Beyond Fungible: Transforming Money into Moral and Social Resources
Tonya Williams Bradford
An essential characteristic of marketing practice and theory is the promotion of exchanges, many of which are funded by money. Marketing literature thus places great emphasis on determining what factors influence consumers to engage in the marketplace. Less understood, however, is how consumers allocate monetary resources to fund exchanges. Scholars have demonstrated that people employ earmarks to segregate money by source, meaning, or purpose. The ethnographic study of provisioning in the current research adds to prior scholarship with an explanation of how money, as a fungible resource, is transformed into moral and social resources by the behavioral process of ascribing earmarks and approaching provisioning. As part of this study, the author develops a typology that incorporates thrift provisioning and splurge provisioning approaches to categorize consumer goals derived from the use of prosaic and indexical earmarks. These goals are defined as economizing, sustaining, treating, and rewarding. The article closes with a discussion of implications for marketing managers and potential avenues for further research.