Keeping up with the Jones – Home decor and market forces!

Grant and Handelman determined that “while consumers readily turn to the home décor marketplace for objects that help them reflect their personal identity, lifestyle media have clearly influenced an emergent cultural understanding of the home as a marketplace asset. Industrial-grade appliances, large kitchen islands with bar stools, open floor plans, neutral color schemes, and spa-like bathrooms all speak to consumers working to align their homes with professional marketplace standards. . . . We also observed the presence of a market-reflected gaze that casts shame on homeowners for their poor decorating choices. Uniqueness is shunned while professional expertise and market standards are celebrated. . . . Even for consumers who push against the standards of the day, the market-reflected gaze is a disorienting force that contributes to consumers’ unease with their homes. . . . It challenges their ability to fully identify with their own home and potentially keeps them on the home renovation treadmill.”

“When a House is No Longer a Home.”  2022.  Press release, Journal of Consumer Research, https://consumerresearcher.com/when-a-house-is-no-longer-a-home