YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

Consumer behaviour and consumer activities  311 Slovenia is no exception in this respect, with the paradoxical increase in interest in shopping coinciding with the current problematic period due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the socio-economic conse- quences that have resulted from it. Another aspect of the interpretation of the increase in young people’s interest in shopping can be explained on similar grounds. The increase in materialistic value orientations through the awareness of the difficulty of accessing certain material goods that are highly ranked in the scale of needs and are out of reach (e.g. one’s own real estate) paradoxically results in an increased interest in other material goods, according to the principle of the ‘Invisible Ink Strategy’ (Corrigan, 1997: 14). Simply put, by taking an interest in con- sumer goods that are interpreted as an important part of certain life- styles and social groups, the individual attempts to create a bridge to a desired lifestyle (McCracken, 1998). Comparing the data 2010-2020, there is a significant shift towards the increasing importance of shopping. The increase in the proportion of young people (by around 15%) expressing an increased interest in shopping shows a shift away from the so-called “self-expressive value” (Inglehart et al., 2004) towards more materialistic value orientations. 9.3  YOUNG PEOPLE’S SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AND SHOPPING PATTERNS Increasingly, socio-political engagement is taking place beyond institu- tional politics, led by electoral processes, largely as a result of disillusion- ment with the effectiveness of conventional political practices, through which young people feel they are not (sufficiently) heard. Practices outside institutional frameworks can be referred to as ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY) poli- tics, and its targets can be anyone from multinational corporations and political elites to local communities, friends and family (Pickard, 2019). In contemporary politics the targets and agents have changed, as well as the repertoires of political action (Norris, 2013). Through such engagement,