r company (in this case Vans) that a core of the dynamics of this situation lies in the verities of marketing. It is as true for cool sneakers as it is for anything else that the structure of any particular marketplace is fundamentally determined by the specific (if always changing) ways in which the people who are participating in that market as consumers select product as being preferable over others. In other words, companies are affected by the ways in which people choose products as markers of (and creators of) identity - even as consumers rely on companies to produce those products that become the tangible markers of identity.
Vans is an especially interesting case study in this regard because it is one of the few companies whose products provide an almost instantaneous and almost absolutely assured in-group status to its wearers. The creation of identity through consumption in this particular case is thus much more transparent than in most cases. Scanlon argues that the identities created through acts of consumerism are fleeting.
Neither the purchases nor the process, however, lead themselves to a simple explanation. A working-class woman does not once and for all acquire the identity of a wealthy sophisticate through her purchase of a particular perfume or handbag. An "average guy" does not once and for all acquire the identity of a debonair men-about -town through the purchase of a particular automobile or brand
...