Nike Street Kids: Identity Through Consumption

This assignment analyzes the social identities of street kids who use Nike products. Drawing on Aldridge's consumer typology, the paper examines how these kids demonstrate rational consumer behavior while simultaneously being influenced by marketing techniques, highlighting the complexities of identity formation within a consumerist society.

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Advanced Marketing: Street kids in Nike: In search of humanization through the culture of
consumption
Introduction
People seek to create identities and realities for themselves, depending on their
circumstances and conditions. In this paper, the case of children creating their own social identities
through consumption where relations are governed by commodities, in which case, commodities
have a symbolic meaning. This is discussed in the context of the article communicator and rational
actor side from the Aldridge matrix
Discussion
According to Aldridge, consumers can be classified based on images based on the western
discourse and perception of consumption; based on the Aldridge classification, consumers fall into
four main categories of the rational actor, the communicator, the victim, and the dupe, as illustrated
in the image below;
Consumers fall in the four categories, although the categories are sometimes not distinct.
The rational actor consumer is derived in economics where they combine ordered approaches to the
process of decision making and motivation driven by self-interest. Consumers, thus behave
rationally as they pursue their self-interest, although capitalization gives people freedom and
choices. Victims are consumers that make bad choices due to their irrationality, or lack of objective
information, and can be swindled (Greener, Powell & Simmons 10); for instance a person that buys
into a ‘Ponzi’ scheme in the hope of making quick millions especially upon hearing that others have
made fortunes from the same. The communicator consumer has its roots in anthropology and

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sociology, where consumption is used as a means to achieving symbolic exchange, where
consumption is explained as a symbols exchange between actors that convey messages concerning
their identity and lifestyle. Victims are those consumers that make poor decisions while dupes are
consumers that are subject to surveillance and control through consumption that are manipulated
from their real needs. This is achieved through marketing engineering to manipulate the feelings
and thoughts of consumers through advertising and branded commercial products (Cox 264).
In the context of the Nike Kids, the kids the author speaks of, and observes, and who
ridicule him for buying ‘old’ Nike trainers despite having been in the US are essentially being
rational communicators. Their life is in shambles, but hey seek to define themselves sociologically
and culturally as being urbane, modern, and forward looking, by their aspersion of the ‘old Nike’
shoes in favor of the more trendy, modern Nike models such as Jordan's. Having seen the modern
Nike adverts, no less, they have created an image of themselves, and defined their identity with the
ultimate in a luxury product they my never afford, but which allows them to express themselves,
and communicate their values and feelings; their social identity. Rationality can also explain the fact
that they are dupes, based on clever commercial advertising from Nike, that the newer Nike models
are better and ideal, rather than the older ‘functional’ Nike shoes. Marketers have eroded public
space through private interest as seen in their advertisements where culture has been made into a
commodity from which profits can be made, such that culture is commoditized, as exemplified by
the ‘New, better, Nike’ shoes. Yet the author is surprised by this fact, a shoe is functional, and he
demonstrates resistance against the commoditization of a shoe to the extent of influencing popular
culture. This is his anti-corporate protest as a rational consumer; the kids, however, are victims of
the corporate monolith that dupe people with clever marketing; in the process commoditizing
culture, as Karl Marx argued (Ellis 155-159). Such consumers are almost powerless to protect their
rights against the corporate power that is supposed to be a player in the free market, not a controller
of culture
Conclusion
Consumers can either be rational, communicators, dupes, or victims; the Nike street kids
case illustrates communication as a form of consumption in which there is symbolic exchange that
enables people (like the street kids), express their identity and lifestyle. The street kids behave
rationally on the surface, but below the surface, their reference for the modern ‘Nike’ shoes is a
result of being duped, through commercial branding, a concept well explained by rationality.

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References
Cox, Nancy C. The Complete Tradesman: A Study of Retailing, 1550-1820. , 2016. Internet
resource.
Ellis, Nick. Marketing: A Critical Textbook. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2014. Print.
Greener, Ian, Martin A. Powell, and Richard Simmons. The Consumer in Public Services: Choice,
Values and Difference. Bristol: Policy Press, 2009. Print.