{"id":519,"date":"2020-03-10T15:20:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T13:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/?p=519"},"modified":"2020-03-10T15:20:59","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T13:20:59","slug":"what-is-a-tastefully-decorated-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/2020\/03\/10\/what-is-a-tastefully-decorated-home\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a tastefully decorated home?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fiskars scissors, Moomin mugs and an Aalto vase? Maybe also striped towels from Marimekko and a stool with legs of bent plywood (be it Artek, or a replica). How about white kitchen cabinets, grey floor tiles in the bathroom, and one of those woven seagrass baskets, the ones with handles? A eucalyptus branch as decoration? The list continues, I keep on checking \u201cyes, got it\u201d item after item, amused at the realization that my home is indeed quite the clich\u00e9 of Scandinavian modernism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Such \u201cWhich of these items do you have in your\nhome\u201d lists have been circulating in both social and traditional interior\ndecoration media. Apart from being just fun online tests, they also \u2013 in the\neyes of a consumer researcher \u2013 illuminate some intriguing consumption\nphenomena. How come so many of us have all these same possessions in our homes?\nEven when we think that we make unique and personal choices and devote time and\neffort into making decisions about what we think looks good in our homes, the\noutcomes are surprisingly conformist. Why is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a researcher, I have been trying to\nunderstand how we consume objects in the home through the concept of taste.\nThat is, how we make judgements about aesthetic objects, what we prefer and what\nwe find appropriate for a specific situation. What we find as tasteful versus\nbad taste. But to understand consumption, should we settle with the thought\nthat \u201cthere is no accounting for taste\u201d, that people\u2019s tastes for consumption\nobjects are just different and subjective, and thus rather impossible for a marketer\nto grip?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not according to sociologists and culturally oriented consumer researchers, who claim that taste is a product of socialization, a practice, and a way for us to express social distinction through what, and also how<\/em>, we consume. For instance, interiors that consist of just the \u201cright\u201d items can be judged as impersonal and catalogue-like, if they are not skilfully spiced up with the occasional second hand bargain or other item giving just that right personal tough, signalling the consumer\u2019s ability to constitute a carefully curated combination of d\u00e9cor resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The social nature of taste practice is\nparticularly visible in today\u2019s media landscape where taste is to a lesser\nextent than before dictated by cultural authorities such as traditional\nlifestyle media like interior decoration magazines. Rather, various online\nplatforms (Instagram, Pinterest, blogs and Facebook groups to name a few) have\nchanged the field of taste-making, influence and persuasion, and allowed for\nthe emergence of different taste regimes. Within such regimes, a specific\naesthetic orientation \u2013 such as \u201cScandinavian modernism\u201d I mentioned in the\nbeginning, becomes collectively negotiated and reproduced by its members, through\ntheir choices of material objects for their homes (the \u201cmust have\u201d products),\nin their doings (the ways to combine objects), and in the meanings they assign\nthem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Having done netnographic research of such consumption practices, one of the interesting things has been to notice how members often explicitly negotiate what \u201cbelongs\u201d within the interior d\u00e9cor style in question and what doesn\u2019t, which seems to support the theoretical idea of taste indeed being a social practice, where symbolic boundaries determine who does and does not belong to a group or class. For instance, if members post pictures from their homes with elements that are less aligned with the general understanding of Scandinavian modernism, like more colourful or decorative elements, the posters oftentimes do this in an almost apologetic manner (\u201cThis is not very Scandi-modern, but\u2026) and at times, if members express willingness to sometimes see pictures of \u201csomething else than these white homes\u201d, they may be hinted towards other aesthetic communities, such as groups for retro style decorators. In this sense, these ongoing and social taste practices give rise to very distinct market segments of home d\u00e9cor and furniture customers. And understanding these in sufficient depth is crucial knowledge for the marketing manager in this field.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anu Norrgrann<\/a>
Assistant Professor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further reading<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsel, Z., & Bean,\nJ. (2013). Taste regimes and market-mediated practice. Journal of Consumer Research<\/em>, 39<\/em>(5),\n899-917.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arsel, Z., & Bean,\nJ. (2018). Social distinction and the practice of taste. In Arnould, E.A. &\nThompson, C.J. (Eds) Consumer Culture Theory.\n<\/em>London: Sage,\n276-294.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syrj\u00e4l\u00e4, H., & Norrgrann, A. (2019). \u201cWhen your dog matches your decor\u201d Object agency of living and non-living entities in home assemblage. Consumer Culture Theory (Research in Consumer Behavior, Volume 20). Emerald Publishing Limited<\/em>, 39-54.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos: Anu Norrgrann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fiskars scissors, Moomin mugs and an Aalto vase? Maybe also striped towels from Marimekko and a stool with legs of bent plywood (be it Artek, or a replica). How about white kitchen cabinets, grey floor tiles in the bathroom, and one of those woven seagrass baskets, the ones with handles? A eucalyptus branch as decoration? …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,15,50,29,49],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cers-blog","tag-decoration","tag-design","tag-marketing","tag-modernism","tag-research","tag-scandinavia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/cers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}