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Social Presence and Product Concept
Product concept is different from the product itself. The product concept is thedistinguishing affordance of an artifact, which is an object or symbol. An object becomes an
artifact through human action. A rock is only a rock until a camper uses it to secure a tent stake,
at which time the rock becomes an artifact of human activity. Its distinguishing affordance was a
secure tent stake. Its affordance could have been a contained campfire, but it was not. A
quarter-inch drill, to consumers, is not a drill or even a quarter-inch hole. The drill is whatever
the quarter-inch hole affords consumers. It is the modified relationship to the physical
environment.
Pure symbols are always artifacts since they are the result of human action. The only
affordance of pure symbols is to communicate, which is social activity. Symbols afford a modified
relationship to the social environment. Objects that afford modified relationships with the
physical environment may also, as symbols, afford modified relationships with the social
environment. A consumer with a quarter-inch drill may never use the drill in the physical
environment but may display it socially as either a symbol of potential or merely of accumulated
possessions that indicate prosperity. In this case, the principle affordance is a social
perception. Brands are symbols that, through marketing, usually add social affordances to objects
with physical affordances. Further, brands can signify the social affordances of social objects,
i.e., people.Objects can offer both physical and social affordances. And a single object can offer
multiple affordances. Research identifies which affordances are salient. However, research often
emphasizes physical affordances, ignoring social affordances, by eliminating the social and
cultural context from the research design, even with products used chiefly in social situations.
Daugherty et al. (2001) explicitly stated that they instructed subjects not to interact with each
other. Coyle and Thorson (2001), Klein (2003), Li, Daugherty and Biocca (2002) and Menon and Soman
(2002), among others, implicitly reveal that their designs exclude social and cultural context. Yet
Mick and Buhl (1992) noted that solitary-subject designs ignore social dimensions. Ritson and
Elliot (1999) pointed out that the lack of social and cultural context is a general failure of
consumer research, not just specific failures of particular researchers. This widespread failure
easily misses social affordances that may be critical to product concept.Lombard and Dillon (1997) conceptualized presence in social terms important to communication
of product concept. Indeed, in many cases, product or brand concept is the sense of presence that
the product or brand affords. As Lombard and Dillon point out, presence is based on consumers’
subjective judgment. Products and brands that consumers perceive to fit well within a social or
cultural context are likely to increase consumers’ sense of presence in that context. Products and
brands that fit poorly are unlikely to increase consumers’ sense of presence. Consumption behavior
will tend toward products and brands that afford greater presence in consumers’ preferred social
and cultural contexts. Various techniques in market research implicitly recognize this phenomenon.
For example, researchers often ask such questions as, “If (product A/ brand X) were a person, what
kind of person would it be?”Within the cultural parameters Hall (1973) identified, consumers sense social presence and
perceive relationships from several observable cues. Physical proximity, duration of eye contact,
smiling, conversation topics, body position, gestures and facial expressions are among the cues
adaptable to computer-mediated environments. As a property of social objects, each behavior alone
may convey little meaning. Combinations, however, convey social affordances. Composition variations
result in corresponding affordance variations. Consumers interpret affordances from the occurrence
probabilities of component acts. Consumers learn probabilities from experience within social and
cultural environments. Some components that do not conform to social and cultural acts may appear
to be idiosyncratic. Others may appear foreign. Still others may appear only as aberrant or deviant
and, therefore, socially and culturally unacceptable.The perceived behaviors afford behavior in the observer. Even aberrant or deviant behavior
affords behavior. As Lang and Gabriel (1995) pointed out, conventional standards of social and
cultural behavior afford some consumers the opportunity to rebel through aberrant or deviant
behaviors. Conversely, aberrant or deviant behaviors afford most consumers the opportunity to
define social and cultural parameters. All perceived behaviors, whether conventional, aberrant or
deviant, afford the observer the opportunity to identify with or distinguish from a social or
cultural group.
When products and brands are integral components of behavior, they afford consumption as a
social process. Products and brands are components of behavioral compositions. In the absence of
specific products or brands, consumers interpret compositions differently. Products and brands are
critical to the richness dimension of vividness that contributes to consumers’ sense of presence.
Products and brands afford consumption, which is a social process that cannot occur without
products and brands. In a consumer culture, a mediated environment without products or brands is a
fantasy environment. An environment with misused products and brands will appear aberrant or
deviant.Consumers interpret a social or cultural composition differently when a specific product or
brand is excluded. They also interpret a specific product or brand differently when it is removed
from the social or cultural composition. This difference is critical to product concept. When
research studies components isolated from social or cultural compositions, discovery of social or
cultural affordances is difficult, if not impossible.
