use these questions to get started and QuickWrite for five minutes.

How do products you have bought (clothing and accessories, music, technology, furnishings, a car, for example) help identify you? How do these “things” tell others about you, in other words? Perhaps start with a list under categories and then QuickWrite for 5 minutes.

Discuss

Get into a small group. Perhaps go around the group addressing these two questions to help identify you: What kind of a shopper are you? Where do you tend to shop? Then move on and talk about shopping places. Use the following questions to prompt discussion. Do you think that mall retailing is on its way out—or that more malls will need to become “lifestyle” malls to accommodate shoppers whose lifestyles have changed? Do you think downtowns can be revived as centers for shopping? Do you think Internet shopping will eventually become the norm?

Learn More

Learn more about the state of malls today. Are “lifestyle malls” on the rise? Are big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Target displacing malls? Are some big-box stores becoming anchor stress in malls? To what extent do issues like working environments for the production of goods (sweatshops, for example) or treatment of sales personnel (wages, health insurance) affect shoppers? Learn more about outsourcing. Has outsourcing increased? Learn more about eco-shopping. How green is “green”? Has the demand for green products continued to increase? Learn more about activist movements like “culture jamming,” which launched Buy Nothing Day. Learn about the “Unswooshing America” campaign to resist Nike. Learn more about branding and logos and brand name shopping. Browse through some journals (Journal of Consumer Culture, for example) and magazines that feature news and stories about shopping (eco-shopping, for example) or shopping guide magazines like Lucky or Cargo (a sort of Lucky for guys). In 2007, 150 million Americans went shopping on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. How many went shopping this past year on that day? What about Cyber Monday (for online sales)?

Write

Write a short essay or a 750-word blog about shoppers or shopping. Shop around for some possibilities. Based on the reading and research you have done and informal writing and discussion, you could QuickWrite to learn about what interests you. You may change your mind when you do more research and come across another topic of interest.

Offer an informed viewpoint or position. In other words, demonstrate that you have done some research and critical thinking about the topic. You are not just writing “off the cuff,” so to speak. Your “reading” should be a considered response to some issue or concern related to shoppers and shopping.

Do not write a strictly informative piece (kinds of shoppers, for example) or basically a summary of various articles on a topic. Use research to inform, explain, and support your critical reading of an issue or concern.

Think about your audience. Where would be a good place or space to “go public” with your writing? Whether you’re writing an entry in your blog (like MadHatterMommy, p. 0-00) or an essay, your writing should be appropriate for your audience. Leave your readers something to think further about based on your research and reflections.

Depending on your topic, you could include yourself as an example. You could also do some micro-ethnographic research and interview different consumers and include some relevant quotations along with references to more formal or second-hand research.

After you have done some research and re-thinking, you could meet with a small group and try out your focus and initial reading. It’s helpful to have a writing network to talk through your ideas. Articulating your thoughts to an interested group can often move you further along.