Liquid Consumer Security
Home ownership and accumulated possessions have long provided consumers with a sense of security, particularly in times of economic difficulty. This research asks whether these solid roots are now perceived as vulnerabilities by a consumer seeking greater agility and adaptability in their lives.
For many, life has become uncertain. Those things that previous generations considered a given, such as a career, a pension, and home ownership, are now increasingly out of reach for the current. The economic and health crises of recent years have shaken consumers’ confidence. The future is unpredictable, and one’s security can no longer be taken for granted.
Research has shown that in times of trouble, whether in response to long-term or immediate dangers, adaptive responses to insecurity are focused on accumulation, stockpiling, and long-term planning. Traditionally, consumers have built a sense of security by prioritising this ‘solid consumption’ logic. They have purchased houses and accumulated material possessions, all things which bring a sense of stability and reinforce a sense of future temporal orientation. Increasingly however, solid consumption is out of reach, requiring financial resources, employment stability, and confidence in the future, which are all in scant supply. As a result, consumers are thinking twice about the viability of a life centred on ownership and rootedness. An alternative response has emerged, and it is investigated in the research paper Liquid Consumption Security, which has been co-authored by Bayes Business School Lecturer in Marketing, Dr Aleksandrina Atanasova.
As part of the investigation, the authors conducted an ethnographic exploration of the growing phenomenon of digital nomadism. This is an emergent global lifestyle movement in which individuals work remotely and digitally, and serially migrate between different locations, to cut the cost of living and attain a better quality of life. Digital nomads are a demographically diverse group, spanning ages and occupations, and all attracted by the promise of aspirational living and self-fulfilment. While some digital nomads are wealthy, others are of modest means. Indeed, particularly for millennials and retirees, the desire for digital nomadic living is often fuelled by limited economic and employment prospects.
Digital nomads aspire to avoid a future of economic precarity, debt, and dead-end jobs. The solid consumption and solid structuring of life that were once bedrocks of security are perceived by this group as sources of risk. Ownership, accumulation, and solid ideals, such as starting a family or purchasing a home, emerge as risk-laden burdens they eschew, rather than aspire to. The long-term temporal demands, financial liabilities, and commitments which solid consumption requires are regarded as unwanted anchors in times that call for agility and adaptability.
These consumers choose to strategically construct security via what the authors label “liquid consumer security”. This is defined as a form of felt security that stems from the avoidance of solid consumption and its risks and responsibilities. Liquid consumer security is achieved through a recursive process of engaging in three strategies: (1) solid risk minimisation, (2) security reconstruction through the liquid marketplace, and (3) ideological legitimation. This process reflects a reorganisation of everyday life, where felt security is constructed via consumption projects within which lightness and detachment are seen as sources of security, while ownership and rootedness are seen as sources of risk.
Liquid consumer security draws in a type of consumer who is well positioned through skills and know-how to leverage the liquid marketplaces. This points to an emergent fragmentation in access to security and stability. For consumers with ample resources, solidity will remain within reach and disruptive events can be weathered. For others, who are increasingly disillusioned with the viability of solid living, the ability to construct liquid consumer security will help them chart new trajectories of the self in the face of ontological insecurities. By studying this emergent lifestyle movement, the study invites a different way of thinking about risk within consumer research, and shows how it can be managed in non-normative ways.
The paper Liquid Consumer Security is available for download at City Research Online. It has been published in Journal of Consumer Research.
