Üsküdar Üniversitesi Faculty of Communication Department of Advertising Assistant Professor Dr. Cihan Becan's book titled “Maximum Purification: Unraveling the Codes of Consumption” has been released. The book, which met its readers from Cinius Publications, offers a critical and analytical perspective, while also being a unique work for including field research at the same time.
Analyzing the phenomenon of consumption, which has manifested itself in different forms throughout human history, within a psychological and sociological framework with various theoretical approaches, Assistant Professor Dr. Cihan Becan evaluates the human dimension of consumption in his book titled “Maximum Purification.” Becan, who started his work approximately two years ago, combines the phenomenon of consumption with concepts such as hedonism, narcissism, dystopia, and transference mechanism in his book, while also proposing a previously unattempted local-scale model called ‘Consumer Identity and Consumption Values.’
“We received no financial support for the book from anywhere”
Assistant Professor Dr. Cihan Becan stated that he wanted to address how consumption is shaped in the book, saying, “The idea for the book actually emerged with the project itself. At İstanbul Aydın Üniversitesi, with a twelve-person student working group, we were researching how people's consumption and lifestyles were shaped in areas such as brands, media usage, and social media. We determined the research area for the voluntary students working on this book to be a shopping mall. This is because consumption tools are more prevalent in shopping malls. From November 2018 to June 2019, we conducted one-on-one interviews with 387 people in the field. These were not standard survey studies. We carried out an in-depth and long study with the voluntary students. We conducted interviews face-to-face, recording, writing, and using all kinds of tools and equipment. We did not receive any financial support for the book from anywhere, and the students carried out the research with their own means.” he said.
“The book combines both critical analysis and discovery-based research”
Becan stated that his book offers a unique research for individuals to recognize and rediscover themselves as consumers; “What makes the book you hold unique is that, as a result of the psychographically-based in-depth interview technique, consumers are grouped based on a total ten-question scale, ranging from their relationships with brands to their shopping habits, from media consumption to holiday and clothing preferences, and how they make sense of life. Until now, due to the lack of a similar book published in Turkish that possesses both a critical structure and includes the findings of qualitative research, I wanted to produce such a resource. This book took a little longer than I anticipated to complete due to the concern of effectively evaluating the large amount of data we had. However, the time spent provided an opportunity to analyze the results in a healthy manner. This book presents original research for individuals to recognize and rediscover themselves as consumers. While serving as a guide for understanding, comprehending, and questioning the phenomenon of consumption with intellectual accumulation, it also continues to unravel the sociological codes of consumption.” he said.