The commodified self in consumer culture: A cross-cultural perspective

The author examined the premise that the pervasive consumer ideology in tod ay's society has implications for the conceptions of self and others. She u sed structured interviews to assess conceptions of self and other and G. P. Moschis's (1978) questionnaire to measure consumer orientation among 76 U. S. and 62 Finnish college students. The principal hypotheses were (a) that the U.S. students would be more commodified than the Finnish students and ( b) that the participants who were high in consumer orientation would be mor e likely than those lower in consumer orientation to see themselves and oth ers in material terms and also to consider personal characteristics to have market values. The results supported both hypotheses.