Multi-Cultural Identification In Consumption

The topic of cultural identification has always been discussed by many cultural researches and cultural theories.Today,globalization has provided various ways for people to construct their cultural identification.In the context of consumer culture,the activity of consumption has also become one way of defining consumers' cultural identification.Commodity's sign value gradually surpasses its use value becoming the terminus of consumption.In recent years,with the rise of cultural industries,cultural products created by museums have increasingly emerged.While museum's cultural products meet people's daily needs,the cultural connotation hidden behind each product becomes the bridge for people to express their cultural identification.In order to spread the world's culture and at the same time to acquire more cultural identification,the British Museum enters into the Chinese market and infills its cultures into diverse cultural products,providing a new medium for Chinese consumers to construct multicultural identification.Based on the theoretical framework of Baudrillard's theory of symbolic consumption and Roland Barthes' semiotics theory,this paper tries to analyzed the injected symbolic connotations of the products of British Museum,and reveals how consumers are passively accept and actively construct their cultural identification to diverse cultures.It also investigates the consumption strategies adopted by the British Museum to gain cultural identification,and its referential significance for Chinese cultural institutions to spread Chinese culture to the world during the process of implementing the “Belt and Road” Initiative.This paper is divided into five parts.The first chapter is the introduction.The second chapter elaborates the construction of cultural identification in different social development stages,and gradually narrows down to the cultural identification in museum-related products.The third chapter takes different products of the British Museum as examples,analyzing their symbolic connotations to examine how the British Museum locates consumers to provide materials for them to construct personalized identification and social distinction.The fourth chapter explains the negotiation strategies both of the British Museum and Chinese consumers.On the one hand,it displays how the British Museum implements the glocalized strategies to gain more cultural identification,while on the other hand it reveals how Chinese consumers are actively engaged in cultural modification to enrich the cultural identification.The last chapter is the conclusion part and elaborates on the referential significance of British Museum's consumption strategies to contemporary Chinese cultural institutions.