Just looking? Choice and constraint in practices of visual consumption at magazine newsstands

Abstract

This article takes as its subject practices of looking that occur in London's newsstands (magazine retail displays). Taking an ethnographic approach inspired by the flâneur and emphasising the symbolic properties of consumption activities that take place in public retail space, it reports on an extensive participant observation of newsstands. A three-fold typology of visual consumption is put forward: “drifting,” “speed-shopping” and “free-reading.” These practices of looking are then critically analysed in the light of theoretical perspectives on visual consumption, in particular, the tension between arguments prioritising the pleasures and, conversely, the constraints that it entails. The analysis culminates in the argument that the most fruitful position is a dialectical one that acknowledges the conditional freedom of visual consumption.

Keywords:

• consumer choice
• constraint
• flâneur
• magazine
• media
• newsstand
• visual consumption

Notes

1. See McFall (2004) for a discussion of critical perspectives on the saturation of everyday life by advertising messages and for a fascinating historical account of the rise of the “clutter of advertising” in coffee houses and outdoor environments.

2. See R. Barrett (2010) and Yochelsen (2008).

3. Massey (2008) used a newsstand in Kilburn High Street as the departure point for an argument about the ways in which “real place is not defined by political or administrative boundaries” but rather by multiple, dynamic links with the world. Nevertheless, Massey's argument uses the newsstand as one point of a broader social geography and does not dwell on the specific social interactions that take place there.

4. See Iqani (2011).

5. Increasingly, surveillance is also being used as a form of consumer behaviour research – see Fitchett and Lim (2008) for a concise discussion of surveillance-based consumer research techniques. Certain companies watch consumers browsing through stores in order to “understand how certain consumers respond to products” (Rosenbloom 2010), incorporating this into sales and merchandising strategies.

6. For example, the Space Hijackers' anti-consumerist intervention “Buy Nothing Day” saw activists posing as shopping assistants in stores on London's Oxford Street, but instead trying to persuade customers not to buy the items they were holding.