Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

Rob Walker

Random House Publishing Group, Jun 3, 2008 - Business & Economics - 291 pages

Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Consumers are in control. Or so we're told. In Buying In, Rob Walker argues that this accepted wisdom misses a much more important cultural shift, including a practice he calls murketing, in which people create brands of their own and participate, in unprecedented ways, in marketing campaigns for their favorites. Yes, rather than becoming immune to them, we are rapidly embracing brands. Profiling Timberland, American Apparel, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Red Bull, iPod, and Livestrong, among others, Walker demonstrates the ways in which buyers adopt products not just as consumer choices but as conscious expressions of their identities. Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology, Buying In reveals why now, more than ever, we are what we buy—and vice versa. 

What people are saying

Review: Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

User Review  - Tiffany - Goodreads

I tend to think that I'm a pretty intelligent person, and more or less immune to marketing gimmicks and whatnot. So when I read the opening of Buying In, where Rob Walker states that polls show that ...

Review: Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are

User Review  - Debra Daniels-zeller - Goodreads

Rob Walker set out to write an ambitious book about the secret dialogue we use to buy things and took me on a compelling journey of branding and how part of our sense of self-identity in America is ...

About the author

Rob Walker writes the weekly column “Consumed,” a blend of business journalism and cultural anthropology, for The New York Times Magazine. Previously, he created and wrote the popular “Ad Report Card” column for Slate, and he has contributed to a wide range of publications, from Fast Company and Fortune to The New Republic and AdBusters. Walker continues to write about the secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are at his own website, Murketing.com. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife, photographer Ellen Susan.


From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are
• Author: Rob Walker
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2008
• ISBN: 1588367290, 9781588367297
• Length: 291 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / General; Business & Economics / Investments & Securities / General; Business & Economics / Marketing / General