CONSUMER AND THEIR ANIMAL COMPANIONS

The relationship between human and other animal species has been an enduring one.
American consumers currently maintain an estimated 63 milion cats, 55 million dogs, 25
million birds, 250 million fish, and 125 million other assorted creatures as pets.

Given the remarkable size and diversity of these household menageries. It is

surprising that so little attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of pet ownership by
social science in general and consumer researchers in particular. According to fossil remains,
the wolf was the first species to be domesticated, an event that ocurred in prehistoric
setlements in the Near East some 12,000 year ago. Shortly thereafter, sheep and goats were
transfored to domestic status. It is significant to note that the keeping of animals as pets did
not merely come as a result of the domestication of animals for utilitarian purposes, such as
food and protection, but appears to have resulted from a human desire for companionship
with other species, from the early 1500s onward, explorers and missionaries described native
inhabitants of the Americans as keeping a wide variety of companion animals: racoons,
monkeys, peccaries, tapirs, wolves, bears, moose, mice, rats, squirrels, and birds. They are
assisted in this by two related, yet distinct, phenomena, both of which originate with the
human species: anthropomorphism and neoteny. Anthropomorphism refers to the apparently
universal human tendency to ascribe human characteristics to nonhuman entities. Companion
animals, especially dogs, are often assisted in their anthorpormorphic roles by a physical
characteristic termed neoteny. Neoteny refers to the tendency of an animal species to
maintain a juvenile appearance into adulthood.

Companion animals play many roles in consumers’ lives. At the risk of

oversimplification, however, these roles may be devided into two broad categories: animal as
object/products and animal as companions. Animal as object, in their role as object, animal
are reduced from their status as consumer’ companions and become instead object in the
consumers’ environment. Animal as ornaments, in this role, animal are kept to provide
aesthetic value or pleasue to consumers. Animal as status symbols, some consumers acquire
animals as a means of achieving or displaying elite status. Animal as avocation, into this
grouping fall consumers whose primary purpose in owning animals is to breed thm for
showing/exhibiting. Animal as equipment, North American Plains Indians used both dogs
and horses as equipment for hunting and transportation; the Artic Inuit similarly us dogs for
transportation even today. Animal as people, although animals do serve consumers in
utilitarian, aesthetic, or facilitative roles, many, perhaps the majority, act as companions to
their human owner. Because consumers may react defensively to researcher questions that
suggest their anime are, in fact, performing human roles in their lives, the nondirectve,
nonjudgemntal approach of phenomenological interviews was chosen. A purposive sample of
25 pet owner-informants was selected that included 11 men and 14 women ranging in age
from 18 to 68 and spanning occupational groups from working-class retirees to college
students to corporate executives.

Animal as self, several researchers have commented on animals as representing an

extension of their owners personalitis, selves, or ids; thus, finding evidence of these roles in
our interviews was anticipated. In our interviews, few explicit projection of self-identity onto
pets were encountered. However, the few instances in which this occurred did appear
consistent with Beck and Katcher’s observations. Animal as family members, between 70
percent and 99 percent of pet owners define their animals as family members. Among our
interviewees, similar result were obtained, wih approximately 80 percent spontaneously
describing their pet as a “member of the family.” Animal brothers and animal sisters, for
several of the young adult consumers to whom we talked, a favorite dog or cat often served as
brother or sister. A family of French poodle named Shu Shu, who is now 11 years old:
“we’ve had him since he was four months old.” Animal children, as numerous researchers
have documented, animals make fine children. Feldmann was one of the earliest to describe
this phenomenon: “a pet can allow potential parents to experience aspects of parenthood
through practicing nurturant behavior and experiencing the result, a pet can be a permanent
surrogate child o some childless couples. A child-substitute- a canine or feline child who can
never grow up.”

The notion that pets may function in consumers’ lives as extensions of self, as friends,
and as family members has been observed and commented on in the social science literature
previously. The present research inquiry did not originate these themes, although i do hope to
have extended them in some novel directions. The first emergent theme extends
conceptualizations offered by anthropologists such as Leach and Sahlins, who have observed
that pets reside in an intermediate position between nature and culture. The second emergent
theme is linked to the work of several investigators who have commented on the utility of
families keeping companion animals to help teach children to be responsible and nurturant. In
coomenting on the phenomenon of animal companions. Leach proposed hat pets form a
mediating category between humans and animals, having aspects of both but being fully
neither one or the other. The house is primarily intended as human habitat. Pet animals are
permitted within it to the extent that they comform to certain behavioral practices and respect
certain boundaries. The other half of the inside/outside dialectic is the concept of “outside.”
In the words of Maurice Sendak, this seems to represent “where the wild things are” to
consumers.

Several social scientists have commented on the use of companion animals to

socialize children into responsible and nurturant carigivers. The present study has utilized the
method of phenomenological inquiry to make an initial foray into consumers’ relationship
with their animal companions. Using ethnographic procedures, consumer researchers could
extend the pioneering studies of Sanders and his colleagues into novel areas. A second
virtually unexplored aspect of the meaning of pet keeping in our culture may be accessible
via semiotic analysis. In recent years, Belk and others amination of the enduring, emotional
ties that consumers cultivate with certain possessions. There are several additional areas of
the animal-consumer relationship that remain unexplored and that could fruitfully benefit
from increased research attention. First, more direct attention could be placed on the
acquisition process for pets. A second, significant area of pet keeping little explored in the
present inquiry is the breeding and showing of purebred animals. Closely related to this
would be inquiries into pet ownership that carefully examined the possession of animals as
market of social status or evidence of conspicuous consumptions.

Consumer and pet interaction has dated from prehistory, as has the larger interrelation
between humans and animal life. In the attempts by consumers to establish boundaries on
their pets’ places and activities within the household, we may see reflected the larger struggle
to allocate space to humans and animals in the biosphere. Social norms in both these domains
are evolving rapidly and would likely provide a fertile ground for consumer researchers to
initiate inquiries.