The business section of this morning’s Asbury Park Press had an article about a web site where shoppers get together on-line to chat about shopping, share information about products, and steer each other to good buys. The website, called Kaboodle, looks and acts like a social networking site and combines two of the things Americans love to do most: shop and talk on-line. According to the article, which came from the Associated Press, “Many users find it utterly addicting, logging on at least daily to see products that other people are looking for or have discovered. These members say the shopping lists their fellow users post are often funky, personal elements of self-expression, as much as that may sound like an overly exalted way of describing what is, after all, consumption.”
Such activities are a perfect example of the social learning theory put forth by Etienne Wenger in her book titled Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Wenger points out that learning results from the interplay of human beings as they engaged in a common pursuit, collectively creating meaning and identity. She uses the term ”community of practice” to describe such networks as families, offices, and social networking sites. Practice, as defined by Wenger, is “a process by which we can experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful” (51). What makes the shopping/chatting site so indicative of the kind of practice Wenger describes is that it not only engages its members, it serves to redefine the act of shopping itself and give a new kind of identity to the shopper. Shoppers in this community of practice are no longer passive victims of retail, sitting politely waiting for the weekend shopping circular. In this community of practice, shoppers call the advertising shots, spreading word (and links) about bargains, which brands and merchants to seek out, and which dot com sites to shop at. As Pat Conroy, vice chairman and lead consumer products consultant for Deloitte & Touche, notes in the Press article, “We have never seen, in the past few decades, the shift in power to consumers that we’re seeing now.”
