Moving from conspicuous consumption to conscious living this Christmas

Ask a Filipino millennial or Gen Z-er what “Black Friday” is, and they will probably say that it is practically synonymous with shopping. Black Friday is indeed tied to shopping. It falls on the day after Thanksgiving and is the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States. Interestingly, Filipino social media feeds also become rife with Black Friday deals as soon as November rolls in. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but that’s no reason not to embrace yet another reason (or excuse) to shop. Moreover, shopping isn’t just about acquiring things that we need. It is also about being seen buying. How many times have we been guilty of using #budol on our social media posts?

This is conspicuous consumption, a term coined by economist Thorstein Veblen in 1899 in his work, The Theory of the Leisure Class, which describes how people use their purchase behavior to signal wealth and prestige, even when it is impractical. It’s when people buy a 700+ horsepower luxury car, even when they cannot fully experience its speed given the EDSA traffic, or when two people order every entrée from the menu of a fine dining restaurant, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to finish it. Apparently, flexing has been around for more than 100 years, and it has just been made easier with social media.

Today, however, it’s not just the leisure class (the barons and billionaires) that participate in conspicuous consumption. Even ordinary people like us know what it is like to spend our hard-earned 13^th month pay on trendy knick-knacks, only to realize mid-unboxing that it’s not quite what we had in mind. In the end, we are left with a mountain of things we will probably never use, the boxes and bubble wrap they came in, and a feeling of disappointment.

Research has shown that conspicuous consumption does have a positive effect on one’s social status and self-esteem. One such study, which was presented at the International Conference on Information Systems 2010, indicated that a “conspicuous consumer” gains an average of 13.2 friends compared to his counterpart, who only wins 5.1 over the same period. Another study, which was published in the Journal of Retailing in 2022, confirmed that conspicuous consumption leads to subjective well-being, i.e., happiness, satisfaction with life, and empowerment. But at what cost? More recent studies published in the last five years showed how conspicuous consumption leads to negative consequences, such as anxiety from the pressure of keeping up with appearances, chronic dissatisfaction, or that persistent feeling of not having or not being enough, increased debt, especially for lower-income households, and wastefulness. When consumption becomes performance, waste becomes inevitable. Yes, conspicuous consumption fuels even our country’s ever-growing waste problem.

Conspicuous consumption is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that haunts us all, telling us that grim things are on the horizon if we continue down this purchasing path. But just as the Ghost made Scrooge realize that he can still change the future, I hope we recognize that there is an alternative: conscious consumption, an attitude of intentional and responsible buying.

And since Christmas is a time for contemplation (not just consumption), I would like to invite you to reflect on two questions before you hit the checkout button: 1.) What do I need this for? 2.) What waste will this create? The first question clarifies your intention and turns a vague desire into a deliberate decision. The second question highlights the hidden environmental cost of every purchase, forcing us to evaluate if it is worth paying. Pausing before we pay and taking time to answer these questions helps us ensure that each one of our purchases aligns with our personal ethics.

Holiday season sales will come and go, but the consequences of our consumption will stay with us. The challenge for us today is to reconsider what it means to live a good life. It is not to be seen partaking of the good things that life has to offer, but to be mindful stewards of the things and the people in our care.

Liza Mae L. Fumar is a PhD in Business candidate of De La Salle University, where she also teaches Management courses, including Corporate Social Responsibility and Governance. Her research interests include consumer behavior and green consumption. She is a recovering shopaholic.

liza.fumar@dlsu.edu.ph