When Products Become Rituals: How Everyday Consumer Goods Turn Into Cultural Anchors

A routine set of products, such as headphones, a smoothie in the morning, and a water bottle, can be rituals despite the lack of religious importance. Routinely being used within an everyday routine, these products can be elevated from being simple products into important cultural objects within anthropology related fields concerning business, especially within marketing, which may often overlook such effects.

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Rituals involve something more than just routine behaviors; they consist of actions invested with symbolic meanings. For a long period, research on rituals carried out by anthropologists remained primarily religious and community-based, such as initiation rituals, harvest rituals, and life cycles. But new markets have generated new ritualistic arenas in which the brand can intervene, such as the 6 a.m. exercise routine, the kitchen counter in the breakfast ritual, the daily commute, and the evening “reset.”

Take the example of the emergence of high-end water bottles. From a design standpoint, it is simply a packaging device, but for most users, the device is related to a form of self-regulation related to hydration and wellness. This is clearly a form of anthropological stickiness rather than a brand, because a brand is given meaning by being associated with a form of culturally approbated behavior.

Conversely, those who understand these ritual worlds reliably succeed in business. Caffeine is what coffee chains sell, but what they really market is the ritual of mornings—reliability, predictability, a sense of being rebooted for the day. Sports marketing is about much more than sports gear; it's about the ritual of warm-ups, stretches, and trainings. Even social platforms tap into ritualistic views with clicks of notifications, reviews of tasks, and scrolls before bed.

The first anthropological observation is that rituals come before loyalty itself. People use objects because these serve as transitions—to wake up, travel, begin employment, and unwind. Over a period of time, these transitions develop significant emotional attachments. As objects join the ritual, it is very hard to substitute them without upsetting the emotional cycles of everyday life.

This contributes significantly to why some products can be differentiated with a high degree of prices without provoking a backlash among consumers. For products with a ritualistic identity structuring, consumers can become less sensitive concerning prices because consumers can change from one similar brand, for example, dish soap, but rarely leave the items used for identity structuring.

Knowledge about rituals helps unravel why some products fail as well. Many businesses try to communicate a “lifestyle” without understanding the rituals of said lifestyle. They create products with the intent of giving meaning without ensuring they serve a purpose within a meaningful ritual. An understanding of anthropology would ask: Which transition is this item facilitating? Which emotional change is being prompted?

Designing for ritual means creating the space in between the events. This is a mapping of the rhythm of life itself, a person's wake-up routine, meal prep, employment, socializing, and unwinding. Ethnographic research is excellent in this area because it appreciates these routines not just as mundane behaviors but rather cultural patterns of identity formation. Brands that understand and live within these patterns with a certain level of reverence will get customers, but most importantly, they will be relevant within the culture.

It is a broad inference that today's economy is one of supply and demand, but it is one of rituals and meanings as well. When businesses understand that products can be used as cultural anchors, they begin to shift away from what is described here as “brand loyalty” and instead try to create objects that people will want to integrate into their worlds of meaning in an automatic way. Thus, evergreen products will be those that subtly integrate themselves into the ways and means by which people create meanings in life, rather than those products that try to draw attention to themselves.