Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This study examines how young consumers in the UAE, with special emphasis on female university students, are actively employing consumer goods and services to forge and express their socio-cultural identities. The study explores how consumer practices, especially those related to luxurious products and brands, function as markers of socio-cultural and economic uniqueness. Consumption is interpreted as a socio-cultural practice, rather than a pure economic one, where multiple imaginations and images meet and interact. Commodities do not serve to satisfy basic needs, but also to create and negotiate identity and distinction. Interviewed female students have shown a rising appetite for consuming luxury brands. Technology and social media have played a vital role in their brand consciousness. They tend to spend their available resources (money, time, technology, knowledge) on consumption. They seek through their consumer practices to define themselves and to display their personal styles. The study adopts an anthropological framework in terms of its methodology and analysis. Ethnographic data were collected primarily through conducting in-depth interviews with 350 students in UAE University in Al Ain city, UAE during the Fall and Spring semesters of the academic year 2016-2017.