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Moris Holbrook
One of the most influential frameworks in the Moris B. Holbrook, ed, 1999, Consumer Value:
marketing literature (particularly in the relation to A framework for analysis and research, London
arts and culture) is Morris Holbrook’s consumer and New York: Routledge.
value framework. Holbrook defines consumer value
as ‘an interactive relativistic preference experience’
(1999, 5). In using the term ‘interactive’, Holbrook maintains that ‘value depends
on the characteristics of some physical or mental object but cannot occur without
the involvement of some subject [person] who appreciates these characteristics’
(6). By ‘relativistic’, Holbrook means that consumer value is personal (ie, it varies
from person to person), involves comparisons between objects, and is specific to
a particular context. In describing consumer value as ‘relativistic’, Holbrook thus
accounts for the three factors that Belfiore and Bennett describe as ‘determinants
of impact’ for arts experiences based on their review of literature on aesthetics:
factors that pertain to the individual, factors that pertain to the artwork, environmental
factors (2007, 247).
The final term in Holbrook’s definition of ‘consumer value’ is ‘experience’, by
which he means that ‘consumer value resides not in the product purchased, not
in the brand chosen, not in the object possessed, but rather in the consumption
experience(s) derived therefrom’ (8, emphasis in original). Thus, while Holbrook’s
concept of consumer value is by no means limited to the value that is derived
from arts and culture, it supports the notions of impact and value generated by
cultural experiences as described by Throsby, Klamer, McCarthy et al, and Brown.
Holbrook distinguishes eight types of value in the consumption experience. These
are distinguished by three binary characteristics: extrinsic vs. intrinsic, self-oriented
vs. other-oriented, and active vs. reactive, as follows (1999, 12):
Extrinsic
• Self-oriented, active
∙∙Efficiency (a product’s ability to help the consumer achieve some task, often
assessed as the ratio of outputs to inputs, or in terms of convenience)
• Self-oriented, reactive
∙∙Excellence (the appreciation of a products quality/its ability to perform a task)
• Other-oriented, active
∙∙Status (a conscious use of consumption to project a certain image)
• Other-oriented, reactive
∙∙Esteem (a celebrative contemplation of one’s own possessions/life style as
markers of one’s social position)
VALUING ARTS AND CULTURE FROM THE MARKETING PERSPECTIVE 98
UNDERSTANDING the value and impacts of cultural experiences