City Shoppers and Urban Identification: Observations on the Social Psychology of City Life

Chicago housewives comprise four types of shoppers: economic, personalizing, ethical, and apathetic. The personalization and moralization of customer-clerk relationships cannot be inferred from conventional proposition about the anonymity of city life, yet the shoppers are urbanites. Each type of shopper is distinguished by a specific pattern of social characteristics reflecting her position in the social structure of her residential community....