FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Marketing experts know that consumers
use products to help construct personal identity. When a person decides to
purchase a Hummer rather than a Prius, for instance, that person is also buying
a certain lifestyle or attitude. And with so many products to choose from, it
is easy to change one’s identity by simply purchasing different products.
But what about tattoos? For marketing
researchers, tattoos present interesting questions because unlike clothes,
jewelry, cars and even houses, tattoos do not change. They are permanent,
infinitely customized and essentially immutable products. A University of Arkansas researcher says people use tattoos as a
way to find meaning, permanence and stability — and thus a coherent identity —
in an increasingly complex and fragmented world.
They do this through the power of story,
said Jeff Murray, marketing professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Each tattoo can be viewed
as a symbol of an episode or scene in the narrative of one’s life. Perhaps more
poignantly, Murray refers to these stories as personal
myths, which other researchers have defined as stories that bring together a
wide range of experience into a purposeful and convincing whole.
“We continue to be struck by rapid and
unpredictable change,” Murray said. “Some theorists talk it about in
terms of postmodernism, which is one way of saying that our culture has become
fractured. Consumer culture reflects this situation, as consumers adapt to
these changes by varying their lifestyle. They downshift, upgrade, change their
hair, body, clothes, car, house, career, geographic location and even family.
The result is a loss of personal anchors needed for identity. We found that
tattoos provide this anchor. Their popularity reflects a need for stability,
predictability, permanence and identity.”
To develop in-depth analyses of a variety
of individual life stories, Murray selected seven subjects — three women
and four men — with a breadth of life experience. The youngest was 22; the
oldest 58. Two were married, three were single, one was a widower and one was
divorced. Some had children, and others did not. The subjects represented
diverse occupations, including college student, college professor, construction
worker, medical courier, artist, waitress and manager of an exotic boutique.
Murray and his graduate students
conducted unstructured, in-depth interviews with the above subjects. The
interviews were audio-taped, and each interview lasted from one to slightly
more than two hours. Questions focused on the meaning of the tattoo design, the
experience of being tattooed, perceptions of the body, words the subjects used
to describe themselves and other biographical information. Then an interpretive
group, consisting of Murray and three co-authors, met once a week to
read the transcribed interviews aloud and discuss potential interpretations.
Focusing on temporal sequencing of key
events and narrative movement leading to the formation of a personal myth for
each subject, group members then sought common story lines between individual
narratives. They identified two predominant themes: stories of redemption and
stories of contamination. Narrative sequences of redemption moved from an
emotionally negative or bad scene to an emotionally positive or good outcome.
For example, one subject had several tattoos to symbolize her journey of
healing from the grief she felt because of the death of her parents.
Conversely, narrative sequences of
contamination moved from good to bad. In this case, positive experience was
spoiled or contaminated by a bad outcome. One subject, for example, had several
tattoos in obvious, easy-to-see places on his body. When he got the tattoos,
they symbolized a positive experience, namely that of identifying with friends,
some of whom were in a band with him. However, as the subject got older, he
regretted having some of the tattoos because he thought they caused employers
to discriminate against him.
“Our analyses revealed that identity is
an ongoing negotiation between the individual who chooses to narrate particular
scenes and the culture within which the individual lives,” Murray said. “Redemption and contamination
sequences as common story lines helped us better understand the long-term
consequences of tattoos and their role in the negotiation process.”
Murray says this process demonstrates the
importance and power of narrative in the construction of personal identity,
which, good or bad, says a lot about the types of products people purchase and
their reasons for purchasing them. Many marketers and retailers understand this
and increasingly rely on narrative to sell all kinds of products.
“Selling a product by listing its
attributes is an old paradigm,” Murray said. “Companies understand that
identity and personal narrative are extremely effective tools for marketing
products. They are valuable explanations for why and what people consume.”
Murray’s study, titled “Inscribing the Myth:
the Role of Tattoos in Identification,” was published in Research in Consumer Behavior, a journal
presenting the latest research, theory and methods in the field of consumer
behavior. A copy of the study can be provided upon request.