ABSTRACT
Investing is more than an instrument for acquiring cash returns, as finance has traditionally viewed it, and the goods and services one can acquire with cash are more than instruments for enjoying the benefits these goods and services can provide, as marketing has traditionally viewed them. Using Holt’s (1995) typology of metaphors for consuming, we show that at higher levels of instrumentation, the things which are consumed or invested in are instruments by which we are able to engage in the acts of consuming or investing, the acts of consuming and investing are interactions with objects which are instruments for interactions with other people, and the acts of consuming and investing are also instrumental actions for purposes of integration or classification. There may even be additional instrumental hierarchies layered on top of this process, since consuming or investing may be undertaken as an instrument to facilitate or enable other acts of consuming or investing. Financial services are a vast and expanding industry, whose size and growth seem disproportionate to its economic role. But if its “product” is more than the “allocation of funds from savings surplus units to savings deficit units”, its structure and function make much more sense.
