The duality of social self-categorization in consumption

“Consumer culture” theories frequently claim that people use symbols of consumption to socially self-categorize and satisfy their needs for assimilation or differentiation. Through two empirical quantitative studies, we argue that self-categorization operates according to a duality overlooked by these theories. On one hand, self-categorization can be understood as the assimilation of the “I” into a normatively well-characterized group, a self-categorization that we define as “ontological” in this article. On the other hand, it can be understood as the identification with socially standardized and impersonal models, a self-categorization that we term “formal.” In the two studies, we investigated whether the psychologically perceived distance between the in-group and out-group (metacontrast) is greater in ontological than in formal self-categorization and, second, whether these two forms of self-categorizations operate independently (not correlated) in consumption. The results support the two hypotheses. However, further studies should be developed in order to give a more definitive character to the theory. If the findings of this work were to be confirmed by other ecological contexts and sampling techniques, there might be consequences for “self-brand connection” analyses and in general for consumption studies where social self-categorization theory can be applied.