Through the consumer culture context, the importance of lifestyle and brand preferences: A research

While products turn into symbolic and cultural objects, the need for examining consumer beyond her/his demographics is considerably increased. Additionally, nowadays not the products are on talk, but the brands. Meanings and narrations presented by brands are effective on consumer's self-identity process, self-positioning. In other respects, consumer desires to get in a relationship with the brands that are relevant to her/his lifestyle or able to make real her/his lifestyle projects. Within this context, it can be thought that consumers with different lifestyle values, so different motivations, may prefer different brands. In theoretic part of this graduate thesis, the prominent lifestyle values rising in consumer society and the brands' role in consumer culture within the brand management perspective are reviewed. Based on this theoretic frame, in research part, an academic survey is conducted among the students continuing education in Istanbul. Participants are distinguished in specific clusters according to their lifestyle values, then the brand preference of clusters in different product groups are examined. Factor and cluster analysis, addition to one-way ANOVA test are the methods used. Findings show that lifestyle clusters, whose difference in means is seen partially significant by statistical analysis, prefer the same brands but with the same or different preference line ups. Such consequence, somehow, draws attention to standardization in preferences and homogenization role of globalization.