ABSTRACT
The ability to choose from a range of products is predicated on the distinction between products, and what is unique within a product must be made to stand out. By choosing certain products over others we are exercising our judgement of taste, through which we articulate our sense of class, background, and cultural identity. Hence the connection between taste, identity, and everyday acts of consumption. The choice of particular products over others, the judgement of taste, is therefore derived from our family background and the way we have been socialised. Thus ‘lifestyle’, the exercise of judgements of taste and our choice of products, is a mechanism for expressing identity. Lifestyle has a decisive link with consumption as, at least in part, we define who we are through what we buy.
