Big Supermarkets Both Provide and Limit Choice

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Outline the view that big supermarkets both provide and limit choice. Today we live in a consumer society where people tend to define themselves and others by what they buy and just as equally, where they buy it. Far from being about what is necessary, shopping has now become about the consumption of luxury items and activities. There are often strong conflicts of opinion related to the power of the big supermarkets within consumer society and whether their power is used to provide or limit the choice of the consumer. This essay aims to outline both sides of this argument and begin to explain some of the theories which underpin them. In order to deconstruct the argument that supermarkets provide or limit choice it is important to look at who is actually able to consume effectively; who is able to consume luxury items and who is confined to consuming only that which is necessary. Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of the seduced and the repressed goes some way into looking at this (Bauman, cited in Hetherington, 2009, p25). He suggests that those who are more affluent within society are able to consume effectively because they are able to consume in a way which allows them to fit into society in the way that they desire, they are not restricted in their consumption. The repressed then are those whose ability to consume in the way that they desire is limited either because they are less affluent or because they have limitations within a certain kind of consumption, i.e. a disability or a religious belief that prevents them from doing certain things. With this in mind it is important to consider whether it is a matter of choice over where people shop or whether people shop where they can according to what they can afford and what is easily accessible. One could argue that those who shop at supermarkets are repressed because supermarkets provide them with things that they

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