Consumption of Landed Properties in Africa: The Mediating Role of Culture

Introduction

Whilst it is not a new knowledge that culture impacts consumption, the intersection of materiality with rituals and its transformative role in this respect is continually a matter of interest to marketers and social scientists. The organisation, operations, and outcomes of marketing are profoundly influenced by contextual customs and traditions. As suggested by Ghemawat (2007), knowledge of and embedding in local context remains a key success element. Essentially, the cognisance of cultural differences among groups informs the wisdom that marketing cannot follow a uniformly predicted path conceptually.

Yet, common to people across regional, lingual, and religious divides are educed emotions that become part of a shared repertoire. This is evidenced in the similarity of stories articulated, as well as the commonality of metaphors (Kane, 2001) that are used (e.g. graveyards, markings, and sacrifice) in describing experiences and encounters. Death and the consequent burial rites associated with it provide a metaphoric articulation of such experiences and encounters. There are legal, ethical, financial, environmental, commercial, and social implications, around the management of death, which also include the disposition of possessions through wills, the environmental effects of burial practices and the implications of cryogenic storage (Dobscha, 2012). Researchers (e.g. Walter, 1999) have studied specific ways in which the dead and the living ‘cohabit’ in groups, the preservation of “a sense of continuity and ancestry, and ‘police the grieving’ by establishing norms for the feelings and behaviors of survivors” (Neimeyer, Prigerson, & Davies, 2002, p. 237). In the same vein, Chronis (2006) asserts that exhibited objects act as tangible mnemonic devices and radiate perceptions of cultural continuity due to their multi-sensory bodily associations and ritualistic performances in the everyday life of the consumers. Consequently, funeral rites (Bonsu & Belk, 2003), heritage exhibitions (Chronis, 2006), and consecrated landscapes (Chronis, Arnould, & Hampton, 2012) have been argued to generate an opportunity to become habituated.

Recently, Dobscha (2012) identified two main research areas at an ACR (Advances in Consumer Research) roundtable on research on death and consumer behavior. The first involves the ritual aspects of death (e.g., Bonsu & Belk, 2003; O’Donohoe & Turley, 2005) and the second relates to “identity and meaning made of death by the dead, the dying, and the living” (e.g., Neimeyer, 2000; Arndt, Solomon, Kasser, & Sheldon, 2004) (p. 1098). In speaking to the second theme, this chapter is motivated, using funerary practices, to investigate how cultural excitements and sensitivities collaborate to impact and penetrate ethnic housing markets and stock, and in the process, probe the advent of slum and slumming conditions in a non-Western society. Therefore, the extent to which the complexities of family relationship and the cultural context contribute to urban housing deterioration and neighbourhood slums is interrogated in order to amplify our knowledge of ethnic housing market dynamics. This is imperative given that “researchers need to understand the scale, scope and dynamics around the development and growth of informal/slum areas” (UN-HABITAT, 2010, p. 73).