The role of symbolic consumption in the construction of professional identity

Identity is defined as a symbolic project. It is a selected mental label (Reed, 2004) that a person builds through a coherent personal storytelling (Bauman, 2007; Thompson, 1995). This label defines a person at an individual, relational and collective level (Brewer, 2001). Nowadays, the professional position is probably one of the most enduring and salient identities that a person can have (Brewer & Gardner, 1996). In the postmodern society, consumption has a vital function in the identity construction process, because
it is based on the brands’ meaning transfer to the satisfaction of the self-physiological needs (Levy, 1959). So, the personal identity is mainly shaped as a consumer (Belk, 1988; Dittmar, 1992; Wattanasuwan, 2005), using the symbolic consumption as a tool to provide a sense of being (Baudrillard, 1981; Cushman, 1990; Giddens, 1991; Holt, 2002; McCracken, 1988; Solomon, 1983). So, due to the misrepresentation of the creative’s professional identity suffered in our society because of the stereotyped image presented
in the mass media and also the lack of studies in the academia about this topic,
we decided to focus our research in learning how junior creatives build its professional and personal identity. In-depth interviews were conducted with junior creatives, in order to explore how they construct their professional identity through symbolic consumption (assigning new meanings beyond brands).