ABSTRACT
Intuitively, given the tangible presence of consumer goods, we have come to think of consumption as a predominantly material and physical activity that sees us moving around shopping spaces, touching, buying and using goods in physically involved ways. However, we have also come to accept material consumption as a resource for the imagination to the point that much of the magic of goods hinges on pleasurable daydreams about their transformative power (Belk 2001; Belk et al. 2003; Campbell 1987; McCracken 1988). In this chapter we consider digital virtual consumption (DVC) as a location that combines aspects of both materiality and the imagination allowing for new experiences and with them transformations in consumers and their practices (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth 2012). We map out possible DVC practices and more specifically focus on the moments of reflection
and transformation these may produce in individuals. We do this cognizant of the conceptual pitfalls of perpetuating an erroneous separation between what is physical or material consumption and DVC. So this is not so much about isolating DVC as a distinct terrain then, but rather seeing DVC as a transformative space, about working out the meanings and uses of digital virtual goods, about investing our imaginative prowess in transforming them into objects of desire, and about the accompanying new skills, competencies and knowledge through which we can make sense of ourselves and our place in our social milieus. We present DVC as a potential space to acquire and test out practices and subject positions, not always possible through either the material real or the imagination on its own, but always linked to both. The chapter is divided into three sections. To begin with, we make a case for why con-
sumption can be understood as being suffused with reflective and transformative potential. From there we explain the conceptual underpinnings of DVC and map out possible relationships between virtual, digital virtual and material consumption. Drawing on research insights we have gained from our decade-long engagement with DVC, we offer a range of examples, namely
consumption practices on eBay (our central example), popular retail websites and videogames. We conclude by pondering on the angst that the promise of transformation via DVC may bring.
Grant McCracken (2006) has noted that self-reinvention is a major preoccupation of contemporary consumer culture. Self-authorship of the kind McCracken writes about depends on the creation and maintenance of spaces through which change can be sought and a subject who has an unflinching drive to change. Consumers enter consumption experiences in hope that some kind of transformation will ensue, for example, that a desired home will bring idyllic living or that a pair of running shoes will make us more adept runners (McCracken 1988). This drive for transformation has both conceptually and empirically been dealt with through the lens of consumer desire (Belk 2001; Belk et al. 2003; Campbell 1987) where research has concluded that any hope of contentment from permanent transformation is always truncated. In part, this is because displaced meanings attached to goods (McCracken 1988) – an imagined future or past – are too ideal to be fully tested, and because desire for desire is too important a fixture to be forsaken (Belk et al. 2003; Campbell 1987). There are, however, more optimistic analyses that see ownership and subsequent use of
goods as producing small triumphs and transformations (Leadbeater and Miller 2004; Miller 1997; Slater and Miller 2007). Such transformations are namely produced by the kind of reflective activity, which Colin Campbell (2004) has expressed as a form of ‘getting to know oneself’, by testing, defining and refining our tastes through consumption. For example in the introduction to The Shopping Experience, Falk and Campbell (1997, p. 4) note that while shopping:
