Also attached to hyper-consumption is the significant pressure to consume these goods in order to shape one’s identity. Luxury, capitalism, advertisement, exclusivity, and authenticity are important social agents to the consumptions of objects and experiences. Advertised goods, travels, and market landscapes form universal codes of luxury that contribute to the representation of “high” status in society. Hyper-consumerist structures, such as malls, demonstrate the power of the manufacturing industries in Asia.
Luxury is also often associated with the quest for exclusivity and authenticity. When it is exclusive, luxury becomes a symbol for success. Scheppe (2015) explains that “luxury consumption is the consumption of the feeling of having excluded others [...] and of being able to warm oneself in the agreeable sensation of their admiring envy. It is nothing other than the enjoyment of total separation” (p. 75). However, most objects of mass-consumption are made through a production flow system that engages dozens, hundreds, or thousands of individuals. Wang (2013) described authenticity as a salient imperative of identity making that involves strategic, complex processes of semiotic maneuvering that orients towards multi-scalar, polycentric systems of norm. In the creators’ quests to offer authentic design and identity, they can be viewed as lacking credibility the more aware they become of their outward intentions towards a larger audience. Using brand status to display authenticity often negates credibility. Baudrillard (1968) understood that “the [f]antasy of authenticity is sublime, and it is always located somewhere short of reality (sub limina)” (p. 84). Nothing is ever authentic; the idea of authenticity is an elevated emotion of the purity.
Today, hundreds of giant hyper-malls all over Asia are connected to the distribution of fake “stuff.” These commercial emblems have become an integral part of China’s visual and social landscape. The quantities of fake goods using Western brand images (e.g. logos, symbols, and language) have grown for centuries to become an abstract superstructure of falsely branded lifestyles and design integrity. For example, in a Beijing mall where all garments are sold for less than $50 USD each, the decor consists of crystal chandeliers, shiny marble, and mirrors. These overt indications of luxury are important to social status — and shoppers. The aesthetic of the store’s environment is of high interest in the context of this research because it lends a form of prestige and exclusivity to the fake goods. With the sophistication of the production system, one can recreate an almost exact visual replica of a luxury product. Crewe (2017) tells us:
The emergence of high quality “super fakes” whose inauthentic assembly is discernible only to the well-trained eye, is damaging the values that are fundamental to the perception of luxury designer brands. The copy, they argue, represents an inferior craft, a failure of creativity. (p. 56)
Fake brands are, after all, “inauthentic only in the eyes of certain people and only in certain moments or contexts” (Craciun, 2013, p. 70). Only through knowledge of the craft can one identify authentic products from an array of luxury goods. However, if the products in question are not related to luxury, the low-quality goods still exist as a product of use but not of quality.
The ritual of consumption and its social agenda are in constant flux. Douglas and Isherwood (1979) believed that a ritual process’ main function consists of gaining meaning from an ongoing change of events. The constant social movements act as a vehicle for capitalism — extracting popular concepts into brand messaging. In one of his most important writings, Guy Debord (1967) found:
Capitalist production has unified space, which is no longer bounded by external societies. This unification is at the same time an extensive and intensive process of banalization. The accumulation of commodities produced in mass for the abstract space of the market, which had to break down all regional and legal barriers and all the corporative restrictions of the Middle Ages that preserved the quality of craft production, also had to destroy the autonomy and quality of places. This power of homogenization is the heavy artillery which brought down all Chinese walls (p. 165).