Values and the Concept of a Preferred Life Vision

One way to conceptualize a system of values is through the concept of a preferred life vision. Levi-Strauss points out that people are sensitive to contrasts in the human condition.5 Examples are seeking excitement versus being bored, being rich versus being poor, or being healthy versus being ill, and so on. People seek the life that captures the more preferred polar extreme. But, as all aspects of the good life cannot be pursued with equal vigor, the consumer’s value system reflects the particular weightings he or she attaches to various components of the preferred life vision. These weightings have some stability but can change with circumstances and cultural drift. Indiference to any contrast is equivalent to giving equal weighting to the polar extremes: a possibility that can be dismissed for all practical purposes. Rokeach spoke of both terminal and instrumental values, though this distinction has not caught on, presumably because values, as the concept is being used here, are usually viewed as terminal by definition. If we were to tie values to consumer buying, they might look like the following for many people:

• Preference for a less-pressured over a fast-paced lifestyle
• Preference for an environment less threatening to health over a more technologically driven way of life
• Preference for a more meaningful, simpler life over a more materialistic one
• Preference for more solidarity, face-to-face communication, and sense of sharing with others over mere luxurious isolation (bowling alone is not pleasurable)
• Preference for more to be preserved from the past than overthrown in the name of progress
• Preference for staying young-looking rather than old-looking

There is no complete homogeneity of values, consumer or otherwise, within a culture—simply a family resemblance. Consumers attach diferent weights to various values; hence psychographic segmentation, which is based on diferent values and lifestyles. Values difer among social classes and difer among people of diferent generations within the same class, depending how refined our categories of values are. Sharp diferences in values between generations have led to “generational marketing” and “cohort marketing” in segmentation. 6 While diferent generations are separated by about 25 years, cohorts are formed by common defining experiences in their history. As a consequence, cohort groups are assumed to be “value-bonded” by similar preferences. Thus the “postwar cohort” came of age between 1946 and 1963, experiencing a time of family togetherness, economic growth, and social tranquility. In spite of the Korean conflict, it was an experience of security and stability. Marketing campaigns to cohort members exploit nostalgia with symbols of the experiences behind the bonding. Such symbols can incite a good deal of nostalgic emotion.
Accepting that early emotional experiences are most involved in molding the consumer’s system of values, the question becomes: How influential are common cohort experiences in shaping values? Are they suficient to direct preferences? Values can be poor predictors of buying until or unless beliefs are taken into account. Consumers can have the same set of values but show diferent buying patterns because they have diferent sets of beliefs about the appropriate means for promoting their values. Values operate like goals for the individual, but the paths to goal attainment are many. Thus a consumer may place a high value on buying the “best tennis racquet money can buy,” but this depends on beliefs about the criteria that reflect “bestness,” while other beliefs about personal finances and buying opportunity will also play a role in what tennis racquet is bought.