There’s an entire marketplace out there that most of us are blissfully unaware of. This marketplace is where culture really gets created.
Where people exchange markers of status with one another every single day.
Most of these markers of status are symbolic in nature. They aren’t tangible resources but rather function like a symbolic currency that people acquire and trade in order to gain membership, prestige, and power in the communities within which they exist. These markers of status are what we refer to as symbolic capital (a term that was originally coined by French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu).
Symbolic capital shapes the forces driving your category or business today. Perhaps more significantly, it also shapes the future of your category. In my recent keynote at TMRE, I unpacked the concept of symbolic capital and talked about how one can go about identifying the forms of capital driving one’s business and use it to predict short and mid-term futures. Using examples across retail, food, and personal care, I outlined a framework to identify and quantify symbolic capital in any context.
Take a look.